GettyThe UK is reviewing its deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, the defence secretary has said.
Wes Streeting confirmed the deal was being looked at again after US President Donald Trump called it “terrible” at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.
The original agreement would see the UK cede sovereignty of the territory to Mauritius and pay an average of £101m ($136m) per year to lease back a joint UK-US military base there, prized for its strategic location in the Indian Ocean.
In April the deal, agreed under Sir Keir Starmer, was paused indefinitely because Trump pulled his support.
“What President Trump said yesterday wasn’t new but I think it does provide absolute clarity that his position on this Chagos deal as currently drafted is not changing,” he told BBC Breakfast.
“So we have to do more work with our American allies, with President Trump and his administration, to get the deal to a place where he can support it.”
Streeting said the focus now would be to secure a long-term certainty for the base on Diego Garcia, the Chagos archipelago’s largest island.
He said it had been the view of every UK prime minister since Boris Johnson that an ongoing legal process – as Mauritius argues it was illegally forced to give away the islands in 1965 to gain independence – risks the security of the base.
During Trump’s first face-to-face meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the UN General Assembly in New York, the US president criticised the “terrible deal” and said the UK was “going to be looking” at it.
Burnham replied: “Yep.”
He later told broadcasters he has “inherited the situation and we need a resolution”.
Burnham added: “It’s critical to safeguard the future of the base, and that matters to us for security reasons, but also clearly to the United States as well.
“What I said in the meeting is that we will work to find that resolution between the different sides, and we’ll work hard to find it.”
The prime minister had spoken to his Mauritian counterpart, Navin Ramgoolam, ahead of his trip to New York.
An official readout from that meeting said Burnham “reiterated his commitment to continue doing everything possible” along with the US to ratify the deal.
Prior to the pause in April, the UK and Mauritius had signed an agreement in May 2025 but a final draft of the bill to hand over sovereignty of the islands had not passed Parliament.
Under the terms of the deal agreed in 2025, Britain would hand sovereignty over the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius but lease back the Diego Garcia base for 99 years, with official figures giving the total as £3.4bn.
However, Sir Keir, who was then prime minister, came under heavy criticism from opponents who said the real cost of the deal could amount to about £35bn, adjusting for inflation, and risked allowing China to establish a presence on the archipelago.
Trump has been a frequent critic of the deal, previously branding it a “a blight on our great ally” and an “act of total weakness”.
Reacting to the review, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called on Burnham to “just scrap this terrible deal”.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “The Chagos deal is dead. Thank God.”
Streeting told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday that no money would be handed over to Mauritius “at this stage” while officials review the deal.
Describing the Diego Garcia base as “one of the most sensitive and valuable national security assets”, he said work was underway to find a deal “that maybe not everyone loves, but everyone can live with”.
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