Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my environmental interests in the register and join other noble Lords in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, to our House—an environmentalist to the FCDO, which is wonderful. I also welcome this Bill which, as many noble Lords have said, will help to protect two-thirds of the world’s oceans, but will also be a big UK contribution to supporting the 30 by 30 commitment made as part of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. I hope it will also be a positive statement about the UK’s leadership contribution on climate and biodiversity, although it would have been more convincing, perhaps, if we had shown similar leadership on future forests at the recent climate COP at Belém. But, while thanking the Government—I think I have just thanked the Government—can I do an Oliver Twist act and ask for more? I have got five minutes and I have got five asks.

As the Minister and other noble Lords have already stressed, can we keep the pressure up to get this Bill and the secondary legislation through, so that we can ensure a place at the first conference of the parties next year?

Secondly, can my noble friend the Minister ensure that UK actions at home and abroad reflect the values of the treaty? I will give two examples of where we should be demonstrating our commitment to these values. One has already been mentioned: progress so far in ending bottom trawling in all our marine protected areas here in the UK. What has been proposed at the moment is inadequate, and we need to do better than that. Under the Chagos deal, which is a cause close to my heart, because it involves one of the largest, most wonderful and most important marine protected areas, can the Minister tell the House what further progress has been made to make sure that the MPA around the Chagos Archipelago is properly safeguarded with the transfer to Mauritius?

My third ask is for the Minister to reaffirm the UK’s position on the moratorium on deep-sea mining and licensing that has already been referenced now that President Trump is going ahead and ignoring the International Seabed Authority. My fourth is for the Minister to urge her Defra colleagues to produce a strategy for overfishing beyond 2026, at the end of the current commitments for the UK.

The Fisheries Act simply is not working. Quotas are not based on evidence. I was convinced that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who is not in his place, was going to make a sturdy, evidence-based statement about that, but he did not, damn him, and I had not done the research in order to back that up—but he would have if he had thought about it. Some 27% of commercial fish stocks are critically low and a further 25% are suffering from overexploitation. More than half of UK fishing opportunities are being allocated in excess of scientific advice, which the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, would have spoken about, and that is not only leading to heavy declines in key stocks but undermining the sustainability of fishing livelihoods. It is impossible to deliver economic growth within fishing if we continue to deplete the asset on which the sector depends.

The combination of declining stocks and increasing concentration of quota in the hands of a very few, mostly foreign-owned vessels means that the inshore fleet is now on its knees. This is causing job losses and hardship in coastal towns that are very important electorally, I say to my party. So will the Government commit to a full review of the Fisheries Act? My last call is, of course, one that has already been referred to. Last but not least, 145 countries have signed the Global Ocean Treaty, of which 73 have now formally ratified. Will my noble friend the Minister update the House on what steps the Government are taking to persuade those nations that have not yet formally ratified to do so?

Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Blackstone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to support what the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has just said. As the Minister knows, I very strongly support the Bill and welcome it, but it seems that there is a gap here.

I do not want to repeat what the noble Baroness said, but I strongly identify with her views. I very much hope that, when the Minister replies, she will be able either to accept the amendment or tell us why it is not needed and give us the assurance that the noble Baroness asked for. I asked about this at Second Reading, but I did not receive a reply when the Minister was winding up—perhaps she did not have enough time to do so—so it would be nice if we could hear from her on that today.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 7 and 7A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, even though he has not yet introduced them.

The Chagos Islands are a globally important area. This is the first time in the documented history of the human race that a marine protected area of this importance and scale has changed hands, so we have to get this right. The treaty on the Chagos Islands makes remarkably little reference to the fact that this major marine protected area exists and is hugely environmentally important. Mauritius does not recognise the marine protected area in its current format and has drafted its own. It accords with the IUCN principles, which is a step in the right direction, but there is a long way to go before we have a final version of it.

The biggest problem is that Mauritius has no means of monitoring or enforcing this marine protected area. It has two ocean-going vessels and two small aircraft. Neither of the aircraft is large enough to reach the Chagos Islands and, even if they could reach the islands, they would not be allowed to refuel, and therefore they could not come back. That is a flaw in the monitoring arrangements.

I declare an interest as vice-president of BirdLife International. We have had considerably good relationships with the Mauritian Government about some recovery important endangered species. The first was the Mauritius kestrel, which was virtually down to single figures but is now thriving to the point where it is predating the second species that we worked with them on, the Mauritius pink pigeon. I always think that when two endangered species start living on each other, that probably means that they are out of the danger zone.

However, the record of the Mauritian Government on marine issues is incredibly poor. We know how difficult monitoring and enforcement is in that part of the world. If you have boats and planes, they run up against Chinese influence. In the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea and the wider Pacific, fisheries enforcement is already extremely difficult, so I very much support what I think the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, will say on his Amendments 7 and 7A.

However, will the Minister tell us what proportion of the UK funding to Mauritius under the treaty has been earmarked for environmental protection? What do we, as a Government, intend to do about knowledge transfer where we have traditional links to build up biodiversity science and expertise in Mauritius? We will need to do that in bucketloads in order to look after the Chagos Islands properly. Will the Government communicate with and exercise influence over Mauritius to ensure that legislation is passed to prevent the commercial exploitation—whether through fishing or mining or for other reasons—of these incredibly important waters and the archipelago that exists within them?