UK Spent Millions on Diversity Scheme in Mauritius During Chagos Negotiations

The UK funded a diversity scheme in Mauritius out of the foreign aid budget during negotiations over the Chagos Islands.

Taxpayers spent £1.3 million on a bespoke aid programme, including a scheme to increase the representation of women in the Mauritian renewable energy sector, despite the country’s demand for Britain to give up the Indian Ocean territory.

The programme began in October 2022 – the same month the Government agreed to start negotiations over the Chagos Islands – and was described by officials as a “priority for ministers”.

Sir Keir Starmer is now under fire for his decision to “surrender” the islands, at a reported cost of up to £18 billion over 99 years.

Opponents of the deal, including the Conservatives and Reform, argue that Sir Keir has needlessly given up British territory to appease international courts, while endangering the UK’s relationship with the US.

The Telegraph can reveal that while the negotiations have been ongoing, the UK has spent tens of thousands of pounds a month on a development project in Mauritius, which is run directly by the British High Commission in Port Louis.

It included a £200,000 plan to increase women and young people “occupying jobs in the renewable energy sector” by March 2024, with a focus on the solar panels industry.

The UK Government paid for workshops to train women and young people to work in the green energy sector, in a project that was deemed “good value for money”.

British taxpayers also funded a £15,000 visit by the Mauritian electoral commissioner to the UK in March 2023 to learn about election law, as well as “expert advisory services to support water sector reform in Mauritius” at a cost of £230,000.

Between January and March 2023, at the start of the negotiations with Mauritius over the future of the islands, the UK sent police officers from the City of London and Cambridgeshire to the country, where they were to train law enforcement in dealing with cyber crime and “to help develop investigative capabilities”.

‘Interventions to support marginalised groups’

The project comes as diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) policies have increasingly come under fire, including in the United States where Donald Trump, the president, has signed a series of executive orders banning the schemes in federal institutions and agencies.

Mauritius has long demanded sovereignty over the archipelago in the Indian Ocean, drawing on a non-binding ruling by the International Court of Justice in 2019 that said Britain’s use of the islands was illegal.

The draft deal to hand over the islands to Mauritius will involve the UK paying a 99-year lease on the military airbase on the largest island, Diego Garcia, alongside significant extra development funding to prop up Mauritius’s ailing public finances.

The aid scheme, named the Mauritius multi-sector development programme, was described in government documents seen by The Telegraph as involving “targeted interventions to support marginalised and vulnerable groups”.

While no mention is made of the Chagos deal in auditing documents produced by the Foreign Office, the scheme is repeatedly described as a “priority” for the Government.

When by March 2024 a Chagos Islands deal had not been reached, the Foreign Office extended the aid scheme for another year. The Government denied that any aid was “conditional” on the negotiations.

Officials also requested that the programme was exempt from foreign aid cuts under the last government because of “wider political sensitivities”.

Diplomats stressed the importance of maintaining a good relationship with Mauritius, which sought an international court ruling against the UK, because “a deterioration in our bilateral political relationship could stop programme delivery and waste resources”.

Nigel Farage, the Reform Party leader, condemned the aid programme, which he pointed out began under the Conservative government and has continued under Sir Keir Starmer’s administration.

He said: “Frankly, the whole episode, from the very beginning, and with all the more details that emerge, is getting pretty close to treacherous behaviour by the British Government.”

An Foreign Office spokesman said: “This programme was introduced under the last administration to work with Mauritius on international development and climate change. It is not conditional on negotiations over the British Indian Ocean Territory.”