Liberal Democrat Shadow Foreign Secretary, Edward Davey has written to David Miliband demanding that the Government drops its appeal against the Chagos Islanders' right to return, after it emerged the FCO has spent over £2mn on the legal action.

Today's [Thursday] Public Accounts Committee Report on the management of British Overseas Territories shows that the Foreign Office has spent over £2m appealing against a 2000 court ruling that the eviction of the Chagos Islanders from Diego Garcia in 1971 was illegal. The then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook accepted that the islanders had a right of return.

Edward Davey said:

"It is an outrage that millions of pounds of taxpayers' money has been used in order to prevent the Government from facing up to its moral duty to grant the Chagos Islanders a right of return. The Government must not continue to use public money to defend the indefensible.

"The whole sorry episode is a stain on our history. Robin Cook had the courage and conviction to want to right this wrong and engaged in a fair long-term solution for the islanders. Unfortunately his successors have shown no such backbone.

"Together with the recent revelations that the US rendered terror suspects through Diego Garcia, apparently without British knowledge, it is time to reappraise our whole approach to what the British Government has turned into islands of shame."