[Dr Luke Evans: … On a technicality, the Minister is right to say that the treaty in front of us has no problems, but at the end of the day it is about the interaction with other treaties once we have signed it and sovereignty has been given away. My hon. Friend is right that things would not be covered once Diego Garcia no longer belonged to us, and the Government are struggling to explain that difficulty.]

Sir Julian Lewis: I must tweak what my hon. Friend just said. Although there is discretion for the Mauritian Government to give permission for a nuclear-armed vessel to visit temporarily, for example, there is no discretion for nuclear weapons to be stored permanently on Diego Garcia.

[Dr Evans: My right hon. Friend is right. From memory, I think he is referring to article 3 of the 1996 treaty, which explicitly talks about researching and so on. The Government need to set out the implications and how that treaty interacts with this treaty that they are signing or want us to ratify. ...]