2 weeks Ago By The Telegraph
Civil servants racked up almost £75,000 in expenses during the negotiations to give away the Chagos Islands , The Telegraph can reveal. Foreign Office diplomats landed taxpayers with the large bill for travel to and from Mauritius, covering business class flights, hotel stays and taxis. It comes on top of the estimated £9-£18 billion price that Britain will pay when handing over the strategically important Indian Ocean archipelago.
Critics said that Rachel Reeves’s new Office for Value for Money (OVM) should investigate the spending, revealed by The Telegraph under freedom of information laws. Figures released by the Foreign Office show that a team of just eight negotiators racked up the £75,000 bill. The bulk of the spending was on 19 flights for officials on British Airways and Air Mauritius, of which 17 were business class.
The team clocked up £68,452 in air fares, with the most expensive being a return flight with BA in December which cost £6,338. A further £3,458 was spent on hotel stays by the negotiators, at resorts in Mauritius where rooms cost up to £230 per night. The remainder included £237 on meals, £104 for taxis and rail fares, and £1,444 worth of fees for flight changes and bookings.
The negotiations took place the end of August and in mid-December, when temperatures in the Indian Ocean islands average 27C. At the same time Britain was battered by seasonal storms while the South of England endured its wettest Autumn in a century, according to the Met Office. James Cartlidge, the shadow defence secretary, said: “Taxpayers will be horrified to hear that Labour are wasting so much money in order to negotiate wasting a whole lot more.
“ Rachel Reeves’s brand new OVM isn’t looking at Chagos because, according to the Treasury, treaties are ‘outside their remit’. “That needs to change – wasting tens of thousands of pounds gadding about to waste billions of pounds renting islands we already own is far from value for money.” The Foreign Office said that all the flights were in line with its “strict rules” that business class can only be used for journeys longer than 10 hours.
It added that negotiators had only booked hotel rooms when there was not enough space to accommodate them at the High Commissioner’s residence. “In-person negotiations are essential to delivering such a complex agreement that is in the UK’s national interests. In order to minimise cost, the negotiating rounds were split between the UK and Mauritius,” the department said in a statement.
The revelation comes after it emerged that Mauritius is demanding even more money from British taxpayers under the deal to hand over Chagos. Under the controversial agreement thrashed out by Labour, the UK would already pay an estimated £9 billion to £18 billion. No 10 would relinquish control to Mauritius, which is 1,500 miles from the archipelago and has never previously governed it.
Britain would then take out a 99-year lease on the biggest island, Diego Garcia, which is a key military base used by the US air force. The deal has proved highly controversial in the UK and US but unexpectedly received the approval of Donald Trump at the start of this month. Following the US president’s sign off, Mauritian negotiators tabled demands for even larger lease payments and a new pot of development funding.
A Foreign Office spokesman said the negotiations in person “were vital to delivering an agreement that secures the full operation of the base on Diego Garcia”, adding: “The UK Government has robust rules in place to ensure any expenditure is carefully checked and provides value-for-money for the taxpayer...
“As much as possible, the negotiators stayed at the High Commissioner’s residence while in Mauritius for the negotiations. “The agreement is rooted in a rational and hard-headed determination to protect UK security. Once signed it will protect the base on Diego Garcia and cement UK and US presence in the Indo-Pacific for generations to come.
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