Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

Lord Callanan Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, to his place on the Government Front Bench. When I was a Minister in DESNZ and he was shadow Energy Minister in the other place, we often appeared on panels and at seminars together and very rarely disagreed on most of the issues. He understands the energy brief extremely well and I am sure he will be a great success in his ministerial position. I look forward to seeing how he progresses.

I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, but we support this important Bill implementing a landmark agreement that we signed when we were in government, as my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lord Courtown reminded us. Biodiversity is important both here and abroad, and the Government are right to continue our work to protect marine diversity both at home and on the high seas.

As my noble friend Lord Courtown said, in government we had a strong record on biodiversity. Beyond signing the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction—quite a mouthful —we implemented our world-leading Blue Belt programmes supporting our overseas territories in delivering protection for endemic marine biodiversity. Meanwhile, we ensured that around 40% of the UK’s domestic waters are protected by appropriate marine protected areas. These efforts, which are a continuation of the policy started by the previous Government, put the UK at the forefront of the global effort to protect 30% of global seas by 2030.

Ministers will have our support as they work to protect the world’s oceans from the harms of overfishing, pollution and climate change, but we need to get the details right, and we will be monitoring the Government’s approach to ensure that they really are doing the best that they can to protect marine biodiversity in our home waters as well as playing a full role in our worldwide effort to protect our oceans.

As we have already heard from a number of speakers, the UK is doing a great deal already to protect marine biodiversity, but protecting our oceans, as a number of noble Lords have reminded us, cannot be achieved unilaterally. When she replies, will the Minister provide the House with an update on the work that her department and others in government are doing to ensure that our partners across the world are doing their part in also protecting our oceans? What processes, for example, exist under this treaty to ensure that signatories fulfil their obligations and what consequences would there be for a nation that is a signatory to the treaty which fails to fulfil those obligations? Without firm commitment from all signatories, we will struggle to achieve the benefits for marine biodiversity, so it is essential that the UK continues to play a full role in encouraging other global partners to step up to the demands of this treaty. Can the Minister also confirm whether the UK will support other signatories where they lack the necessary administrative or scientific expertise, for example, to fulfil their obligations under the treaty? If so, what form would that support take and how would it be funded?

The location of the new marine protected areas, as my noble friend said, is important. Any clarity that Ministers can provide on that would be helpful to the House as we consider this treaty. It has also been noted that it will come into effect in early 2026. I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that. Any other timelines which go along with the secondary legislation would also be helpful to the House.

How many of those MPAs will include prohibitions on fishing when they are introduced? We on these Benches are proud to back the UK fishing industry, so of course we need to get the balance right between MPAs that rightly prohibit overfishing and continuing to protect the sustainability of our fishing industry. I will not repeat the point on EU fishing rights in UK waters, but we are disappointed with the Government’s approach on this. We will continue to hold the Government to account. It is essential to get the balance right for our fishing communities, which have been, in our view, badly treated by the agreements that this Government have made.

My noble friend Lord Courtown summed up our approach to this Bill very well at the beginning of this debate. We will not seek to delay or undermine this important piece of legislation, and we want to support the Government in getting the Bill, which is necessary for ratification, on to the statute books in good time, not least to allow ratification to happen before the treaty comes into effect early next year.

That said, we will of course look at the Bill in detail as it progresses through its stages. In the other place, we sought to amend the regulation-making powers to improve parliamentary accountability, and a number of Members have referred to that. We sought to require Ministers to report to Parliament on the use of those powers under this Bill and the enforcement of the treaty. We will return to the issues of accountability and reporting in Committee, as well as looking at the impact of the treaty on UK-based businesses, particularly, as I mentioned, the sustainability of our fishing fleet.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and my noble friend Lady Redfern, mentioned the important issue of the UK’s approach to the Chagos Archipelago. We debated this extensively during the recent treaty legislation and the Minister knows well that we are extremely concerned about the Government’s political decision to hand over the islands to Mauritius. This means that the UK will no longer be able to play a full role, as we would have played previously, in protecting the rich marine biodiversity around those islands.

Mauritius is also a signatory to the UN agreement on marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, and the UK’s treaty with Mauritius establishes a marine protected area around the islands—although we are extremely concerned with its ability to enforce it. Will the Minister please take the opportunity to set out what levers and mechanisms the UK will retain and be able to use under the UN agreement to ensure that Mauritius fulfils its obligations on marine biodiversity?

We will not waver in our support for global collaboration on marine biodiversity. Healthy oceans are essential, and this treaty is, in our view, a real step forward in the fight against the harms of overfishing, pollution and climate change. Ministers are right to continue the excellent work that we started in this area, but we reserve the right to scrutinise the Bill in detail—and perhaps disagree with some of the details—when it progresses to its next legislative stage.