Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill
(1 day, 10 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill is a landmark piece of legislation that will implement obligations in the United Nations BBNJ agreement in UK law and enable us to move towards ratification of this historic agreement. I am sure the Bill will be welcomed by Members in all parts of the House. I recognise the contribution of Members, particularly those on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the Environmental Audit Committee and the all-party parliamentary group for the ocean, who have kept oceans high on the parliamentary agenda. In all fairness, I pay tribute to the previous Government, who did a lot of work on the Bill.
I am personally proud that we are turning words into action. In April 2024, I was the shadow Minister on a debate on this topic, and I made the commitment that if Labour were lucky enough to win the election, we would ratify this treaty, so I am very pleased to be able to say that we are going to. People in civil society, academia and industry will be delighted to see the introduction of the Bill. Organisations such as the National Oceanography Centre and the Natural History Museum have provided invaluable support to the UK delegation. I also thank the High Seas Alliance and the World Wide Fund for Nature, as well as many other environmental non-governmental organisations, for their unwavering commitment.
The BBNJ agreement is the result of years of dialogue and negotiation involving stakeholders from all around the world. In fact, I heard just this morning that negotiations started in 2012, so it has taken quite a while to get to this point. The UK’s role in these negotiations was informed by the expertise and passion of marine scientists, legal scholars and environmental advocates, and I thank them all for their contributions.
The BBNJ agreement has achieved the 60 ratifications required for its entry into force, which will happen on 17 January 2026. We expect the first meeting of the conference of the parties to take place later in 2026, and the UK can attend that meeting as a party only if it has ratified the agreement at least 30 days previously.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Minister is absolutely right to say that there is support across the House for this really important Bill. She is right also to pay tribute to the previous Government for some of the work they have done, but it is true to say that, despite the fact that in the last Parliament there were many times when this Parliament did not have a great deal to debate, we never actually got this on the statute book. Just over one year into this Government, when there is a tremendous amount of legislation, we have managed to find the time to get this through. I pay tribute to the Minister. I think it is worth taking that bit of credit because we are doing something that has not previously been done.
Emma Hardy
I cannot disagree with my hon. Friend on that, can I? I thank him for his comments. As I said, it means a lot to me to be able to stand here today and say that I have fulfilled in government the commitment that I made in opposition.
We need to pass the Bill and the associated secondary legislation before we can take the next steps to ratification, so it is about not just the passage of this Bill but the statutory instruments that will follow it. I know that all sides of the House will want to see the UK playing a leading role in future discussions at the conference of the parties, and that is why we must maintain momentum.
The Bill marks a significant step in the UK’s commitment to protecting the two thirds of the world’s ocean that lie beyond the jurisdiction of a single nation. From one of the heaviest fish, the sunfish, to the delicate sea butterfly, this vast expanse of ocean is home to extraordinary biodiversity and ecosystems that are vital to the health of our planet. It sustains fisheries that feed billions, and it underpins weather patterns, coastal protections and the livelihoods of people across the globe, but these areas of the ocean are vulnerable to exploitation, degradation and irreversible harm.
Stephen Gethins (Arbroath and Broughty Ferry) (SNP)
I agree with the Minister that her engagement with various stakeholders—environmental NGOs, academics and universities—is crucial. I also acknowledge the parts of the Bill that underline the role of devolved Administrations and the important work that has to be done. Will her officials work closely with the devolved Administrations on the international impact of the Bill and that that will continue throughout this legislation?
Emma Hardy
I can offer the hon. Gentleman that reassurance. That is an important point well made.
The BBNJ marks an historic breakthrough. It is a multilateral treaty adopted under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea that is designed to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The agreement delivers on four critical fronts. First, it established new obligations to share the benefits arising from research into and the use of marine genetic resources from these ocean areas. Secondly, it created a mechanism to establish area-based management tools, including marine protected areas, which was an essential step to safeguard fragile ecosystems.
Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)
It is great that the UK is finally ratifying the treaty, and it is also great to hear the Minister talk about the benefits of marine protected areas, but if the Bill is to signify a new and invigorated Government focus on protecting our precious marine environment, does she not agree that the terrible, destructive fishing practice of bottom trawling obliterates vital habitats on our seabed? It makes a mockery of the entire term “marine protected area” that the UK Government have ignored the Environmental Audit Committee’s advice to ban bottom trawling from our own marine protected areas.
Emma Hardy
Of course, domestic marine protected areas are not within the remit of the Bill because we are talking about areas beyond national jurisdiction. What I can say is that the UK Government have introduced a consultation looking at banning bottom trawling in 41 of our marine protected areas. That consultation is out now. We are showing our commitment to oceans on not only an international scale but a national scale.
Thirdly, the agreement strengthens the framework for environmental impact assessments by building on the provisions of the UN convention on the law of the sea to ensure that new activities in these areas are sustainable and responsible.
Fourthly, it reinforces capacity building for developing states and promotes broader technological transfer. The journey to the agreement started with an ad hoc informal working group in 2006, before it progressed to a preparatory commission that worked through 2016 and 2017 and culminated in a formal inter-Government conference that negotiated the text between 2018 and 2023.
The UK has already played a leading role in shaping the agreement over the course of more than a decade of negotiations. In September 2023, we were one of the first countries to sign the agreement when it opened for signature at the UN, and today, through the Bill, the UK takes a major step towards ratification.
I will now outline the structure of the Bill, which is divided into five parts. Parts 2, 3 and 4 are designed to correspond and give effect to the three core sections of the BBNJ agreement relating to marine genetic resources, area-based management tools and environmental impact assessments.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill and for her deep interest in this subject. We are all very impressed by what the Minister does and we thank her for it. Further to intervention of the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Stephen Gethins)—he and I both represent coastal communities—I would like to say that marine biodiversity is the lifeblood of the fishing industry and that, as we have often said, fishermen are the greatest natural caretakers of the sea. Does the Minister agree that the input and the generational knowledge of the fishing sector is essential as we move forward?
Emma Hardy
I pay tribute to all the fishermen throughout the United Kingdom who play such a vital role in helping to feed our nation.
The Bill also ensures that the UK has the necessary powers to implement decisions adopted at future meetings of the BBNJ conference of the parties, beginning with the marine genetic resource provision. Part 2 of the Bill sets out the requirements related to the collection and use of marine genetic resources from areas beyond national jurisdiction and digital sequence information generated on those marine genetic resources.
These measures mean that UK researchers conducting collection activities from UK craft or equipment, such as royal research ships or autonomous systems, will need to notify a national focal point within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office before and after the collection of these resources. Additionally, any users of marine genetic resources or digital sequence information will need to notify the national focal point once results of utilisation are available and make those results available in publicly accessible repositories or databases. The results of utilisation, including publications such as journal articles and patents granted, should detail the outcome of research and development on these resources. These notifications will provide valuable data on material collected and on the results of research in areas beyond national jurisdiction. These notifications will be passed on to a clearing-house mechanism—a core part of the future architecture of the BBNJ agreement.
The clearing-house mechanism will act as a global online notification hub, where parties to the agreement will submit their notifications, allowing researchers from the UK and elsewhere to see what is being collected from where and how it is being used. That function is key to the benefit-sharing mechanisms under the agreement, enabling researchers from developing countries to work from the same scientific data as a researcher in the UK. That will also facilitate the development of cross-national research groups crucial to supporting breakthrough scientific discoveries.
The measures in the Bill also require repositories and institutions holding marine genetic resources to provide access to samples under reasonable conditions. That will apply to bodies like the Natural History Museum, the National Oceanography Centre and UK universities. Similarly, UK databases containing digital sequence information from marine genetic resources will need to ensure public access. Marine genetic resources may hold the key to future medicines, enzymes and sustainable technologies. This is a fast-growing global sector, and our universities and biotech firms are world leaders. Taken together, the measures will allow our researchers and companies to remain at the cutting edge of marine genetic discovery, benefiting from and contributing to global research in this space.
Part 3 of the Bill provides powers to allow the UK to implement internationally agreed measures in relation to marine protected areas and other area-based management tools established in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Any such measures will be agreed in meetings of the conference of the parties and will aim to manage activities in geographically defined areas of the ocean to achieve conservation and sustainable use objectives. Part 3 also ensures that the UK can implement any emergency measures adopted by the conference of the parties to respond to any natural or man-made disasters in areas beyond national jurisdiction that may require, for example, restrictions on navigation of UK ships or discharges from UK crafts.
Part 4 updates domestic marine licensing legislation to meet the environmental impact assessment requirements set out in the agreement. These changes apply to licensable marine activities that take place in areas beyond national jurisdiction. It provides the power needed to adapt the UK’s domestic marine licensing and related environmental assessment system as new international standards and guidelines are agreed by the BBNJ conference of the parties. For example, that may include applying the latest standards for environmental assessments or for the ongoing monitoring of impacts. In short, it will future-proof the UK’s marine licensing legislation, ensuring that we can keep pace with emerging technologies and activities in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
In addition to the Bill, secondary legislation is required before the UK can formally ratify the BBNJ agreement. We will need to make changes to domestic legislation to implement the BBNJ agreement provisions relating to environmental impact assessments and to define digital sequence information. Those issues require engagement with stakeholders, and statutory instruments will be laid before Parliament after the Bill receives Royal Assent. Once the secondary legislation is in force, a standard six-week process will allow us to finalise the instrument of ratification, which includes signature and formal submission to the United Nations.
The provisions in the Bill may appear to be narrow and technical, but once implemented, they will enable the UK to participate fully in global efforts to conserve and sustainably use the ocean beyond national jurisdiction. Working with our international partners, the BBNJ agreement will allow us to safeguard fragile ecosystems, protect endangered species and ensure that scientific benefits are shared fairly and responsibly.
The Bill is rooted in this Government’s broader environmental and international goals. We are protecting and improving the marine environment at home and internationally to meet the global commitment to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030, and this Bill is a key instrument in delivering that goal. The Bill supports our efforts to maintain multilateral agreements and international governance as the bedrock of our global community, and to address collectively the biggest issues of our generation: climate change, food insecurity and harm to marine environments—issues that affect not just the UK, but every nation on Earth. I hope that Members will recognise the urgency and importance of this moment. The ocean cannot wait, and the consequences of inaction are profound. This Bill is an opportunity to act, to protect marine life, to support sustainable development and to ensure that the benefits of the ocean are shared fairly and responsibly. I commend this Bill to the House.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
I thank the Minister for her explanation of the Bill. It is an important piece of legislation, and I thank her for acknowledging that it started under the previous Government. I hope there will be a consensus, but there are many questions to be answered, and we need to go into this legislation in a lot of detail to ensure that there are not unintended consequences.
Nobody in this House doubts the importance of protecting our oceans. The high seas belong to us all, to every nation on this planet, and the United Kingdom, as a proud seafaring nation and a world leader in natural sciences with no less than 16 overseas territories spanning—for now at least—all five of the world’s major oceans, has always led the world in safeguarding them. The protection of our oceans is one of the defining challenges of our age. Two thirds of the world’s oceans lie beyond the jurisdiction of any single nation, and those waters are home to a vast array of life that sustains the planet’s ecosystems.
Britain depends on the seas for our trade. They have been a moat for our national security and are our bridge to the wider world. We therefore have not only a moral duty to protect them but a strategic one. One of the core values of the small c conservatism that I believe in, as the name suggests, is to conserve things that truly matter. That applies not only to our institutions and our way of life here in these islands, but to the preservation of our green and pleasant land and, in this case, that of the marine biodiversity, so that we can hand on to our descendants the natural beauty that I know we all cherish. That principle is certainly not in question today by anyone in this House of any party.
Nowhere is our record clearer than in the crown jewel of our leadership on the environment that is the blue belt programme. Through it, the United Kingdom and our overseas territories have created over 4.4 million sq km of marine protected areas from the South Atlantic and the Pacific to the Indian ocean. These waters safeguard king penguins on the Falkland Islands, green turtles on Ascension Island, grey reef sharks on the Pitcairn Islands and countless other species across the globe. I have had the privilege to visit the Falkland Islands and Ascension Island and see the amazing biodiversity that we are responsible for, and the oceans around those territories are vital to protect. The blue belt is one of the largest networks of protected ocean on Earth, and it exists because of British leadership alongside the Governments of the British overseas territories. We granted those creatures and their habitats protection from exploitation by others, from industrial fishing fleets and from countries that would plunder our resources without a second thought. That is something this nation should be immensely proud of.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I am listening carefully to what the hon. Member is saying, and he is absolutely right on the blue belt. Does he therefore regret that in all the debates we have had about the Chagos Islands, the Conservatives have not raised the importance of the conservation of the fish stocks and the biodiversity around those islands?
Andrew Rosindell
The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee is, I am afraid, incorrect. We have raised those issues on many occasions, and I have personally raised them on countless occasions over the years. Before too long, the right hon. Member will hear a bit more about the Chagos Islands and the importance of protecting marine stocks and biodiversity in that part of the world.
