Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Barry Gardiner]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[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.