Conservative MP seeks to remedy the final indignity for Chagos Islanders

While bevies of prime Californian cheer-leader are imported to entertain the military on Diego Garcia, and there are modern leisure facilities on the island to fill the rest of US and UK servicemen's idle time, the grandchildren of the dispossessed islanders are treated by the UK government like any illegal immigrant.

The Conservative MP for Crawley sought to put that right with a Ten-Minute Rule Bill yesterday. He explained:

I am sure that I need not recap the tragic events that have led to this moment, but I believe it necessary in order to put the Bill in context and to grasp the gravity of Chagossian history. It was almost half a century ago that then Prime Minister Harold Wilson gave an Order in Council to remove the inhabitants of the British Indian Ocean Territory so that a UK-US military base could be established on the strategic main island of Diego Garcia. In the years that followed, a community that had lived peacefully found itself exiled and ignored with scant regard for its rights or wellbeing. We cannot change history, but we can support those removed from their homeland and their descendants who are not covered by the existing law and protections that, as Britons, they should enjoy.

The legislation currently assumes that just one generation of Chagossians will be born in exile and, although many members of the community born in exile have received British citizenship, their children have not. As such, when these families have come to the UK, as is their right, their children have been treated as immigrants like any others by the Home Office. Therefore, they are subject to the usual financial costs and administrative implications. At this time, we can ease the burden. We can provide assistance to those whose story is not recognised in the country that removed them from the place—a British territory—that they call home. Of course, had the population not been evicted half a century ago, all born on the islands would already have British citizenship status.

It is disgraceful that a back-bencher has to initiate legislation to right this wrong, and by the least promising method - no Ten-Minute Rule Bill has made it into law since 2002. At the very least, the government should make time available for its progress, but one hopes that Mrs May is shamed into taking the measure on board as government legislation.