Despite what has been said today, I fear that at this stage the Government are riding roughshod over that record and undermining those very principles through their abject surrender of a marine protected area. The British Indian Ocean Territory might look like a scattering of remote atolls in a far-flung region of the planet, but they are home to 640,000 sq km of ocean—one of the most pristine marine ecosystems on the earth, an area of ocean the size of France. Within it live more than 1,000 species of fish and over 200 species of coral.
I had the opportunity to see it for myself in 2019 when I visited the Chagos islands, in particular the atoll of Peros Banhos, where I was greeted by the wonderful Chagossian coconut crabs, as I jumped out of the dinghy and walked on to the beach and into the uninhabited island—where we shamefully forced the people to leave their homes all those years ago and refused to allow them to return. Its waters shelter seabirds, turtles and dolphins. It is an environmental treasure that the world envies and that Britain has rightly protected over so many years.
Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Mauritius was one of the early signatories to the UN global ocean treaty? If so, I am not sure what his point is.
Andrew Rosindell
The hon. Member should examine how Mauritius behaves in reality, which I will come to later. If we want a nation that will actually take these issues seriously, it is the United Kingdom. It is easy to sign a treaty, it is not so easy to follow it through in practice.
In what I believe to be an act of historic folly, this Government are to hand that amazing territory over to Mauritius. That nation does not have the record, the capability or the will to protect such a fragile environment. Its own waters have suffered from overfishing and poor enforcement. Its close alignment with China, and indeed India, should concern anyone who cares about the Indian ocean’s future. Indeed, the evidence speaks for itself. In the 2024 Environmental Performance Index, Mauritius ranked 109th for marine key biodiversity area protection, with a score of just 0.8 out of 100; 83rd for marine habitat protection; and 131st for marine protection stringency, down nearly 78%. Are these the credentials of a nation ready to steward one of the world’s most delicate ecosystems? The Government appear to think so. I disagree.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I am just wondering whether the hon. Member finds himself in the wrong debate?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I am overseeing the debate. If the hon. Member had been in the wrong debate, I would have pointed it out.
Andrew Rosindell
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Some of us do care about our British overseas territories and the marine environment. Some of us have made these arguments for many, many years, as have many on the Government Benches. If we are to take this issue seriously, we need to take our responsibilities seriously. Otherwise, future generations, not just in this country but across the world, will look back at this debate and what we are doing today, and think, “What on earth were they doing, giving away such a vital part of the planet that we are responsible for?”
Either the Government truly believe that Mauritius will reverse course and persuade China to respect this marine protected area, or, as I am afraid the Chagos surrender treaty implies, we shall end up doing the heavy lifting while paying for the privilege. Forgive me for not being entirely convinced, but I do not believe that the statistics I have cited are those of a nation ready to take on responsibility for one of the world’s most delicate marine ecosystems.
Scientific assessments show that live coral cover in Mauritian waters fell by up to 70% in the late 1990s, while coastal erosion and reef degradation continue unchecked. A United Nations review in 2022 found that, while on paper Mauritius has environmental laws, enforcement is inconsistent, community involvement is limited and responses to emerging threats such as ocean acidification remain inadequate. Unbelievably, seagrass beds, which are vital for carbon storage and marine biodiversity, are still cleared to make way for tourism development. Is this really the environmental guardian that Ministers are entrusting with 640,000 sq km of some of the most pristine ocean on earth? It beggars belief.
We need to look around the world to see what happens when Chinese fishing interests move in. In Ecuador, thousands of octopuses and sharks have been left dead on the shore because of illegal fishing by Chinese vessels. We need to guard against that in future. Off the coast of Ghana, fishermen’s catches have fallen by 40% due to Chinese bottom trawlers decimating local fish stocks. Around the Korean peninsula, squid populations have collapsed by 70%. I hope that this legislation and this agreement will help to protect the oceans around the world and countries where there are no protections at the moment. If the Chagos islands are handed over, the same fleets will soon appear in some of those waters, and Chagos will be at the mercy of exploitation.
That is the context in which the House is considering the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill. It runs to 26 clauses, as the Minister has said. It is impossible to run through them all today, but no doubt we will look at them in greater detail in Committee. There are, however, several points that must be addressed in today’s debate.
When will ratification happen? Clause 25 provides for the commencement of regulation, but without any statutory deadline or parliamentary trigger, leaving ratification entirely at the discretion of the Secretary of State. To add to that, clauses 9 and 11 grant far-reaching powers to the Secretary of State to make regulations to amend existing Acts of Parliament by secondary legislation. Where is Parliament’s role in that? How will the House scrutinise decisions taken by the conference of the parties under the agreement? Will we be consulted before international rules are imposed on British institutions and industries? Will British waters or those of our overseas territories ever fall under the jurisdiction of a foreign or supranational regulator? We surely cannot allow global bureaucracy to override British parliamentary sovereignty.
Beyond the question of control lies the spectre of bureaucracy. Clauses 2 and 3 impose heavy reporting duties on marine research and genetic sampling. Clause 16 allows still more procedures by regulation. Has the Department assessed what that will cost in time and money for our scientists and shipping operators and for legitimate researchers? How will small British enterprises compete if they face mountains of paperwork, while less scrupulous nations exploit the same waters freely? We all support high standards, but in the world we currently live in, we cannot afford to lose innovation or competitiveness.
Then there is the matter of expense. The impact assessment admits that compliance, licensing and enforcement will not be cheap, yet provides little detail on who pays. At a time of fiscal restraint, when every Department must justify every pound spent, can the Minister explain whether this legislation will truly be the best use of taxpayers’ money? How much will it cost to implement the BBNJ regime in full? Will the task of monitoring fall to the Royal Navy or the Marine Management Organisation, and what extra resources will they receive to do the job? What is the cost-benefit ratio, and have the Government assessed whether there could be indirect impacts on the taxpayer?
What of the impact on British industries, fishermen, offshore energy and biotechnology? Can the Minister assure us that British fishermen will not face restrictions, that our energy sector will not be burdened by impractical licensing demands, and that our biotech pioneers will not find their discoveries trapped in international bureaucracy?
Emma Hardy
I wonder if I could offer some helpful clarity. This debate is on BBNJ—biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction, with the word “beyond” giving a clue to the fact that it does not relate to British waters. The points the hon. Gentleman is raising, about what impact the high seas will have on offshore wind development here, might therefore not be entirely valid, and his points about the impact on British fishermen fishing in UK waters might not be covered by the global ocean treaty. I wonder if it might be helpful for him to read the explanatory notes alongside the Bill.
Andrew Rosindell
The Minister will have plenty of time to explain all these matters in detail in Committee. This is Second Reading, when we raise issues of concern. I look forward to Committee, and to all my questions being answered at that stage, if not today. I thank her for her intervention.
What safeguards will protect British intellectual property in marine genetic research? Will the benefit-sharing provisions prevent our scientists from developing the fruits of their own work? Will other nations shoulder equal obligations, or will Britain be left carrying the cost because we are doing the right thing and others are not? Our research institutions are some of the most prestigious global leaders in the marine sector, whether it is the Natural History Museum, the National Oceanography Centre or our magnificent universities. First and foremost, there must be a guarantee from the Government that this Bill will not drown them in red tape.
Clause 20 rightly extends the Bill’s provisions to the British overseas territories, which are central to our environmental success story. From the Pitcairn islands, with their 35 residents, to Tristan da Cunha, home to barely 240 residents, these far-flung Britons have shown what small communities can achieve for global conservation when they have British support. But how can they have confidence in the Government’s assurances when they witness what is happening in Chagos? If Ministers are willing to trade away one British territory without consultation or consent, what message does that send to the rest? I remind the House that conservation with the loss of sovereignty and without credible means of enforcement is a hollow virtue. The United Kingdom has a record to be proud of, from Captain Cook to David Attenborough. We must build on that record and not undermine it with rushed ratification.
If Ministers will answer the questions that I have laid out, and if they will commit in statute to parliamentary oversight, a fully costed implementation plan, explicit safeguards for British science and intellectual property, and legally enforceable protections for the overseas territories, many on the Conservative Benches will consider how to support measures that genuinely conserve our seas. If they will not, I and others—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. Mr Rosindell, can I check that you are nearing your conclusion?
Andrew Rosindell
I was literally about to get there, Madam Deputy Speaker.
If Ministers will not do so, I and others will oppose any step that weakens Britain’s hand. I end where I began. As Conservatives, our principle is that we want to conserve, to keep safe, to steward and to defend what we are responsible for. We must be true to that principle. We must continue to act as custodians of the seas in a way that respects our sovereignty, honours our obligations to our descendants and protects the livelihoods and ecosystems that depend on the United Kingdom.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I am really proud to be standing here today, because it is an historic day for ocean conservation. Let us make no mistake: the world’s oceans are under significant threat. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that if global warming reaches 1.5°, 70% of coral reefs will die. If temperatures rise by 2°, as now sadly looks likely, 99% of the Earth’s coral reefs will die. Coral reefs are not just a pretty thing that we go diving on; they are incredibly complex and important ecosystems. They are fish nurseries, but they also provide significant protection for islanders from both adverse weather and sea level rises.
Other threats include illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, which is decimating fish populations across the globe, and deep-sea mining, which threatens to cause damage from which ecosystems will take decades to recover. Currently, two thirds of the ocean lie outside the jurisdiction of national states, and that is what the Bill focuses on. For the health of oceans and the planet as a whole, it is crucial that the international community develops ways of ensuring that these areas are not subject to lawless exploitation, as is currently happening.
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
In January this year, as Chair of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend wrote to the Government to push them to ratify the global oceans treaty. As a member of her Committee, I thank her for her efforts on this front. If I recall correctly, our Committee’s work highlighted that the UK had to work globally because there are 3 billion people who depend on the oceans for work, especially in poorer, smaller developing nations. Does she agree that this is a vital step forward for the future, especially of small island developing states, and that the Government must push others who have signed up to this treaty to ratify it?
Sarah Champion
I thank my hon. Friend and colleague. He is absolutely right, and that is why today is so historic: this is the UK taking that leadership role and hopefully corralling some of the other countries that are more reticent to do the right thing.
The International Development Committee and the all-party parliamentary group for the ocean, both of which I chair, have long been calling on both the previous Government and this Government to put in place the necessary legislation to ratify this agreement. To have finally reached this point is a credit to the Ministers—particularly the Minister for Water and Flooding, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), but also the Minister responsible for the Indo-Pacific, my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), and the Minister of State for International Development and Africa, my noble Friend Baroness Chapman.
In an era of international fragmentation, I am relieved that 145 states have come together to forge this agreement and safeguard a global public good. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) alluded to, 75 countries have already taken the next step of ratification. I am very proud that the Minister for Water and Flooding was championing this in opposition and has delivered on her word, leading this ratification in government. I thank her for that.
As a seafaring nation and a centre of expertise in maritime law, the UK is perfectly placed to lead the charge to protect the world’s oceans. Sadly, we are lagging behind many countries, including the Seychelles, St Lucia and Barbados, which ratified the agreement last year. It is not surprising that the small island developing states, or SIDs—or large ocean states, as they prefer to be called—were quick to ratify, because they recognise the existential threat that ocean ecosystem degradation poses to human societies and their economies.
As the International Development Committee argued in our report last year, SIDs need reliable partners. The UK talks a good game when it comes to responsible global leadership, but activists and policymakers from SIDs told the Committee they were concerned about the consistency of Britain’s commitment. I hope we will see that change at this moment, under this Government, and that we will stand up for small island developing states, particularly our overseas territories, which the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) mentioned.
The health of the world’s oceans is not an issue confined to low-income countries; it is an existential issue for all of us. As the Government’s impact assessment acknowledged, the impact of reduced fish stocks and decreased capacity will be borne by all of us, including future generations. The UK must seize this moment to match its international conservation ambitions with tangible action to protect our domestic waters. Bottom trawl fishing, a highly destructive practice, is still permitted across almost all of the UK’s seas, including in more than 90% of our marine protected areas. I welcome the Government’s consultation on that, and hope that they will take the necessary step to ban that practice wherever they can.
The Government must consider introducing additional legislation to ensure that the UK’s marine protected areas are actually protected, because sadly, even though they have the title, many of them are not. The Bill also offers plentiful opportunities for the UK’s blue economy as a world leader in marine science and technologies. To support quick progress, the UK needs a definition of the use of “marine genetic resources”, and “digital sequence information”, by the time the agreement is ratified. That is to support all those who will implement it.
The UK’s next steps are vital to ensure that we fulfil our leadership role in ocean protection. The 120-day countdown has started. The first conference of the parties, Ocean COP1, will be held within just 12 months. With the clock ticking, will the Minister set out a timetable for the passage of the Bill through both Houses? We need it to pass quickly to allow the UK to play its full part in the first conference. Will the Minister also confirm whether the Bill legally extends the UK’s existing domestic duties to have regard to the precautionary and polluter pays principles to the high seas? If not, will she say whether something to that effect should or could be inserted into the Bill? Will the Minister consider producing an ocean strategy? Ocean issues currently fall between a number of different Departments, which unfortunately means they are under the ownership of none. The Bill is to be commended and must attain Royal Assent without delay. I strongly urge all Members to support it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
It is a privilege to speak in support of this Bill. This is a hugely important step that, as the Minister laid out, will finally allow the United Kingdom to ratify the high seas treaty and play its full part in protecting our shared global ocean. That is something that I hope Members across the Chamber will support. I share in congratulations to the Minister on keeping her word that she gave as shadow Minister. That is really good to see.
