Labour Minister Refuses to Say How Huge Chagos Surrender Bill Will be Funded – Guido Fawkes

WATCH: Labour Minister Refuses to Say How Huge Chagos Surrender Bill Will be Funded

Overseas territories minister Steve Doughty is up before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in the Commons now to talk about the Chagos surrender deal. Asked about the costs of the deal he congratulated himself on the government’s transparency so far:

“It’s not normal to provide the costings but in this case we have decided to for the benefit of transparency on this deal and particularly because some of the misleading commentary that was going on around them, the government green book methodology has been used over all of this and if the committee wants I can take you through the very complex arguments behind it but essentially it averages out at 101 million per year.”

Actual cost: £30.3 billion. About a minute and a half after Doughty congratulated himself for his party’s commitment to transparency by publishing basic cost details of the surrender he was asked what amount the MoD would pay and the FCDO would pay:

“So there will be a share between the two departments but I’m not not able to give that that at this stage.”

There goes the transparency. A large amount will obviously go out of the “boosted” defence budget straight towards relieving Mauritian citizens of the need to pay income tax…

Doughty tried some spin: “Even if the MoD was paying the full amount here – which it isn’t – it’s just a fraction of 1% of the total annual defence budget, and one thing here that we’ve got to remember is that the value to us of this facility is as I said quite frankly priceless but it’s it’s certainly significant multiples of the investment that’s put in.” Priceless – ironic considering the terms of the surrender…