Sir Keir Starmer has signed a £10billion-valued deal to hand over the Chagos Islands, bringing an end to months of fury and speculation over the future of the archipelago.

Speaking on Thursday afternoon, the Prime Minister confirmed that the UK had agreed a deal with Mauritius on the future of the base - and claimed the staggering cost was "part and parcel of Britain's global reach".

"The US and France do the same with their military bases," Starmer said.

The Government says the cost per year of the deal - commonly decried as a "surrender" by critics - is 99 years long and costs £101million every year.

That totals around £10billion - but the "net present value" of payments under the treaty is £3.4billion after future inflation is considered.

The UK's Five Eyes partners - the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - back the agreement, along with India, Defence Secretary John Healey said.

In a Ministry of Defence statement this afternoon, Labour laid out its legal position on the giveaway - which said that if Britain failed to hand over the islands, it "would not have a realistic prospect of successfully defending its legal position on sovereignty".

Without handing the archipelago over, the UK would be unable to "ensure access to the Base by air and by sea, effectively to patrol the maritime area around the Base, and to support the Base’s critical national security functions", the statement added.

The base is "vital to UK and US power projection in the Indian Ocean and beyond", it continued.

Starmer also slapped down a last-minute legal challenge to the "surrender" - and said he welcomed it, as it meant the courts could consider both sides of the argument.