The Bill comes at a crucial time. After more than a decade of negotiation, this treaty is one of the greatest biodiversity conservation victories in history. It is a landmark moment for global ocean governance, setting out for the first time a clear legal framework for establishing ocean sanctuaries and area-based management tools on the high seas, two-thirds of which lie beyond national borders and are therefore currently lawless. We refer to our rainforests as our planet’s lungs, but our oceans are just as important for biodiversity, regulating our climate, absorbing almost a third of human-made carbon dioxide, and sustaining billions of people around the world. As we have heard, they are also under extraordinary pressure from overfishing, plastic pollution and the growing threat of deep-sea mining. The treaty is currently the only viable pathway to meeting the global 30 by 30 biodiversity goal of protecting at least 30% of the world’s ocean before 2030. Currently, less than 1% of the high seas is fully protected, so time is running out to meet that goal by the end of the decade.
I welcome the Bill, which provides the legal framework for the UK to deliver on the high seas treaty’s three central pillars: first, the fair sharing of benefits from marine genetic resources, the DNA and data of ocean life; secondly, the creation of marine protected areas and area-based management tools on the high seas; and thirdly, stronger environmental impact assessments to prevent harmful activities before they happen. This has to be fair for developing nations, and capacity building and technology transfer is central to that.
This is personal to me. Before entering Parliament, I spent over a decade working professionally on the creation of marine protected areas in east Africa and South America. I helped to create the first ever multiple-use marine reserve, together with fishermen and Government in Zanzibar on Misali island. I then spent several years mediating conflict and reaching consensus between fishermen, tour operators, the Galapagos national park, and the Government, to help create the Galapagos marine reserve, which at that time was one of the largest MPAs created. Since then I have been involved in work towards international marine governance beyond national jurisdiction, the high seas treaty, as well as the UK’s Blue Belt programme, and I worked with communities and officials on all those overseas territories. I have seen at first hand what is at stake, from working with fishermen to prevent the destruction of coral reefs by dynamite fishing, to the terrifying news that we have reached the first climate tipping point, with our precious and beautiful warm-water coral reefs now in irreversible decline, putting at threat the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.
I have also mediated negotiations with the fishing sector on deep-water fishing to find sustainable fishing quotas and standards for tuna fishing, while protecting vital marine corridors for our endangered marine mammals and birds. I have dived along those, tagging whale sharks to understand the routes that they take across the high seas, beyond national jurisdictions. That is often the wild west, where we are facing the “tragedy of the commons”, and there are no agreed rules or governance to stop everyone in the race from taking as much as possible before someone else does.
That is why it is so important to highlight that the global ocean treaty could provide a legal mechanism to address the “blue hole” in the south Atlantic—a region requiring agreements about what is sustainable fishing practice, and ways effectively to deter terribly unsustainable activity. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for a coherent ocean policy, and an ocean strategy that links the global commitments we make through the Bill to stronger domestic action on marine protection, sustainable fishing and pollution at home.
The UK was instrumental in securing an ambitious treaty text at the UN, and we should take pride in that. However, as other Members have said, we must be honest: the UK was not among the first 60 nations to ratify that treaty, and that matters because where Britain leads, others follow. The commitments being made today must be matched with commitments to sustainable fisheries management and marine conservation back in our own waters. Our credibility and moral authority on the world stage is under threat when Ministers seem to say that we might not implement an outright ban on bottom trawling, despite pledging earlier this year to extend the ban on bottom-towed fishing gear to offshore protected areas.
I was a member of the Environmental Audit Committee’s inquiry into marine governance, which recommended the ban on bottom trawling ahead of the UN ocean conference, and we commended the Government on their announcement at that time. I fully support the Committee Chair’s response, which repeats the Committee’s call to completely ban bottom trawling within offshore MPAs, and pleads with the Minister and the Government to take the right decision on the back of the consultation that is happening now, and not to undermine the integrity of our protected waters.
In conclusion, the Liberal Democrats are clear: we support the Bill, and we urge the Government to bring forward ratification swiftly—I hope Members across the Chamber will support that—so that the UK has a seat at the table when Ocean COP1 takes place, and going forward.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Like others, I very much welcome the Bill, and I hope it swiftly passes into law so that we can play a full role at Ocean COP1 next year. If we look back beyond recent years, we had people such as John Kerry, and David Miliband as co-chair of the Global Ocean Commission, spearheading efforts on this front, but it then felt as if the issue dropped off the agenda. Next year will be important for ensuring that it becomes a priority again.
I will start by saying why the oceans matter, why they are under threat and why protecting them is so important. As we have heard, oceans are a massive carbon sink. They absorb over 90% of excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases, as well as around 25% to 30% of global carbon dioxide emissions. They host around 80% of all life forms, many of which are still waiting to be discovered. They are under threat from plastic pollution, ocean acidification and the bleaching of coral reefs, and from overfishing on an unsustainable industrial scale. The largest factory trawlers have net mouths of up to 1,200 metres wide and 200 to 300 metres deep that sweep up hundreds of tonnes of fish and seafood in one trip, much of which is bycatch, not for human consumption, that is then discarded. Oceana has called this
“marine deforestation—akin to clear felling an entire rainforest when you’re only looking to harvest one type of tree”.
The Environmental Justice Foundation has done some brilliant reports in the past into slavery and labour exploitation as part of this industrial-scale fishing, particularly in the Thai seafood sector. The fish stocks in territorial waters are depleted, but the further afield those ships go, the higher the risk to the workers that are kept at sea for years at a time.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, between 35% and 37% of assessed fish stocks are being fished beyond biologically sustainable levels. That figure is much higher in the high seas and in straddling fish stocks, with two thirds classified as over-exploited or depleted. That includes iconic species, such as sharks, that are a crucial part of the ocean ecosystem. It is estimated that there has been a 71% decline in the ocean population of sharks and rays since 1970. Some 77% of oceanic shark and ray species are threatened with extinction. Roughly 100 million sharks a year are killed by humans through targeted fishing, shark finning and bycatch.
Many of us will have seen “The Blue Planet” series that did such a brilliant job at highlighting, among other things, the threat of plastic pollution and at spurring calls to action. I want to give a shout out to BBC Bristol’s natural history unit, which has been hugely influential, as well as giving great enjoyment to all the people who have seen its programmes. It is a great shame that agreement still has not been reached on a global plastics treaty, and we must keep up the efforts on that front.
I hope that Sir David Attenborough’s latest production, “Ocean”, will have a similar impact when it comes to bottom trawling. As Sir David says:
“What we have done to the deep ocean floor is just unspeakably awful.”
He says that the trawlers tear the seabed with such force that
“the trails of destruction can be seen from space”.
It was reported that some of the material filmed for the programme was deemed too shocking to be shown.
Due to climate change, more than half the world’s straddling fish stocks will shift across maritime borders between economic exclusion zones and the high seas by 2050. In the high seas, fisheries management is much more challenging and stocks are much more likely to be over-exploited, as I said earlier. That makes the need for marine protected areas in the high seas even more important. As we have heard, as well as being an island nation ourselves, because of our overseas territories the UK is the custodian of a fifth of the world’s territorial waters. That means that we are the neighbour, which is the next best thing as a custodian, of much of the high seas, including the Sargasso sea.
Greenpeace is calling on the UK to take a lead in working with our overseas territory, Bermuda, on developing an ocean sanctuary proposal for the Sargasso sea, ready to present it at the first Ocean COP next year. The Sargasso sea is a uniquely biodiverse and important ecosystem. The floating sargassum mats are known as the “golden floating rainforest”, and they are a haven for juvenile fish and turtles, a spawning ground for a rich range of species and an important migratory pathway for humpback whales. As a generator of massive carbon sequestration and oxygen production, the Sargasso sea is vital in tackling climate change and planetary health, but it is at risk of overfishing, pollution and shipping traffic. There is much support in Bermuda for the proposal, and I hope that we will be able to take that forward next year.
Given our strength as a global financial centre, the UK is uniquely well placed to play a role in developing innovative financial instruments that will help finance marine protection, building on what countries like Seychelles and Belize have done with their blue bonds and their debt restructuring. At COP29 last year, we launched our six principles for high integrity carbon and nature markets, and they have been out for consultation this year.
In a world where public sector resources and donations are dwindling, the world is looking to make progress on leveraging private sector finance in a meaningful and sustainable way. That could be of huge benefit to climate-vulnerable coastal countries and small island states, but could also be applicable to funding marine protected areas in the high seas, making it economically viable to protect our seas rather than to plunder them. I have heard that the Treasury may be less enthused about the nature side of these voluntary markets than the carbon side, but I hope that is not the case. I will certainly keep up the pressure on the Treasury to take this forward.
I want to speak briefly about deep-sea mining, to which I am totally opposed. Deep-sea mining could cause irreversible damage to deep ecosystems and a loss of undiscovered biodiversity. I understand that the current UK position, as confirmed by an FCDO ministerial answer last month, is that we back the suspension of deep-sea mining and support a moratorium on the granting of deep-sea mining contracts by the International Seabed Authority. The Minister said that we will not grant licences for exploitation unless
“there is sufficient scientific evidence about the potential impact on deep sea ecosystems, and strong enforceable environmental Regulations, Standards and Guidelines”.
However, it is not clear what powers we will have through this international collaboration to stop other countries issuing such licences, so I hope that the Minister will clarify that in her summing up. I am a little concerned that the measures in the Bill about marine genetic resources will open the door to deep-sea mining. I accept that there is a case for exploring the potential of such resources, if carried out under strong safeguards, but I would resist any attempt to allow deep-sea mining to occur.
Finally, while I welcome international initiatives and, as has been made clear, the Bill addresses areas beyond national jurisdiction, we need to lead by example with stronger protection for our own territorial waters. As has been said, there has been some progress, notably around our overseas territories, but perhaps it is easier to act when those areas are thousands of miles away and do not have the same economic interests. There has been great work around Ascension, Pitcairn and South Georgia, but there is more of a mixed picture around the UK coast.
Dogger Bank in the North sea is one of the largest marine protected areas. Since it was established in 2022, it has benefited from a 98% reduction in bottom trawling, supporting the recovery of marine species like halibut, cod, angel shark and eels. As it says in the UK’s national biodiversity strategy and action plan, all marine protected areas must be well managed, enforced and effective, not paper parks. We could start by moving faster to end all bottom trawling in our marine protected areas.
The recent excellent report “Blue Carbon”, published by the World Wide Fund for Nature, the Wildlife Trusts and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, set out a blue carbon mapping project carried out with the help of the Scottish Association for Marine Science. We are the first country to undertake such mapping. We know about the importance of kelp forests, seagrass meadows and mangroves, but it is the less glamorous sediment on our seabed that is the true hero in carbon sequestration. The report found that 224 million tonnes of organic carbon was stored in just the top 10 cm of seabed sediments and vegetated habitats, and 98% of that was in the sediment, such as the mud.
In my role as Minister for climate, it frustrated me that we talked so much about the role of trees and forests in carbon sequestration, but we did not talk about the oceans at all. I was told that that was because it was difficult to quantify, so this project is a great example. If this is the amount of carbon work that is being done by the seabed around the UK coast, just think about the amount that the seabed of our high seas is doing. We must have action on that at Ocean COP. I hope that the Bill will be enacted very soon, and I look forward to next year’s discussions.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Less than 1% of the high seas are fully protected; there could not be a more important time for this treaty. It is the world’s only viable pathway to meet the global biodiversity goal of protecting at least 30% of the world’s ocean before 2030. Along with my Liberal Democrat colleagues, I welcome the fact that the Government are finally bringing forward this legislation. It is disappointing that the UK was not among the first 60 countries to reach the threshold to get the treaty ratified, especially given the long cross-party support for the subject in this House, but I hope ratification will be swift to allow the UK a seat at the table at Ocean COP. We Liberal Democrats have long been pushing for the strongest possible marine environmental targets, both internationally and domestically, including through the ratification of the global oceans treaty.
The Bill is welcome, but we must not be complacent. Global plastic production and waste have doubled in the last 20 years, and more than 12 million tonnes of plastic are dumped into the ocean every single year, putting countless species at risk of extinction. In 2023, the BBC reported that there were more than 170 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the world’s oceans. That is simply shocking and totally unacceptable.
Biodiversity relies on healthy oceans, but plastic pollution, climate change and unsustainable fishing practices are destroying our marine biodiversity. With 10% of marine species at risk, we must act now. Communities across the world rely on the oceans for their livelihoods, jobs and food security—indeed, we all rely on the oceans for our livelihoods—but we are taking more from the ocean than can be replenished, with 90% of big fish populations depleted and 50% of coral reefs already destroyed.
