Sir Keir Starmer’s Chagos Islands deal risks British and American planes being shot down by China, a former commander of the Diego Garcia air base has warned.

Cdr Adam Peters, a retired Royal Navy officer who led British forces at the joint UK-US base, said that the islands could become a hotbed of Chinese spyware and missile technology if given to Mauritius.

Under the terms of its deal, Britain will give away the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean and pay billions over a century to lease back Diego Garcia, the island that hosts the strategically important air base.

Cdr Peters said that the base was currently “easily defended”, but giving sovereignty to Mauritius would allow China to construct military installations nearby.

“If the outer islands are under Mauritian control, China could quite happily start redeveloping them and installing all sorts of spying equipment that I think would affect the security of Diego Garcia,” he told The Telegraph.

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“There is also the possibility that they could start putting weapons on there, which could shoot down aircraft using the air base.”

The base is primarily used by the US military, but has also hosted RAF planes and Royal Navy ships and submarines.

The islands are known officially as the British Indian Ocean Territory, and are run by a British civilian commissioner and Royal Navy commander.

Chinese military installations in the Pacific already extend to artificial islands in the South China Sea, where it has expanded operations to threaten Taiwan. The construction has been condemned by several countries as a breach of international law, but has continued.

Sir Keir faced further opposition to the Chagos deal in Parliament on Wednesday, following the revelation by Navin Ramgoolam, the Mauritian prime minister, that the UK had agreed to link rent payments for the air base to inflation.

The UK agreed to give away the islands after an international court released an advisory ruling that they should belong to Mauritius.

Sir Keir told MPs that “without legal certainty, the base cannot operate in practical terms as it should, that is bad for our national security and it is a gift to our adversaries”.

However, the decision has been criticised by Conservative and Reform UK MPs, defence experts and members of Donald Trump’s team, who have warned that Mauritius’s ties to China will present a security risk to Diego Garcia.

Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said during Prime Minister’s Questions that “when Labour negotiates, our country loses” and the deal with Mauritius would see money handed over that “belongs to our children and their children”.

She said: “This is an immoral surrender so north London lawyers can boast at their dinner parties.”

The Diego Garcia base is within flight range of most of the Indo-Pacific region and the Middle East, and has been used by the US Air Force to conduct bombing runs in Afghanistan.

Cdr Peters, who served as the base’s British commander between 2001 and 2003, said that the base was instrumental to the West’s response to the September 11 attacks when he was posted there.

“The most important thing there is you’ve got a very, very safe, easily defended base from which the American Air Force can actually influence events,” he said.

“Militarily, if the Mauritians did take the islands, with their affinity for the Chinese, I think you would find that rapidly there would be Chinese influence in those areas. That is a major problem.”

A Foreign Office spokesman denied claims that China could pose a risk to the air base, arguing that “there is a clear prohibition in the treaty to prevent any other foreign security forces, civilian or military – including Chinese – from establishing themselves anywhere in the Chagos archipelago”.

The spokesman said the deal contained “a robust mechanism and review process to ensure no activity in the outer islands can impinge upon base operations”.

However, Cdr Peters said that the deal would become irrelevant after it was signed, if China persuaded Mauritius to offer it military access to the islands.

“What sort of agreement we had with the Mauritians would make no difference whatsoever,” he said.

“We do not want to give that away to anybody who has any possibility of colluding with potential enemies.”

On Wednesday, a Downing Street spokesman insisted that the deal was necessary to protect the military base from legal threats.

The spokesman declined to explain why the base would be unable to operate if the UK suffered another court loss.

However, The Telegraph understands that government lawyers are concerned about the restocking and resupply of the base.

Ministers have received legal advice that if Britain’s sovereignty of the islands is not recognised in international law, then operating flights to deliver supplies to the base will become almost impossible.

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