Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, as the new Minister. I particularly agree with his comment on the excellence of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. There is another important maritime organisation based in Southampton, namely the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the regulator of the maritime sector and shipping. I declare my interest as its chair, and also as an honorary officer in the Royal Navy.

I am therefore prompted immediately to respond to some of the important points just made by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. I totally agree with his paean of praise for the importance of the maritime sector in the UK, although, in fairness, we have to accept that the scope of the Bill is restricted specifically to the implementation of the BBNJ treaty. I therefore interpret his speech as a call for a broader piece of maritime legislation in a future King’s Speech, which would enable us to tackle many of the vital points he has just raised.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. It is important, because I have read the treaty, which says:

“Nothing in this Agreement shall prevent a Party”—


us—

“from adopting more stringent measures with respect to its nationals and vessels … with regard to activities under its jurisdiction or control in addition to those adopted under this Part, in accordance with international law and in support of the objectives of the Agreement”.

I therefore hear what the noble Lord says about scope, but we have the power in front of us to extend that scope—and I think we should, because London is the heart of global shipping. People look to London to set the lead, and we have an opportunity to do so, but the Bill does not.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

I will come on to discuss that very point. I think the noble Lord is referring to Article 25 of the treaty, on which it would be worth testing the Government more.

Before getting to that, I start by saying, like other noble Lords, that we must recognise that the BBNJ treaty is an important evolutionary moment in international maritime law, going back to the debate that kicked off in the early 1600s between Grotius and Selden about open seas and closed seas. Here we have the common heritage of the oceans and a practical mechanism for making at least incremental progress. However, we should not get too carried away with optimism because, frankly, the scale and urgency of the challenge around what is happening in our oceans—our life-support system—demands, at the very least, the measures set out in this Bill, and probably more.

Therefore, the question that we will want to test is: as the Bill, and the treaty more generally, are implemented, what will be the practical impact? There are several areas that I will raise with the Minister. First, there is the question of the exemptions for intellectual property around marine genetic resources. There is a reasonable balance to be struck here. I believe that the Minister in the Commons, Seema Malhotra, has said that the Government will not notify for data that is protectable under IP provisions, but it would be useful to hear more from Ministers on how they think the IP regime will work in juxtaposition to the broader public goals of the treaty itself.

Secondly, a number of noble Lords have cited the links between the Bill and other maritime legal regimes, in particular the International Seabed Authority. The area does not correspond to the high seas, as we know. I totally endorse the point from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that mining, even if it is under the ISA’s exploratory category, will clearly have consequences for marine biology and diversity. Therefore, it would be of great importance to understand from the Government what influence and forcefield can continue to be placed around the ISA to ensure that, for example, it adopts the more rigorous environmental assessment standards implied by the BBNJ agreement, and to hear more about how that will work in practice.

Finally, on enforcement, the reality is that, under UNCLOS, as we have heard from other noble Lords, IUU fishing and overexploitation in coastal MPAs—and certainly in the high seas—are continuing. Flag hopping, flags of convenience and fake flags all stand in the way of the goals set out in the treaty. Coming back to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, my question relates to Article 25.4, which states that parties can adopt measures over and above the flagging measure set out in our domestic Bill,

“to support the implementation of the decisions and recommendations made by the Conference of the Parties”.

Does that mean, for example, an enhanced role for constabulary or fisheries protection-type interventions in the high seas, where they are designated as area-based management zones or MPAs? An early test case for this might be the opportunity to develop an MPA covering the so-called “blue hole” north of the Falklands on the EEZ border with Argentina, where this is precisely the sort of mechanism that could correspond to a long-standing problem. If we saw action there, we would begin to believe that the Bill—the Act—has teeth.