The first Ocean COP is on the horizon for next year, which will give the UK an important seat at the table if we ratify the treaty in time. While there, the UK should champion further measures to protect our oceans, including a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas. Bottom trawling is a most terrifying practice that damages the seabed, kills animals and plants indiscriminately, and releases carbon from the sea floor in very large proportions, which drives climate change.
If Members have not watched the documentary “Ocean with David Attenborough”, please do—it is terrifying. Once I watched it, I made a pledge that I would not eat fish until we had at least signed the ocean treaty, so there is a personal reason why I push the Government for early ratification. I love fish, and this should not be a call not to eat fish; this is about protecting the oceans. If Members watch the David Attenborough film, they will see that a good and positive thing is that the oceans can recover very quickly if we give them the option to recover. That is why today is such an important day.
The British public are with us; some 81% of British adults say that they would like to see bottom trawling banned in MPAs, according to polling from Oceana. The Environmental Audit Committee backs the call to ban bottom trawling. In September, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs told the Environmental Audit Committee that it would not roll out an outright ban. I implore the Government to reconsider.
We must manage our territorial waters effectively, and we could start by implementing the Fisheries Act 2020 in full. Through that, we could reform the fishing quota distribution to phase out the fixed quota allocation system, which largely rewards those with the deepest pockets. It could be replaced with a system that rewards and incentivises lower impacts from fishing that deliver environmental, social and economic benefits to communities around our coast.
We must also look more closely at illegal and unregulated fishing. Hidden overfishing—when illegal discards are unaccounted for in fishing quotas—is driving stocks into severe decline. Marine groups are urging the Government to introduce a strategy to tackle overfishing by the end of 2026, including catch limits and a fair deal for fishers adjusting to lower catch limits.
The transparency around enforcement and monitoring of fishing activities in UK seas is not adequate. The Marine Management Organisation is not even required to publish data on the enforcement of fishing regulations. We were told that post Brexit, the UK would establish best-in-class fisheries management as an independent coastal state, but we have not taken advantage of that freedom to strengthen our regulations.
I welcome the Bill as an important starting point, but if we are serious about protecting the blue heart of our planet, this must be just the beginning of real action to restore the health of oceans across the world and here at home. I repeat the Liberal Democrats’ call for a coherent oceans policy.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I am delighted to rise to support the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill. The introduction of this legislation marks the beginning of a process for the UK to ratify and implement the global ocean treaty. This vital agreement enables the protection of international marine life. No protection currently exists for wildlife such as fish, turtles and dolphins that inhabit the high seas, over which no one country has jurisdiction.
The ocean, which covers more than 70% of the surface of our planet, is a vital shared resource. It provides us with sustenance, oxygen and genetic resources for food, medicines and research. It is also our greatest ally in the fight against climate change, as the largest carbon sink on the planet. However, it is an ecosystem under perilous threat. Increased ocean temperatures are symptomatic of the warming climate, and endanger us on land through a decreased capacity to absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, rising sea levels and the loss of vital marine life and resources.
The introduction of this legislation reaffirms this Government’s dedication to protecting global marine life as well as mitigating climate change and improving our natural environment. In the current moment, when the environmental consensus is at risk and there are those who would retreat from the world, pretend that we can draw up a metaphorical drawbridge and keep safe behind the safety of political castle walls, this Bill is a significant marker of this Government’s commitment to multilateral processes, which are in fact the only way to address some of the great challenges of our time.
This debate is one of many on the environment and nature that I have attended in recent weeks and months to which not a single Conservative Backbench MP has bothered to turn up. I do not say that to thumb my nose at them; I say it because it is profoundly depressing. I oppose the Tory party with every fibre of my being, but it is one of the great political parties of western Europe over the last 100, 200 and more years, and it has just given up.
His Majesty’s official Opposition is just not interested. That is not just today; it is in debate after debate that I attend. Some hard-working Opposition Front Bencher turns up, but not a single person sits behind them. I say to them, in the most earnest sincerity, that election defeats are disappointing, but the Tory party has to man up. It must turn up and start taking this seriously, because these are matters of the most supreme importance, and we cannot have the official Opposition just refusing to engage.
I have to say that the comments from the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) were pretty lukewarm. I understand that the previous Government looked at this issue for quite some time, but they never got as far as legislating. In listening to what he said, I was left uncertain of how supportive the Opposition actually are of the proposed measures; we will find out more in Committee. I hope that, having committed to this issue in government but never actually legislating on it, they will get behind this important legislation.
As we have heard, this Bill fulfils the commitment made by the Labour Government at the UN ocean conference and in opposition. The oceans need UK leadership and action. The evidence that the EAC received during our recent inquiry, “Governing the marine environment”, painted a worrying picture of the state of the marine environment. It is under threat globally from global warming, pollution and overexploitation, leading to a 49% decline in populations of marine mammals, birds, reptiles and fish species according to the Living Planet Index. UK seas are also in poor condition, failing on most of the indicators of good environmental status in the most recent assessment by the Government.
However, there is some good news: marine conservation efforts are effective. When we do them, they work. While only 9% of the ocean is currently protected in a marine protected area, remarkably half of all catalogued marine species have been reported in those areas. Some 72% of species facing extinction have found refuge in marine protected areas.
The Government are taking important action to better protect the 38% of UK seas already designated as marine protected areas. I repeat what has been said by other colleagues: we want to see the Government going further. Damaging activities can still take place in those areas, but the consultation referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy) is vital. Nearly two thirds of the ocean is considered high seas or international waters, which poses a governance and logistical challenge: how is it possible to protect areas that are beyond the jurisdiction of any one nation? That is why the global oceans treaty of 2023 was so significant—a landmark moment in providing the legal foundation for establishing MPAs in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The creation of protected areas in the high seas is essential to making 30 by 30 a reality.
This Bill, which establishes the legal framework necessary for the UK to meet its obligations, is vital. Its Royal Assent will lay the groundwork for the UK to ratify that agreement. As we have heard, 60 countries have already ratified the treaty, so it will come into force next January, and the first UN ocean conference will be held within the year. As such, it is vital that the UK gets on with ratifying that treaty so that it can be party to discussions and can shape agreements. Setting out a timeline for the UK’s ratification of the global oceans treaty was one of the key recommendations of the Environmental Audit Committee, so we welcome the Prime Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice having kept their word on that.
This is a narrow Bill that allows the UK to fulfil our global commitment. I caution well-meaning allies against extending the process or undermining the commitment that the Government have made by attempting to attach to the Bill other commitments that are not relevant to it and create division—in this incredibly important area, what we need is unity. However, the ratification of this treaty is just the start. We have much more to do to protect 30% of the oceans by 2030 and establish marine sanctuaries where marine life can thrive.
To conclude, I strongly support the Bill. I look forward to its passage through Parliament, and I thank the Government for prioritising this issue despite a heavy legislative workload. It is a welcome development that provides the powers and regulations needed for the UK to ratify the treaty, working with other nations.
Dr Roz Savage (South Cotswolds) (LD)
The oceans have long struggled to get the attention they deserve—there are no voters out there on the ocean. Thanks are owed to Sir David Attenborough and the many filmmakers and photographers who, over the years, have brought the oceans into our living rooms and helped us to get to know them and care about them. Most of us only get to experience oceans from a beach, or from 30,000 feet—looking down from an aeroplane window at a vast, endless blue expanse—but I have spent months and months alone on the ocean, a long way beyond national jurisdictions, rowing across oceans to raise awareness of the environmental crisis facing our world, particularly the parts of it that are blue. I was trying to bring a human face to the plight of our oceans.
Out there in the middle of an ocean, when you have not seen dry land for several months, thousands of miles separate you from the closest land mass and the nearest human beings are on the International Space Station, it feels like you are well beyond jurisdictions, and often beyond justice. It was out there in that lawless place that I came to understand both the power and the fragility of the ocean—you see its beauty and its bounty, but also its vulnerability to what we humans choose to do. The ocean has no voice in this place, so today, we are being its voice.
The ocean may seem boundless, but it is not indestructible. We have polluted it, overfished it, and warmed it. The deep sea is home to some of the most extraordinary forms of life on Earth—I was particularly pleased to hear the Minister refer to sunfish, which are surely the weirdest creatures I have ever seen—but it is increasingly targeted for exploitation. We know the surface of the moon better than we know the bottom of the ocean. There is a real danger that we could destroy species before we even know they exist.
More than 60% of the world’s surface and nearly three quarters of its ocean volume lie out there in the places beyond any country’s control. For centuries, the high seas have been treated as no one’s responsibility—beyond the environment, a lawless expanse—and still today, only 1% is properly protected. Meanwhile, overfishing, pollution and deep-sea mining are degrading ecosystems that we barely understand. The ocean is becoming more acidic, threatening the existence of plankton—the base of the entire marine food chain—and weakening its capacity to absorb carbon and regulate our climate. That is what is at stake. The health of the ocean is the health of our planet.
That is why the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction treaty matters so profoundly. It is the first global treaty to bring order, fairness and protection to the high seas. It offers a framework for managing those shared waters responsibly and ensuring that the benefits of ocean science are shared globally, not hoarded by the few. Earlier this year, when I brought the Climate and Nature Bill before this House, I further pressed the Government to commit to ratifying the BBNJ, and I am pleased and thankful that they are now delivering on that promise. I particularly thank the Minister, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), for her long-term persistence and commitment to this cause. It shows that when we work together across the House, we can turn ambition into action.
However, ratification is only the beginning; turning this treaty into a practical reality will demand co-ordination, funding and focus. As such, I would like to ask the Minister a few practical questions about implementation from the FCDO perspective, questions that I have sent to her office. First, on institutional co-ordination, how will Departments such as the FCDO, DEFRA and the Department for Transport work together to manage marine genetic resources, environmental assessments and new conservation tools under a single, coherent system? Secondly, on enforcement, what mechanisms will ensure compliance by UK vessels and research institutions operating beyond national jurisdiction, given the real challenges—of which I am keenly aware—of surveillance and jurisdiction at sea?
Thirdly, turning to resourcing and capacity, have the Government assessed the staffing, budget and technical resources needed to set up the new repositories, databases and administrative systems required by the BBNJ? Fourthly, on transparency and fairness, what plans are in place to ensure that the data held by repositories such as the Natural History Museum and the National Oceanography Centre are accessible and interoperable—especially for developing countries, including small island states—in line with the BBNJ’s principle of equitable benefit sharing? Finally, on international engagement, with the first oceans COP expected in 2026, how will the UK prepare to shape the operational details of the agreement at the international level, and who will represent us at that table?
These questions matter because they will determine whether the Bill delivers real protection, rather than just good intentions. Our scientists are ready to lead. The National Oceanography Centre, with its cutting-edge research and fleet of autonomous submersible vessels—including one known as Boaty McBoatface—is already mapping deep sea currents and gathering the knowledge we need to understand and protect the ocean. Under the BBNJ, that vital work will become part of a global effort to heal the seas.
The ocean is the blue heart of our planet. It gives us half the oxygen we breathe, shapes our weather, and sustains life on a scale that defies our humble human imaginations. If that heart falters, everything we depend on will be at risk. We often think of oceans as dividing nations, but actually, they connect and unite us; we are, so to speak, all in the same boat. As the great American oceanographer Dr Sylvia Earle said,
“We need to respect the oceans and take care of them as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.”
By ratifying and implementing the BBNJ, we can help turn the tide—sorry, I just cannot help it. Let this be the Parliament that gave the ocean a voice and a future.
Barry Gardiner (Brent West) (Lab)
It has been almost 19 years since I first met Professor Alex Rogers at a two-day conference at Somerville College, Oxford, convened by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment. The subject was international law on the high seas. The young postdoctoral fellow inspired us about the amazing biodiversity of our global ocean— I use the singular deliberately—but he also frustrated us by explaining that the international community lacked any legal framework to protect it.
The ocean accounts for 99% of our planet by volume and nearly two thirds by surface area. Every second breath we take is supplied to us by the ocean. Some 90% of the excess heat in the climate system has been absorbed by the ocean. The ocean is our greatest nature-based solution to climate change, and it is only by restoring the health of our marine ecosystems that we can deliver on our promise to meet the 30 by 30 target in the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework. The BBNJ treaty is the missing part of the jigsaw. That is why today’s debate is so important, and why the Bill is so important.
The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill is welcome and necessary, but we must recognise what the treaty is and what it is not. We must do so not in order to understate what the Bill does, but to understand clearly what action we must take following its passage. We will need secondary legislation to implement the treaty, and—dare I say this before the Budget statement?—it will require adequate funding. The treaty creates a framework for the establishment of protected areas on the high seas, but it does not, in and of itself, create those protected areas. It is therefore important that the Government start to develop proposals for high seas MPAs, especially in regions of the world where the UK is a party to the relevant regional fisheries management organisations.
I commend DEFRA for the work that it has already done in its stocktake of area-based management tools in areas beyond national jurisdiction. This is a really important baseline. I ask the Minister to set out in her response to the debate what further work is planned to identify, support and deliver specific MPAs. I am particularly keen to hear how she might develop the supplementary report that has already been prepared on the Sargasso sea. Will she confirm that this internationally significant ecosystem is a priority for the development of an MPA? It has now been 13 years since the Sargasso sea was recognised as an ecologically or biologically significant area, having met all seven EBSA criteria.
