Official figures blow apart Labour’s ‘accountancy trick’ to hide the true cost of their humiliating giveaway to Mauritius.
As reported in The Telegraph today, Keir Starmer and David Lammy have been caught red-handed misleading the British public over the staggering price tag of Labour’s surrender of the Chagos Islands, a deal that will cost Britain TEN TIMES more than they admitted.
Documents prised from the Labour Government under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the true cost of the agreement is £34.7 BILLION, not the £3.4bn figure Keir Starmer has peddled in Parliament and to the press.
The deal will see Britain hand over the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius by year’s end, leasing back the Diego Garcia military base, a jewel of strategic importance built in the 1970s and used for decades by UK and US forces.
Labour’s spin machine claimed the cost was just £3.4bn “in today’s money”, using a series of dubious accounting manoeuvres to slash the official total on paper. But the raw cash cost, the amount Britain will actually pay Mauritius over the next century, is nearly £35 billion, enough to buy ten Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers or fund half the nation’s annual schools budget.
A Cover-Up in Broad Daylight
Civil servants were reportedly ordered to reduce the headline figure through inflation adjustments, then slash it further using the Treasury’s so-called “Social Time Preference Rate”, a controversial method to downplay long-term spending. The result? A 90% haircut on the public number, allowing ministers to sell the deal as a bargain when, in reality, it is an eye-watering giveaway.
When MPs pressed for the true figure earlier this year, Starmer dismissed estimates between £9bn and £18bn as “absolutely wide of the mark”, a statement now shown to be false.
Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, blasted the deception:
“Labour have used an accountancy trick to claim the amount was only £3.4bn. We’ve all known it’s a terrible deal with huge costs to hard-pressed taxpayers. But for months, ministers have sought to cover up the truth.”
A Diplomatic Disaster
Critics warn that Labour’s Chagos capitulation is not just a financial scandal — it is a direct assault on Britain’s national security. Under the terms of the deal, the UK will be compelled to hand over sensitive operational intelligence about Diego Garcia to Mauritius — a nation increasingly in the orbit of China, Russia and Iran.
Mauritius even signed a new cooperation agreement with Moscow days before the treaty was inked, yet Starmer and Lammy ploughed ahead, insisting the arrangement was “vital for security” and that Britain’s adversaries opposed it. In fact, Beijing, Moscow and Tehran have all welcomed the treaty.
Even more alarming, Mauritius is a signatory to the Pelindaba Treaty, which could force the removal of any UK and US nuclear weapons from the base, effectively disarming the West in a critical theatre and handing our adversaries a strategic victory without firing a single shot.
“Giving away a critical military base to a friend of our enemies is a supreme act of self-harm,” Patel warned.
Taxpayers Funding Foreign Tax Cuts
While Labour plans tax hikes at home to plug what critics say is a £50bn black hole in the public finances, Mauritius will use Britain’s payments to slash its own taxes and pay down debt. As Patel put it:
“Just think — British taxpayers will be paying for tax cuts in a foreign country.”
The Conservatives say that if the £35bn were spent at home, it could pay for 70 new hospitals, fix the entire £17bn pothole backlog twice over, or cut income tax by 5%.
‘When Labour Negotiates, Britain Loses’
Kemi Badenoch, Tory leader, said:
“Labour’s Chagos surrender is costing the country another £35bn. Add that to their £50bn black hole, and it’s clear — when Labour negotiates, Britain loses.”
The Government insists the Diego Garcia base is “essential” to UK and allied security, and claims the costs are in line with other international base agreements. But critics note that no other Labour projects have used the same creative accounting, raising questions about why only this politically toxic treaty was massaged down on paper.
As Parliament returns on September 1, the Conservatives are demanding Starmer apologise and release all details of the agreement. But with Labour doubling down and refusing to admit wrongdoing, the fight over Britain’s future in the Indian Ocean is only just beginning.
Worth reading in full in The Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/08/10/revealed-chagos-deal-to-cost-10-times-what-starmer-claimed/
