Armed Forces Minister Fails to Spin ‘Low Cost’ of Chagos Surrender – Guido Fawkes

WATCH: Armed Forces Minister Fails to Spin ‘Low Cost’ of Chagos Surrender

David Lammy has an opinion piece in The Times and John Healey in The Telegraph this morning as Labour tries to spin the Chagos deal as a win for UK security. Junior armed forces minister Luke Pollard was sent out to face the broadcasters... 

Pollard repeated the spin that the cost of the deal is £3.4 billion “calculated using the Treasury’s rules” and the same system is used to calculate the cost of “nuclear decommissioning.” The cash cost is actually £30.3 billion:

• £165 million per year for first three years plus £120 million a year for the next ten years, then £120 million with (say 2% average) inflation for the remainder.
• £45 million per year development fund for 25 years, and a £40 million one-off payment to a fund for Chagossians.

Downing Street’s communications where in chaos yesterday when they could not deny that the total sum would be counted towards defence spending. When Healey boasts that the cost is less than 0.2% of the defence budget that is an admission the surrender is eating into defence costs…

Pollard also failed to explain why the United States, which runs Diego Garcia, isn’t paying towards any of the costs of the surrender deal. A massive freebie…

He claimed the deal is good value because the French pay £85 million to rent a base on Djibouti. On territory already owned by: Djibouti, not France…

“Net present value” calculations presented here are almost never used by the government to explain costs or funding. Spin that won’t fly…