Our country’s history has left a legacy. That legacy is our exclusive economic zone, which is the fifth largest in the world, largely due to our remaining overseas territories, but that legacy brings responsibilities with it. I pay tribute to the work of the previous Conservative Administration, who expanded the blue belt programme to nominally protect more than 4 million sq km of ocean, from Anguilla in the Caribbean to Pitcairn in the Pacific ocean. In the last year, the programme took satellite imagery of more than 100 million sq km of UK overseas territory waters, providing crucial monitoring and surveillance to crack down on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities. It is this very tangible knowledge and expertise that the UK should be at the forefront of delivering through the first BBNJ COP, which will take place within a year of the treaty taking force, from 17 January 2026.
I welcome the announcement, following the spending review, that the blue belt programme will receive increased funding for 2025-26. However, given that £2 million of this £8.6 million comes from official development assistance, which itself is being cut, I hope it will not seem churlish if I ask that the programme be ringfenced for the future.
For much of human history, we did not need the BBNJ treaty. The high seas were protected from the worst impacts of human activity by the simple reality that they were so far from land and too difficult to access. The dawn of the industrial age and motorised ocean-going vessels changed all that. Even species that lived their whole life hundreds or thousands of miles from land were no longer safe from human exploitation.
Nothing epitomises that sad reality more than the slaughter of the great whales. Industrialised whaling caused the deaths of nearly 3 million whales. Even the blue whale, the largest animal that has ever lived, had its numbers reduced by more than 90%. Whales’ size and the fact of spending most of their lives in inhospitable and hard-to-reach parts of the open ocean had kept them safe for millennia, but the introduction of new and more powerful technologies meant that even they became the victims of massive over-exploitation. Today, there are fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales left in our ocean. And why was it called the right whale? Ironically, it acquired its name because it was rich in blubber and baleen, it moved slowly and it floated after being killed, so it was easily towed in to be butchered—so it was deemed the “right” whale to hunt.
The history of these great mammals shows just why we now need the BBNJ. Biodiversity is no longer protected by its remoteness from land. Human greed will destroy it wherever it is found on our planet, unless we act decisively to regulate our most destructive activities. Today, although the international whaling ban is still ignored by a few countries, whales are no longer threatened by hunters, on the whole, but they are killed by ship strikes and they are entangled in fishing gear.
I emphasise the importance of the international ban not just because I believe that it is one of the most important conservation achievements of the 20th century, but because it was a great achievement of multilateralism —something that is not much in vogue at the moment. It shows how, by acting in concert with other nations, we can mobilise popular support around environmental objectives with both a clear ecological and a clear moral purpose, and we can achieve results. I regard it as an inspiration and a template for what we are now doing in the BBNJ.
The huge factory ships that once slaughtered whales have largely gone, but in their place, equally large factory ships now plunder the ocean as if it were a bottomless pit of profit. There are longliners setting fishing lines tens of kilometres long, each with up to 15,000 hooks, and huge purse seiners using nets that are 2 km long and 200 metres deep. Imagine a net that is twice as deep as Big Ben—the Elizabeth Tower—is tall, and which stretches out so far from this House of Commons that it takes in the whole of Buckingham Palace and most of its gardens. These fishing enterprises devastate the very populations that they are targeting. That is why we need this Bill.
Earlier this year, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science—the Government’s own marine experts—found that more than half of the UK’s key fishing quotas were set above the levels recommended by scientists. Overfishing has led to a 98% collapse in Celtic sea cod populations since 2012, with an 84% collapse in haddock, an 85% collapse in whiting and an 80% collapse in herring. Just two weeks ago, the scientific assessment of mackerel showed that the species has declined by 78% in the past 10 years. Despite continued advice from scientists to reduce catch quotas, that reduction has not happened.
While the UK has been a world leader with the blue belt programme, at home we continue to practise the opposite of what we preach, most notably through disastrous sustainable catch limits and quotas. Worse, we have driven out small fishing fleets, leaving our seas vulnerable to the monstrous mega-ships whose bottom-trawling scrapes away the existence of all life in their path. The inequitable quota allocation that was formalised in 1999 has resulted in more than 90% of the quota for mackerel, herring and blue whiting being held by just 20 companies, most of them not even British. Half of the English quota is held by Dutch, Icelandic and Spanish interests, more than half of Northern Ireland’s quota is held by just one trawler company, and 85% of Wales’s quota is held by Spanish companies.
The system has been rigged against the UK’s inshore fleet and its independent fishers. All of this was done by UK companies selling their quota abroad, but it is the awful consequence of the privatisation of a public good—our fisheries—and the UK taxpayer has received not a penny in benefit as a result. If the UK is truly to be a leader in the implementation of the BBNJ and to demand of other nations that they curb their rapacious plundering of the high seas, we must at the very least begin to stop the over-exploitation of our stocks at home. Our ability to make our voice heard internationally will sound hollow if we continue to ignore the science and set politically led quota allocations at home.
High seas fisheries often have unimaginably high levels of bycatch. This is particularly true of tuna fisheries, because tuna often school with other pelagic species, such as dolphins, manta rays and billfish. Indeed, many tuna species inhabit the same surface mixed layer of the ocean that is inhabited by vulnerable species such as silky sharks or turtles. It is estimated that 100 million sharks are caught every year—most as bycatch in high seas fisheries—so it is no wonder that the number of large open ocean sharks has declined by at least 70% in the past 50 years, almost entirely due to high seas fishing, where they are either targeted or caught as bycatch beyond the reach of national jurisdictions.
The leatherback turtle, the largest turtle in the world, is threatened with extinction because it is so often caught as bycatch by purse seine fleets of fishing vessels on the high seas. In the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of endangered species, published just last week, only one of the 22 species of albatross is not threatened with extinction through being caught as bycatch on hooks on longline fishing fleets in the open ocean.
Distance from land once provided protection for many species in the pre-industrial era, and the same can be said of the deep seas. Until recently, the deep ocean was out of reach for human activity. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Industrialised fishing fleets are now able to fish deeper and deeper, but many deep sea species are slow-growing. An orange roughy reaches sexual maturity only between the age of 20 and 30—much older than shallower water fish. These factors make deep sea species uniquely vulnerable to overfishing, and as many of the deepest waters are on the high seas, we need to ensure that the BBNJ agreement protects them and their habitat better.
Deep sea fishing, especially on seamounts, poses an existential risk to many deep-sea ecosystems, and bottom trawling, which is devastating in coastal and shallow seas, is arguably even more so on the high seas. Bottom trawlers tend to focus on seamounts, as these underwater mountains act as biodiversity hotspots in the open ocean. I seek the Minister’s assurance that, in considering the next steps after ratification, establishing protections around seamounts on the high seas will be one of the Government’s priorities. I ask for the same assurance in relation to the issue of deep seabed mining—I trust that the Government will continue to oppose any developments of this on the high seas.
The Bill before us is excellent. It will delight the now Professor Alex Rogers, who I suspect is not at his desk either in Oxford or at the National Oceanography Centre, where he is now the science director. Most probably, he is out somewhere in the Antarctic ocean in a submersible exploring the deep ocean, as he has been doing for more than 30 years. If he were to take a break from his mission to discover 100,000 new marine species in the deep ocean in this decade and send us a message, I suspect that it would emphasise the importance of getting this Bill enacted quickly. If we do not ratify the treaty at least 40 days before the first COP, the UK will not have a seat at the table; we will merely be a spectator as others set the ambition, or the lack of it, as they roll out the implementation of the treaty.
I congratulate the Minister on bringing the Bill to the House for its Second Reading, and trust that we are able to see the whole ratification process completed in time for the UK to make strong proposals at COP1 next year.
Charlotte Cane (Ely and East Cambridgeshire) (LD)
The Venerable Bede first wrote of the “Isle of Eels” back in the 8th century. He explained that the Isle of Ely is known as such because it was surrounded by water, with an abundance of eels, but these eels do not spend their whole life in Ely or, indeed, in the UK.
The biological story behind eels is a quite remarkable one. They breed in the Sargasso sea, which, as we have heard, is so important to many other species as well, and they drift across the ocean for two or three years as tiny and fragile eels. They adapt to freshwater and mature in rivers—sometimes growing up to 1 metre in length—before swimming all the way back to the Sargasso sea to reproduce once more before dying. These eels face many dangers in their life cycle, including the impact of climate change on ocean currents, pollution and poaching.
European eels are considered a critically endangered species, so it is imperative that we take action to protect them now. At a local level, the creation of eel passes—not, as it might sound, a passport, but ladders or passages—has been welcome action to allow them to get from the sea into freshwater habitats and back again. However, much more needs to be done to protect them and other endangered species on a global scale, so it is really good that the Government have proposed this Bill.
Ely holds an annual eel festival, which not only recognises our history but celebrates biodiversity and nature. The festival celebrates our heritage and is always tinged with concern about the decline in the eel population, but also with a determination to see eels return to our rivers in abundance. They are not anywhere near as common in the River Great Ouse as they once were, owing to all the factors I mentioned, but the good news is that in 2022, over 74,000 eels were recorded as making the 3,000-mile journey from the Sargasso sea to Cambridgeshire.
Measures like banning bottom trawling in marine protected areas would be a good way to protect endangered species like eels and others, as would the provision of greater resources for international environmental co-operation. I hope the Government will take on board calls for a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas. We cannot possibly have the moral authority to call for such a ban on the global stage when we have not done it in our own waters.
Like our eels, all wildlife depends on our oceans, as indeed do we as the human race. The speech from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) was shocking and depressing. For a party that once hugged a husky to now be questioning its support for our oceans is shameful.
Twenty-five centuries ago, Aristotle questioned where eels came from, but if we do not take urgent action to protect them and other marine wildlife, we will not be asking where they came from; we will be asking where they have all gone. I therefore welcome this Bill and the international co-operation of which it is a part. Let us get it through the House as quickly as possible, so that we can sign the treaty and make sure that it delivers what we all hope it will deliver.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for her remarks and for the attention that the FCDO has paid to the importance of marine conservation. The biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction treaty represents a transformation in the way that we protect nature in the high seas. I commend the Government for being an early proponent of the agreement, and I am so pleased—in fact, I am thrilled—to see that we are finally going to ratify it.
I feel that I have been witnessing the Chamber at its best this afternoon. To hear such passion and such well-informed expertise on both sides has been a real honour. It reminds one what an honour we all have in being Members of this place and sitting in a room to listen to such speeches, which has been wonderful. Let me confess that I am one of those people—I remember that when I came back from seeing sperm whales I was still weeping, and I apologised to the organiser of the trip that I seemed to just not be able to stop weeping, but she said, “Don’t worry, dear. We see lots of people like you on these trips.” I feel as though I have found my people, given the passion that has been expressed today for the high seas and for biodiversity.
Today, I want my speech to have a particular focus—please forgive me for this—because I believe that our commitment to this treaty can be tested by how we treat our current responsibilities. I join the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), in using the Chagos islands as a test. I apologise for not recognising that the Opposition have been talking about the biodiversity of the Chagos islands. Perhaps I was only focused on the considerable amount of time they have spent on the sovereignty of the Chagos islands. I have since spent the time available looking up their references to biodiversity, and there have been three of them, so I apologise for saying that there had not been any.
I have had a number of exchanges in this House with the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), who has responsibility for Europe, North America and the overseas territories, about the vital importance of safeguarding marine protected areas around the Chagos islands. I am grateful for the assurances he has given me that the Government are committed to the continued protection of the unique and unparalleled environment of the Chagos archipelago.
However, the FCDO’s assurances, although welcome, really do not go far enough, but before I say why, I want to explain why these waters matter so much—not least because of their role in replenishing the high seas—and the extraordinary obligation that the UK owes the world to ensure that they remain protected. As has been said, these 640,000 sq km of near pristine ocean are among the most pristine in the world. They are home to the largest living coral atoll and to 58 islands. They are the breeding site for more than a quarter of a million pairs of seabirds, as well as the vital and unexplored deep-sea ecosystems that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) talked about with such passion.
The vast no-take zone that the UK established in 2010 provides a vital sanctuary for numerous endangered species. If this marine environment were damaged, it would do huge damage to the seas generally and to species already on the brink of extinction, such as the endangered hawksbill turtle, which forages in the waters of the Chagos islands and nests on their beaches, or the unique population of reef manta rays, which use the protected waters as a refuge and which would soon disappear if those waters became unprotected. This is exactly the kind of marine life that the BBNJ agreement seeks to protect through the establishment, among other measures, of marine protected areas in the high seas.
The vast marine protected area around the Chagos islands provides a safe corridor and foraging ground for vital migratory species and apex predators such as tuna, sharks and whales, and without it we would see their numbers crash much more widely across the world. In a warming world in which coral is dying at a terrifying rate, the coral in the Chagos archipelago is relatively healthy and acts as a reseeding bank for other reefs in the Indian ocean through larval dispersal. The reefs and marine life of the Chagos archipelago help to replenish degraded reefs and depleted fish stocks from east Africa to Indonesia. The coral in the Chagos archipelago has shown an extraordinary degree of resilience and an ability to recover even from bleaching events, and it is not known why. This resilience and the undisturbed nature of the Chagos ocean make it a really important site for scientific study. It could give us an important insight into what we can do next to save our coral reefs, and a proper insight into how healthy marine ecosystems function and the impact of climate change.
