Chagos deal remains on track, says Foreign Office minister

However, having just returned from visiting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for talks with Elon Musk and other allies of the president-elect, Farage challenged that.

“There is very deep disquiet amongst all of them as to what this may mean for the long-term future of Diego Garcia and whether such deal would hold, given the precedent of the deal break over Hong Kong,” he told MPs.

The Reform UK leader also suggested the terms of the deal should be put to a referendum of exiled Chagossians.

Last month, Farage predicted that the deal would be met with “outright hostility” by the Trump administration, which takes office on 20 January.

He suggested Trump’s advisers were worried it could boost China’s influence in the region.

But, on Wednesday, Doughty said Farage did not know the details of the agreement, which US officials had also considered.

No 10 said it was not aware of any contact with the incoming Trump administration about the Chagos Islands deal.

“The focus of our discussions at the moment are obviously with the new Mauritian government,” the prime minister’s official spokesman said.

In recent years, the UK has faced increasing diplomatic isolation over the islands, with various United Nations bodies – including the International Court of Justice and the General Assembly – overwhelmingly siding with Mauritius’s claim to sovereignty.

Mauritius has long argued it was illegally forced to give the islands away in return for its independence from the UK in 1968.

At the time, the British government had already negotiated a secret deal with the US, agreeing to lease it Diego Garcia for use as a military base.

The UK later apologised for forcibly removing more than 1,000 islanders from the entire archipelago and promised to hand the islands to Mauritius when they were no longer needed for strategic purposes.