Defence secretary admits Chagos deal must change to win Trump's support

The UK is reviewing its deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the defence secretary has said. Wes Streeting confirmed the agreement was being looked at again after US President Donald Trump called it terrible at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. The original agreement would see the UK cede sovereignty of the territory to Mauritius and pay an average of £101m ($136m) a year to lease back a joint UK-US military base there, prized for its strategic location in the Indian Ocean. In April the deal, agreed under Sir Keir Starmer, was paused indefinitely because Mr Trump pulled his support.

Mr Streeting said we have to review the deal because the United States doesn't support it. What President Trump said yesterday wasn't new but I think it does provide absolute clarity that his position on this Chagos deal as currently drafted is not changing, he told BBC Breakfast. So we have to do more work with our American allies, with President Trump and his administration, to get the deal to a place where he can support it. He said the focus now would be to secure long-term certainty for the base on Diego Garcia, the Chagos archipelago's largest island. It had been the view of every UK prime minister since Boris Johnson, he added, that an ongoing legal process, as Mauritius argues it was illegally forced to give away the islands in 1965 to gain independence, risks the security of the base.

During Mr Trump's first face-to-face meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the UN General Assembly in New York, the US president criticised the terrible deal and said the UK was going to be looking at it. Mr Burnham replied: Yep. He later told broadcasters he had inherited the situation and that a resolution was needed. It's critical to safeguard the future of the base, and that matters to us for security reasons, but also clearly to the United States as well, he said. What I said in the meeting is that we will work to find that resolution between the different sides, and we'll work hard to find it. The prime minister had spoken to his Mauritian counterpart, Navin Ramgoolam, ahead of his trip to New York, and an official readout from that meeting said Mr Burnham reiterated his commitment to continue doing everything possible, along with the US, to ratify the deal. The review is not expected to constitute a formal process operating to a specific timeframe.

Government sources insist that the comments from Mr Burnham and Mr Streeting do not represent a major shift from the previous position, which was that any deal would require American support. Mr Streeting's remarks were nonetheless notable for their explicit acknowledgement that, without changes, the deal will not attract Mr Trump's backing. Prior to the pause in April, the UK and Mauritius had signed an agreement in May 2025, and a final draft of the bill to hand over sovereignty of the islands had not passed Parliament. Under the terms agreed in 2025, Britain would hand sovereignty over the archipelago to Mauritius but lease back the Diego Garcia base for 99 years, which the UK government said would be a net overall cost of £3.4bn. Sir Keir, then prime minister, came under heavy criticism from opponents who said the real cost could amount to £35bn, adjusting for inflation, and risked allowing China to establish a presence on the archipelago. Mr Trump, who originally backed the deal, has been a frequent critic of the move, previously branding it a blight on our great ally and an act of total weakness.

Reacting to the review, the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, called on Mr Burnham to just scrap this terrible deal. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: The Chagos deal is dead. Thank God. In 2019, the International Court of Justice gave an advisory opinion that Britain's separation of the Chagos Islands from Mauritius was unlawful and stated the UK must end its administration as rapidly as possible. While non-binding, the opinion, endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly, emboldened Mauritian assertions of sovereignty and led to the UK opening negotiations in 2022. Mr Streeting told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Wednesday that no money would be handed over to Mauritius at this stage while officials review the deal. Describing the Diego Garcia base as one of the most sensitive and valuable national security assets, he said work was underway to find a deal that maybe not everyone loves, but everyone can live with.