For the last 15 years, the UK has protected those waters and taken seriously its duties as the steward of those ecosystems, just as the BBNJ agreement invites the entire international community to do as stewards of the high seas. As the UK now hands them over to Mauritius, we have an equally serious duty to ensure that they remain protected. That brings me to the terms of the Chagos deal and the Minister of State’s evidence to my Foreign Affairs Committee, for which I am grateful to him.
The Minister noted that the UK and Mauritian Governments are committed to promoting the conservation of the environment of the archipelago. I obviously welcome that, and I pay tribute to the Government of Mauritius for their clear determination to protect nature. Nothing I am about to say is intended to cast any doubt on that commitment. The problem, however, is that Mauritius is a democracy—a vibrant democracy—in which Governments have historically had different attitudes to protecting the ocean. It is therefore not good enough for the Minister just to point to the commitment of the current Mauritian Government to marine protection; we need a basis for lasting confidence and mechanisms to ensure that these ecosystems remain protected for future generations. My principal concern is that there is no funding mechanism in place to ensure that Mauritius will properly resource marine protection in the Chagos archipelago and to incentivise it to do so. That stands in contrast to the treaty we are discussing.
Wera Hobhouse
I thank the right hon. Member for giving me an opportunity to say sorry to the shadow Minister for misunderstanding, when I intervened earlier, why he thought it was so important to mention the Chagos islands. I hope he will accept my apology.
Emily Thornberry
I must say that we are all behaving so well this afternoon.
I was saying that there is no incentive or funding mechanism in the Chagos archipelago deal, yet the treaty we are talking about—the subject of the Bill we are giving a Second Reading today—does have that very funding mechanism. Why does it? Because we know that that is needed for it to work. Without a dedicated funding mechanism for Chagos marine protection, in which a transfer of funds is contingent on the continuing protection of the marine environment, there is nothing to ensure that this protection will continue. The Mauritian Government want to allocate resources for doing so, but they operate in a resource-constrained environment. It is therefore deeply regrettable that both parties did not reach an agreement on future arrangements for environmental protection across the Chagos archipelago before signing the treaty. They should have allocated dedicated funds to it, or agreed a funding mechanism that would have been a proper basis for confidence. In short, the Chagos agreement should have followed the lead of the BBNJ agreement.
I remain concerned that there is a lack of concrete action on the future conservation of the Chagos archipelago’s unique marine environment and biodiversity. I appreciate the commitments that the Minister has given to the House and my Committee, but now actions need to be taken, drawing on the example presented by the BBNJ agreement. The ratification of the high seas treaty is testament to Britain’s renewed global leadership on climate and nature. That reputation risks being undermined by a failure to invest in the protection of the unique and extraordinary marine environment that is the Chagos islands.
Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)
I welcome the Government and the Minister’s leadership on this issue in bringing the Bill to the House to enact the UN high seas treaty. I, too, am a member of the APPG for the ocean.
I know that people in Exeter care very deeply about our natural environment, particularly the seas and oceans, and rightly so. The world’s oceans are vital to the health of our planet and to our people. They produce over half of the world’s oxygen and absorb a quarter of all carbon dioxide emissions, helping to regulate our climate. They support an immense diversity of life, providing food for billions of people and supporting enormous ecosystems, which contain knowledge that we have only just begun to tap.
After decades of industrial damage, this landmark legislation and the treaty will go some way to protecting two thirds of the world’s oceans, and it represents a massive step forward by nations across the world to protect marine life and ecosystems beyond our national borders. By providing the legal framework necessary to implement the BBNJ agreement domestically, the Bill includes provisions for marine protected areas, environmental impact assessments and the sharing of benefits from the collection and use of marine genetic resources, and will help us to meet the target to effectively conserve and manage at least 30% of the ocean by 2030. I also welcome the Bill as a core part of re-establishing the UK’s role in providing global leadership on climate and nature, both at home and around the world.
Just as the UK is a leader in marine and climate science, so is Exeter. I was delighted this week to host in Parliament the Met Office, which is based in Exeter, to showcase the range and depth of its expertise. The Met Office is not just a specialist in our weather. It is also a specialist in space weather, our oceans, and the connection between climate change and forecasting. Its work on ocean biogeochemistry—studying how carbon and other gases are absorbed, transported and exchanged by the oceans, the mechanisms involved and the impact changes have—is pioneering. It researches the risks of rapid loss of sea ice, and is studying the rise of sea levels and the impacts on communities, the environment and the economy.
The Met Office also provides a vital service in generating risk assessments of rapid changes to the meridional overturning circulation, which I am told—I am literature graduate, Madam Deputy Speaker, not a science graduate—plays an important role in regional climates. It is also part of the National Partnership for Ocean Prediction, bringing together world-class expertise and research, as well as developing beneficial marine products and services.
In addition, the University of Exeter has a wide-ranging research community working on projects related to our oceans. These come together under the Exeter Marine research network, and their ocean research runs from pollution and conservation to governance and human health. In June this year, Exeter University’s Professor Callum Roberts was the lead author of a report in Nature supporting the UN high seas treaty. His paper highlighted that the high seas are the Earth’s largest and most secure carbon sink. Protecting them is critical to preserving the biological and nutrient cycles that draw down and keep atmospheric CO2 in check. They welcome the UN high seas treaty, saying it offers a pathway to greater protection, but they are concerned about the length of time for implementation. The report’s authors also argue that a full and permanent ban on extractive use of the oceans is both feasible and necessary, modelled on the successful precedent set for Antarctica in the 1950s. Will the Minister comment on what more can be done, beyond the treaty as we bring it in, to protect our oceans above and beyond this legislation?
Finally, I want to pay tribute to my constituents Mary Attewell, Debbie Thomas, Sue Down and Lizzie Waler of Exeter’s Greenpeace group, who have been doggedly campaigning for the UK’s ratification of the treaty. I thank them for all their work and for keeping this issue at the top of the political agenda. I hope they will be celebrating this evening, if the Bill passes its Second Reading. They have asked to question how the treaty will be enforced. I would welcome comments from the Minister on that, too.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) that we want there to be cross-party and cross-House agreement on this issue. While it is disappointing that the Conservatives are not here, it is also disappointing that Green party MPs, other than one small intervention at the beginning, are not here to participate substantially in the debate.
I commend the Bill. I am extraordinarily thrilled and pleased to support it. I know that the ratification of the agreement as soon as possible supports the UK’s broader climate and nature agenda, and will mean that we can take our seat at the top table at the first COP. That will ensure we remain at the forefront of global efforts to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change through multilateral co-operation. This will strengthen the role of international law—so important in these times—and multilateral institutions as the foundation for ocean governance.
Martin Rhodes (Glasgow North) (Lab)
I welcome the Bill for what it seeks to put into law, but also for what it signals about the approach of the Government, and hopefully this House, to national and international obligations and interests. It is a testament to the continued survival and delivery of multilateralism in global affairs. In an age of continued and heightened global strife, conflict and antagonism, the Bill is proof that there still remains hope for global co-operation and that joint endeavours with shared purpose can deliver common goods. Institutions such as the United Nations can still be practical and effective forums to facilitate states coming together to work out collective solutions to collective problems. There are those who seek to withdraw from international agreements, seeing multilateral institutions and processes as threats. We must eschew such an approach, because it ultimately does not serve our national or global interests. Such an approach of withdrawal and isolation will not further our interests effectively.
In this case, the United Nations biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction agreement, which the Bill will bring into the framework of UK law, will be one of the most important strides forward for biodiversity and the marine environment. For the first time, the United Kingdom will have a legal framework to help us to protect large expanses of the seas that are beyond our national waters. The establishment of such protections will help to ensure that regions of the high seas are safeguarded from harmful extractive and destructive practices. The protections will help to restore biodiversity to these regions and help maintain the ocean’s capacity to absorb CO2 produced by human activity, thus helping to mitigate the impacts of global warming.
As has been mentioned, the oceans absorb about 30% of man-made CO2, and this treaty will help to ensure that they are fit to continue doing so. The ratification of the treaty must not be the be all and end all for protecting the biodiversity of the world’s oceans. It must be a means through which the UK and allies globally can continue to advocate for greater protection of our shared marine environment. One means of doing that through the treaty will be the first conference of the parties—or Ocean COP1. This will be the first forum for the treaty’s signatories to discuss and action its implementation, such as agreeing proposals for the first generation of high seas sanctuaries. The treaty is welcome and the Bill is welcome, but implementation is necessary to deliver what we need.
As the Minister said in her opening comments, the COP will take place within a year of 17 January 2026, which is when the treaty comes into force. As has been said, if the UK has failed to ratify at least 40 days before that date, we will not have a seat at the first COP. That is why I urge the House to pass this legislation at pace. Already, there are reports that the first Ocean COP could be as soon as August next year. The Government have rightly spoken at length about the importance of the UK bringing its soft power to bear. With this being the first COP of its kind, it is essential that we bring UK expertise and influence to the event while the treaty is in its infancy. We have seen the importance of conferences of the parties as a means of promoting collective action on climate change and nature. We cannot miss this chance to be a part of the first Ocean COP to do the same for our world’s oceans. Multilateral agreements implemented by collective action are the way forward on this issue. I am therefore more than content to support the Bill enthusiastically today.
Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)
Two thirds of our planet is ocean. Our oceans, which sustain life on Earth, cannot be left unguarded any longer. After years of international negotiation, the world finally agreed to the high seas treaty. With the Bill, we will turn that treaty into action and show that Britain is serious about delivering on its promises.
There is no response to the climate crisis that does not also respond to the nature crisis. That is why it is important to protect biodiversity in this country, beyond our border and beyond the seas. Two thirds of the world’s oceans lie beyond national borders, and until now they have had almost no real protection. The Bill gives us the power to protect international waters by establishing marine protected areas, by demanding proper environmental assessments before deep-sea mining or destructive fishing can go ahead, and by making sure that the benefits of marine science are shared fairly. The Bill underpins the global goal of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030—a goal that Labour put in its manifesto and one that we should be proud to be delivering on. The high seas absorb carbon, regulate weather and produce half the oxygen that we breathe. If we do not get biodiversity right, we will not get climate change right either.
We have all heard the tedious lines often repeated by Members on the Conservative Benches—where no one is currently sat—that we cannot act because other countries are not acting, but to lead in addressing climate change we have to do precisely that: take action, do something meaningful and lead other countries in making a difference. Hon. Members may wonder why I, from the most landlocked constituency of Calder Valley, am speaking on the Bill, but in Calder Valley we know the cost of climate change as floods devastate our towns. We also know that protecting nature is our first line of defence, and whether that is restoring our moorland at home, insisting on biodiversity net gain in developments or safeguarding oceans abroad, the principle is the same.
I commend the Government for introducing the Bill, which is a vital step in turning the international commitments into real action. The next challenge is to ensure that the Bill not only passes but is properly enforced and resourced, as many colleagues have said. I look forward to hearing more detail on that from the Minister. Let us see this as the first day of Britain’s leadership on our seas.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Ind)
On land and at sea, our natural environment has suffered a soul-crushing collapse over many decades, putting the future of iconic species and entire ecosystems at risk, as was so eloquently described by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) in a tour de force of a speech. The Government were elected on a clear promise to end that catastrophic decline, the long-term consequences of which, if we do not reverse that trend, will be profound. Our food security depends on healthy ecosystems, the bedrock of our economy is our natural capital, and the public—our voters—cherish our seas, rivers, coastlines, ancient woodlands and national parks. They will not be forgiving of a political system that fails to protect and restore our shared natural inheritance.
The Bill is a particularly vital step towards the renewed protection of our natural environment. It recognises that biodiversity does not obey national borders or jurisdiction, so neither can our duty to safeguard it. As obvious as that truth may seem to the public, let alone conservationists, successive Governments have failed to give the high seas the attention they need. The Bill begins to put that right by at last creating a legal framework for the UK to ratify the UN BBNJ agreement and meet our international obligations in full.
As has been noted, just 1% of the high seas have full protection, and there is still much research to be done on deep sea ecosystems, but they are increasingly recognised as a key global reservoir of biodiversity, so the crucial task is to move the legislation forward quickly and end the crisis engulfing our oceans. Industrial fishing practices such as bottom trawling—the underseas equivalent of ploughing a bulldozer through a wild flower meadow—are tearing apart fragile seabed habitats while trawl nets indiscriminately catch and discard countless non-target, endangered species. Once those species are gone, they will be gone forever, and their entire intricate web of connections will go with them, unravelling irreplaceable ecosystems with profound knock-on effects that we can neither predict nor prevent.
As has been mentioned, if we fail to pass the Bill urgently, the UK will not have a seat at the table for the treaty’s first COP. That would not only represent a dereliction of our international obligations—we have as great a responsibility as any nation to protect global biodiversity—but silence our voice in safeguarding our own national interests, such as the protection of the UK’s 8 million seabirds, over half of which are already in decline. Species such as the albatross and the petrel spend more than 80% of their lives foraging on the high seas. We cannot protect them with action on our own coastlines alone, yet Britain stripped of her seabirds would hardly be Britain at all. Other countries will have their own priorities and national interests to pursue, so our Government must be at the table playing its part in securing the long-term future of the many species that play such an important part in our culture and identity.
I welcome the Bill and the opportunity it creates to discuss nature and biodiversity in this place: a topic of serious debate right now for the public and for the Government. I close by saying again that decisions driven by an ideology that prioritises profit over people and the environment did not just undermine our economy; they wrecked our natural world and our social cohesion. National renewal must mean economic revival, but also once more cherishing those things that make life beautiful, and that means protecting nature. I thank Ministers today for doing just that.
Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)
Cannock Chase may be one of the most landlocked constituencies in the country, but that has not stopped my constituents from writing to me in support of the Bill, and rightly so. If anyone does come across a marine genetic resource in Staffordshire, I would be impressed and also slightly concerned, but the point is this: what happens in the world’s oceans matters just as much to the people of my constituency as it does to those living on the coast. As the wise Franklin D. Roosevelt once said,
“The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”
I would like to extend that to say that the world that destroys its oceans destroys itself. The UK has long positioned itself as a global leader on marine protection, and with the BBNJ agreement about to enter force—on 17 January—we must not give up our status on marine conservation. That is why I speak in support of the Bill: legislation that gives the Government the ability to ratify that vital United Nations agreement and take part in the world’s first ocean COP next year.
As the new chair of the all-party parliamentary group on UK food security, I want to emphasise how vital the Bill is in protecting the long-term health of our global food systems. The high seas—those vast areas of ocean beyond any single country’s jurisdiction—are essential to our food security. They are home to rich marine ecosystems, and globally over 3 billion people rely on fish for at least 20% of their animal protein intake—for many coastal and island nations, that figure is much higher—yet the vast majority of these waters have long been unregulated and are vulnerable to a multitude of threats including overfishing, unrestricted oil drilling, pollution and deep sea mining, which directly threaten not just ocean health but global food security. I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) that, to ensure the agreement has real impact, the Government must rapidly push for new marine protected areas in international waters.
The Bill will enable the UK to play an active role in addressing all those threats. It will extend marine licensing requirements to British activities beyond our waters and mandate environmental outcome reports for potentially harmful activity. It will also ensure greater transparency in the collection and use of marine genetic resources, the biological material from marine organisms that holds immense promise for medicine, biotechnology and food innovation. It is often said that the world’s rainforests hold countless discoveries to come that could cure many illnesses and enable advancements that will enrich our human existence—as well as, I certainly hope, our stewardship of the natural world. However, although they are often overlooked, the same is very much true of our oceans. These scientific and ecological discoveries must benefit all nations and not simply be the preserve of the already wealthy. I therefore very much welcome the emphasis on open access repositories and databases that is so prominent in the BBNJ agreement. The agreement also embeds vital safeguards like the “polluter pays” principle and the precautionary principle. I hope it will pave the way for international action that will finally turn the tide—pun absolutely intended—on the reckless destructive practices that nations across the world have perpetrated.
I could not let the opportunity to speak on the high seas go by without mentioning the global plastics treaty, on which I hope we can find international agreement soon. I pay strong tribute to the Minister and the British delegation to the Geneva talks. We know from her recent appearance at the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that she deeply regrets the collapse of those talks without an agreement, and I know that she is already redoubling efforts to find a way forward so that we can start to halt and reverse environmental catastrophes such as the great Pacific garbage patch. I urge the Government to do whatever they can alongside fellow members of the High Ambition Coalition to end plastic pollution and advance international action on this urgent issue.
As we have heard, the Government have committed to protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030. The Bill makes good on that commitment on an international level, not just as an environmental ambition, but as a foundation for international co-operation, sustainable development and global food resilience. I commend the Government for their leadership in bringing this legislation forward, particularly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) said, in a packed legislative programme as we seek to get our country back on its feet. It demonstrates this Government’s commitment to and prioritising of the health and sustainability of our oceans beyond national jurisdiction, and I urge colleagues across the House to support it.
Whether we live by the sea or in Cannock Chase in the heart of England, a healthy ocean is essential to a secure and sustainable future for us all. The oceans cannot wait, and nor should the United Kingdom.
John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) (Lab)
Our oceans are teeming with complex life, but today they are also in a state of crisis. Climate change, pollution, overfishing, habitat destruction and plastics are all placing our oceans under strain like never before. Our oceans are paying the price, with more than a third of UK fish stocks currently overfished and more than a third of marine mammals at risk of extinction.
The high seas treaty, which the Bill will ratify into UK law, represents a significant and much-needed step forward. For the first time, the treaty creates a legal mechanism to establish marine protected areas in international waters—a crucial tool to ensure that by 2030, and in accordance with the global biodiversity framework, 30% of the world’s land and sea will be protected. However, the success of the treaty will depend on whether it is enforced, so I urge the Government to ensure that adequate funding is provided to help to protect these newly created marine protected areas.
We must also do our bit at home to protect marine life here in the UK. Some 38% of UK waters are now designated as marine protected areas. However, during our inquiry into the marine environment, the Environmental Audit Committee heard that these sites lacked sufficient protection to contribute towards our targets of protecting 30% of land and sea. While Government proposals to nearly triple the amount of seabed protection from bottom trawling are welcome, I therefore urge the Government to enact the recommendation from the Environmental Audit Committee and ban bottom trawling in all marine protected areas; without a ban, it is hard to see how we can claim that these areas are protected at all. Bottom trawling is a highly destructive practice that tears up the seabed, destroys habitats and releases carbon stored in the ocean floor. As David Attenborough said in his film “Ocean”, the idea of bulldozing a rainforest causes outrage, but we do the same underwater every day.
We also cannot protect our oceans without addressing the climate crisis. The oceans have absorbed 90% of all excess heat caused by climate change, and this excess heat is resulting in widespread marine heatwaves that are killing marine ecosystems and causing our oceans to acidify. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been clear that if we allow warming to reach 1.5°C, the vast majority of coral reefs will be lost forever. The willingness of some of our opponents to abandon climate commitments means that it is on us to go further and faster and to do all that we can to protect nature and stop the climate crisis. This Bill represents a welcome move in that direction.
Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)
“It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement, the greatest source of visual beauty, the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living”—wise words by David Attenborough. They are words that everyone can relate to, whether that is a university professor in Oxford, a 12-year-old watching “Blue Planet” on the BBC or, indeed, the specialist in ocean conservation I met yesterday as part of my role as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the ocean. Everyone in this room, in this country and on this planet has an interest in ensuring that our oceans are protected.
When we stare down from space at our blue jewel of a world, it is simply unfathomable that 230 million square kilometres of it are at present effectively unmanaged. It is a free-for-all. It has been allowed to become so because of history, but we now have the obligation to create a system of management, both in this room and across multilateral agreements with other countries. It is the wonder of our democracy in this country and other countries around the world that we can finally introduce a piece of legislation where we can manage many of these locations.
I stand as a proud MP for Medway, in particular Chatham, which has an historic dockyard that served much of our maritime trade and provided support to the Royal Navy. Many in my community have a proud history and legacy of serving on the oceans, from working on fleets supplying freight to participating in our royal naval tradition.
Our country has a proud history of conservation through the National Trust and other terrestrial organisations. We also have a number of third-party sector organisations that are committed to delivering on ocean conservation, not just through this treaty but through the many there have been in the past. Such organisations include Oceana and the Marine Conservation Society.
There is also excellent work being done by Plymouth University and Southampton’s National Oceanography Centre, which my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) and I had the pleasure of visiting earlier this year. Our Natural History Museum, with its work in London and across the country, the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace have all advocated for this in many ways and continue to do so. In many cases their work is not high profile; they do their work quietly and behind the scenes, such as by engaging with DEFRA—I am sure the civil servants can attest to this—and ensuring that they are safeguarding our fisheries and world.
This Bill is extremely welcome and timely. The high seas treaty reached its required 60 ratifications on 19 September, and the 60th ratification triggered a 120-day countdown, after which the treaty comes into force. If we want to be at that multilateral table to deliver for our residents in our communities and our country, we need to deliver this legislation. I welcome the Bill being placed before the House, and I welcome the debate with Members across this Chamber—from those who are fascinated by the sperm whale or the right whale to those who have rowed across oceans and seas.
The contents of the Bill are critical. Genetic heritage has not been mentioned much today, but it is a critical element as it can lead to cures for cancer and heart disease. Genetic heritage is a marker for our future on this planet. If there are cures that come as a result of this legislation, it is today that we give security and licence to it. The designation of marine protection areas has been much debated across this Chamber with regard to UK controls, and I agree with many of my colleagues that we need to do more domestically to protect our MPAs, make them fit for purpose and allow them live up to their designation.
This legislation creates the licence for marine protection areas in international waters, which will support our heritage and legacy for future generations. It is a pathway to the goal of protecting 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. The Bill also gives scientific protections around licensing. We know that there are significant challenges for both our biotic and abiotic resources. Much time has been spent this afternoon discussing the damage caused by international industrial fisheries, with new technologies and industrial-sized trawlers coming from many nations of the world. The damage caused by these monsters, as I refer to them, is decimating not only our biological resources directly in that location but sea birds, species and any food chains associated with it.
There is also a debate about mining and drilling to be had in the next 10 to 20 years as we begin to get access to our deep-sea resources. Whether it is hydrates or base metals that we need, we need to have that conversation, so I implore the Government to look very closely at any moratorium. Then there is climate change, which is not to be denied by many across the world. It is happening. Species are under threat, and the destruction of habitats as a result of the warming and acidification of the ocean is impacting both coral reefs and seaweed beds.
To conclude, I still have a number of questions around the use of the Marine Management Organisation in this country and regional fisheries management organisations. How much extra resource will they need, because I certainly have questions at present around the MMO and its oversight? How do we know that this is going to be enforced? The UN has calculated that to make this effective we might need to look at figures of around $170 billion annually. Where is that money going to come from?
There are serious questions about who will enforce overfishing protection and marine protection areas when we have fishing piracy going on around the world. What are the measures for dispute resolution? We know that there are United Nations convention on the law of the sea disputes around the South China sea with China, and disputes are also ongoing over the Arctic, so what measures and mediation will this treaty introduce? This treaty tells everyone watching about our values, whether they be a 12-year-old “Blue Planet” watcher or a professor in a submersible in the Arctic. It sets the tone for the next hundred years. It is necessary that we do this and I implore colleagues to support it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
That brings us to the Front-Bench contributions. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Pippa Heylings
With the leave of the House, it only remains to say that we have heard, across the Chamber, impassioned and professional expertise. We have also heard about the importance of working together, not only in terms of multilateralism—[Interruption.] I hope that Members on the Conservative Front Bench are listening. We have also heard about the importance of working across the Chamber, on something that is so vital to all our constituents, our allies across the world and those in our overseas territories to finally fill the gap of the lawless part of the oceans through a global ocean governance that we can all agree on collectively.
That will be hard. As hon. Members have heard, I have worked with artisanal and industrial fishermen and with researchers, scientists and conservationists. It is not, and it will not be, easy to come to an agreement about area-based management plans and the ocean sanctuaries and MPAs that we are looking to create, but we can do it if we all work together. I implore hon. Members, across all parties and Benches, that we get to ratification in a timely fashion so that we can be part of the new global ocean movement, sit at the table at the first global ocean COP and take a leading position going forward. We owe it to ourselves, to the children of everyone we know and to the future of the planet.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)
This has been a wide-ranging and important debate on a vital Bill. There have been many valuable and informed contributions, not least from the hon. Members for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes), for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff), for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby) and for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne). The hon. Member for Exeter (Steve Race) is rightly proud of the great academic institutions in his constituency, highlighting the important role that UK research plays in the world.
It was a pleasure to see the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) making one of the first Back-Bench contributions. She reinforced the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) made about the destruction of the marine environment. I know that she speaks from a position not just of expertise but of passion, and she has shown that over so many years, with a commitment to our oceans and with the work that she has led on.
May I say to the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings), that she shows why it is so important that we have people in this House with such wide-ranging experience, who have had lives outside this place? She has brought expertise to the debate and I am sure that many of us envy her in what she has been able to do, the intellect that she has applied to the argument and the fact that we can all listen carefully to what she has said.
The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said something important when she talked about marine deforestation and some of the mainstream media shows that had footage that she had heard had been too shocking to show. That represents a real problem in this debate. Are we wrapping this up in cotton wool for some people, to not show exactly what we are trying to deal with? She made the important point that we should not hide from what is going on in the world.
Kerry McCarthy
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman to an extent. It was reported in The Guardian that some of the footage was deemed too shocking to be shown. I do not know whether he has seen it, but what remains in the film is incredibly powerful. I have read about bottom trawling in the newspapers for a long time, so I knew about it from a factual perspective, but it was only when I saw those images that it was brought home to me how terrible it is.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that important intervention.
The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) raised the importance of mainstream media. We are grateful for her apology to my hon. Friend the Member for Romford for misinterpreting his drive about the importance of the Chagos islands.
It is disappointing that the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), who is no longer in his place, felt that not enough of my colleagues were in attendance, but those of us who were here have stayed here—Mr Speaker has commented on many an occasion that I can often be more than enough. The hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) pointed out how little we know about the oceans. That is an important point. It has often been said that space exploration gets lots of coverage and we talk about it very much—indeed, we are talking about manning the moon again, and maybe using it as a launch pad to go to Mars—yet so much of our own planet is completely unknown and unexplored.
That brings me to the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner), who has a genuine interest and expertise. He gave a wide ranging and important speech and made an important point about the ocean being one of the biggest solutions to climate change. He is indeed right that the European economic zones are a legacy from the days when we owned half the world. One of the great achievements of the last Conservative Government is the work we did on the blue belt and on ensuring that we protected important marine environments. I do not know whether he will expand on this in later debates, but I noticed that he did not appear to be fully supportive of giving up on the fisheries from the EU with the EU reset. I wonder whether he may have things to add to that debate at another time, but perhaps now is not the time and place. However, he does make an important point that we can only do what we have to do as a country if we have the ability to do it in those waters.
The way that the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) approached the subject of the Conservative party’s record in this area was a real pity. I am proud of some of the work we did on the blue belt, including working on this Bill, and as we have seen during the debate, there is wide support for it across the House.
The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) pointed out her genuine delight in the fact that this House has so many experts to speak on such an important issue. She echoed the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Romford on what will happen with the Chagos Bill. I do not want to go into great detail on that, because we are going to be here a long time on Monday evening debating that Bill, but I think she was driving at the fact that the assurances in the Chagos Bill do not go far enough in protecting the blue belt. I welcome her clarification that my party has raised the issue of the blue belt. She comes with expertise and deserves to be listened to when she is raising these important points.
The Minister opened the debate by talking about the urgency and importance of this moment. That is true. When my hon. Friend the Member for Romford spoke, he made some very serious points, not least about how we can ensure that the responsibilities that the United Kingdom has always taken towards marine fisheries do not get overridden if we cannot control our work entirely. He made the point that, in the scheme of things, we must ensure that we do not hand over the ability to other countries to stop us doing that work.
The reality is that—again, I will touch briefly on this because it is not part of the debate—the UN Security Council, set up for a reason, finds it hard to react to what is happening in Ukraine because Russia can override anything with its veto. We must ensure that we have the ability, as a Government and a country, to employ the laws and protections that we need to put in place. We will raise these areas in Committee, even if that is through probing amendments, because we want to ensure that the Bill can do exactly what it intends to do.
The reality of the Bill also comes into some of these situations that we see on the horizon. We know about the opening up of the Arctic, the melting of the sea ice and the opening of the north-east passage, which for many months—certainly weeks—of the year is fully navigable; the ice has gone away by that much. At the same time, we know that President Putin and the Russians have said that there are hydrocarbon resources in that ocean that they want to mine. That would be devastating for the fragile ecosystems that exist in that unique area of the world, which is almost completely untouched.
I had the pleasure back in May of being part of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly visit to Svalbard. The University Centre in Svalbard has dozens of countries, universities, academic institutions and hundreds of nationalities studying that region, climate change and the effect it has on the Arctic, and the effects on ecosystems. It is absolutely vital, as we see the geopolitical tensions forming in areas where they have not been before, that we have those strong protections in place.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
I was about to finish, but I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Barry Gardiner
The right hon. Member is absolutely right to talk about the opening up of the Arctic and the geo-strategic threats that we face there. In that respect, would he support my earlier call that the Government should release the Joint Intelligence Committee’s report on the link between biodiversity, sustainability and national security?
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
I will not be drawn quite into that trap about releasing Joint Intelligence reports. However, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point, because there is no doubt that we are talking about sovereign security if we do not get this right, and that applies to all countries around the world. If we allow climate change and not the protection of valuable ecosystems, as has been described by many hon. and right hon. Members across the House, it is all of us who will suffer.
We have our concerns about some areas of the Bill. We will be tabling some amendments in Committee and probing those areas, but on the whole we hope that we can support the Bill, and it is important to carry on the work that our Government started.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Seema Malhotra)
I thank the shadow Ministers and hon. and right hon. Members across the House for their thoughtful and constructive contributions to the debate. It has been encouraging to hear the broad support for this important piece of legislation, and to hear the expertise, both from Members’ life experience prior to coming to this House and from the extensive work of our Committees over a long period of time.
I want to recognise the work of a number of the key stakeholders involved in informing the debate, some of whom I was able to speak to in the course of preparing for today, including the Marine Conservation Society, Greenpeace, Oceana, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Blue Marine Foundation. I want to make a cheeky remark towards the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke), for whom I have a lot of respect, in that he suggested he could make up for the fact that there were no Conservative Back Benchers here during the debate, but indeed he made a useful contribution. That is important, because this should be a whole-of-House debate. It is important to recognise that we are continuing work that was started under the previous Government and that we supported all the way through. It is important that Members from all parties are present as the Bill starts its passage through the House, because as I will set out, it is important to inform the implementation and the ongoing debate.
I will draw on and respond to the contributions that have been made during my remarks. In particular, I know that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings)—whose comments, based on her extensive experience, were very much respected by the House—will make a great contribution during the passage of the legislation. She also talked about the importance of multilateralism and how we play our part with others around the world. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) has experience of chairing a number of APPGs and has made a long-standing contribution. I will come back to some of the points she raised, but it was helpful to hear from her early in the debate.
We also heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry)— I will come back to some of the points she raised—my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), who chairs the Environmental Audit Committee, for Brent West (Barry Gardiner), for Exeter (Steve Race), for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes), for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby) and for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne), and the hon. Members for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage), for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) and for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff). That goes to show that we have had a whole-of-nation debate.
Before I turn to my more detailed remarks, I want to make a point about young people and the next generation. The important point was made that the oceans do not have voters, but when I think about the issues that are most important to young people, including in primary schools in my constituency, the health of our oceans and how we protect our environment are very high on the agenda. The oceans have their supporters across all generations, and that is important.
Let me start by reminding the House why this Bill and the BBNJ agreement matter. The BBNJ agreement is a huge step towards protecting our shared ocean. It will enable greater conservation of the two-thirds of the ocean that lies beyond national jurisdictions and will support the delivery of the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework, which includes the target to effectively conserve and manage at least 30% of the ocean by 2030. Environmental degradation could lead to huge economic costs globally, making ocean conservation a long-term economic imperative, too. The agreement supports the UK’s wider climate and nature agenda, ensuring that we remain at the forefront of global efforts to tackle biodiversity loss and climate change through multilateral co-operation. It also strengthens the role of international law and multilateral institutions, and reinforces the UN convention on the law of the sea as the foundation for global governance.
There are also clear opportunities for the UK, which has one of the world’s leading marine scientific research communities. World-renowned institutions in the UK, such as the National Oceanography Centre, the Marine Biological Association and our leading university marine science departments, are at the forefront of ocean research and will greatly benefit from provisions in the agreement that promote transparency and data sharing around marine genetic resources. The Bill, along with the secondary legislation that will follow, will deliver on our commitment to ratify this historic agreement.
Let me turn to some of the points raised in the debate, and I will aim to answer as many questions as possible. In relation to the Chagos islands, this deal will help to protect the unique environment of the Chagos archipelago. Both the UK and Mauritius have committed to protect what is one of the world’s most important marine environments, and that commitment will be supported by an enhanced partnership between both countries, under which the UK will support Mauritius’s ambitions to establish a marine protected area that protects the globally significant ecosystems in the Chagos archipelago. The UK’s support for this will be agreed in a separate written instrument as part of the implementation of the agreement, and Government officials have already begun discussing with their Mauritian counterparts what it will involve. This has been welcomed by leading conservation NGOs, including the Zoological Society of London, and both the UK and Mauritius attach great importance to the need to protect marine biodiversity, including the fight against illegal fishing.
It is worth mentioning that under the treaty, the UK will continue to manage environmental protection on Diego Garcia and the surrounding 12 nautical miles. That shall be undertaken in accordance with applicable international law and with due regard to applicable Mauritian environmental laws. The Minister for Europe, North America and the overseas territories, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), is at the heart of these discussions and has been leading on maritime protection in the overseas territories through expansion and confirmation of funding for the blue belt programme and our work in the polar regions. He has met scientists in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda last month and on board the royal research ship Sir David Attenborough to discuss their crucial work in the Antarctic and Arctic. We are doing crucial work on the convention for the conservation of Antarctic marine living resources, which I am sure will be the subject of further debate in the House.
Andrew Rosindell
I thank the Minister for speaking about the points made about the British Indian Ocean Territory by myself and others, including the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). The marine protected area was established by the Government of Gordon Brown at the tail end of the last Labour Government. It is a vital area that we need to protect. What guarantees can she honestly say we are getting that, if we are to hand over the sovereignty of the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius, Mauritius will protect it in the same way we have done under both Labour and Conservative Governments?
Seema Malhotra
I reiterate what I said: both the UK and Mauritius attach great importance to the need to protect marine biodiversity. Indeed, the UK will still have responsibility for managing environmental protection on Diego Garcia and the surrounding 12 nautical miles, and discussions are ongoing in relation to the establishment of the marine protected area, which will be the subject of a separate written agreement. I cannot speak further on that, because I want to go through other points, but I am sure the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth will be happy to discuss this matter further in the House.
The hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) raised the issue of protecting intellectual property rights. The Secretary of State will not transmit information to the clearing-house mechanism that would be protected under intellectual property or trade secrets law. I am sure the hon. Member will be aware of that from his reading of the Bill.
A number of Members spoke about the process and implementation. This is a very significant step, as we move to ratify the agreement at the United Nations, which will happen following the passage of the Bill and associated secondary legislation. Indeed, it is a huge step towards protecting our shared ocean. It will provide the legal framework necessary to implement the BBNJ agreement domestically, ensuring the UK is able to comply fully with its international obligations under the agreement. The Bill and subsequent statutory instruments will ensure that we can implement and enforce future decisions of the conference of the parties.
At international level, a preparatory commission has been established to prepare for the convening of the first conference of the parties. The UK has been fully engaged in the work of the preparatory commission, including co-chairing a working group on the design of the clearing-house mechanism with Barbados. That will lay the groundwork for a successful first conference of the parties, which will enable parties and stakeholders to progress work on the ambitious implementation of the agreement.
In her opening remarks, my the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), referred to the consultation that we have had on bottom trawling, as well as to the work we are doing on proposals to restrict bottom trawling in more vulnerable marine habitats. The Government have outlined plans to restrict damaging fishing activity in marine protected areas, where that is needed to protect designated species and habitats. A number of Members mentioned plastic pollution, and the Government participated in the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution to develop an international legally binding instrument. It is disappointing that an agreement was not reached at the resumed fifth session in Geneva in August, but we continue to work on it. Indeed, we are a founding member of the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution.
The hon. Member for South Cotswolds raised the matter of institutional co-ordination, and I confirm that the FCDO ocean policy unit will be the national focal point, working closely with DEFRA and the Department for Transport.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East asked about deep-sea mining. The UK supports a moratorium on the granting of exploration contracts for deep-sea mining projects by the International Seabed Authority. That means that we will not sponsor or support the issuing of such contracts until sufficient scientific guidance is available.
On the polluter pays and the precautionary principles, parties to the BBNJ agreement are guided by such principles and approaches. It is therefore our view that there is no specific need to include those principles in the Bill.
Seema Malhotra
I am running out of time, but I will be happy to pick this up with the hon. Member afterwards. Ministers will have to abide by the principles that I mentioned, and the Environment Act 2021 places a duty on Ministers to have due regard to the environmental principles policy statement when making policy; we need always to abide by those principles.
I thank Members from across the House for their thoughtful and constructive contributions. I have sought to address as many of the points raised as possible, but I am happy to speak to colleagues about those that I did not reach. I am encouraged by the strong cross-party support for this important Bill. This landmark piece of legislation ensures that the UK can play its full part in the international movement to ratify the treaty. The measures it contains will not only strengthen and safe- guard our marine ecosystems, but will strengthen our environmental security and deliver real benefits for the UK’s research and innovation community. The Bill represents the UK taking decisive action, protecting the ocean that sustains us all, while empowering scientists, innovators and institutions in shaping its future. I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A (7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Committee of the whole House.
Proceedings in Committee, on Consideration and on Third Reading
(2) Proceedings in Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement.
(3) Any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion four hours after the commencement of proceedings in Committee of the whole House.
(4) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings in Committee of the whole House, to any proceedings on Consideration or to proceedings on Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(5) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Stephen Morgan.)
Question agreed to.
Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill (Ways and Means)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill, it is expedient to authorise the imposition of charges or fees under or by virtue of the Act.—(Stephen Morgan.)
Question agreed to.