Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

Lord Grantchester Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

My Lords, as the first to speak after the Minister from the Government Benches, it is my honour to welcome my noble friend Lord Whitehead, of Saint Mary’s, to the Dispatch Box and to congratulate him on his brilliant maiden speech. I pay tribute to his joining the esteemed ranks of those who have made their maiden speech from the Dispatch Box.

My noble friend has had a distinguished career. As leader of Southampton City Council, he championed innovative energy projects and was the first MP to have solar panels and even, I believe, a wind turbine installed on his constituency home roof. His Private Member’s Bill on climate change may have been talked out in his early days, but much of it was incorporated into Labour’s world-leading Climate Change Act 2008. Climate change affects so much of the planet’s precious biodiversity, especially in the marine environment, which is the subject of today’s Bill.

My noble friend’s former constituency has within it St Mary’s Stadium, home of Southampton FC, and he is a prominent member of the Saints Foundation. Southampton’s is one of the three furthest stadiums to visit from Everton FC, but I well remember happy visits —especially when Dave Jones, a dependable right-back who used to play for us, was Southampton’s manager. Southampton was the last team to visit Goodison Park last season. I look forward to welcoming that team and his support at Everton’s new stadium, as soon as they resume their rightful place in the Premier League.

While in the Commons, my noble friend was No. 1 in the parliamentary football team—the position of goalkeeper—and was part of the famous team to play in the Portuguese Parliament in 2006 as part of the 2006 FIFA World Cup curtain-raiser. I met my noble friend not on the football pitch but on the Front Bench in statutory instrument committees, he from the Commons and me from the Lords, on many energy orders. To change sporting analogies, I like to call us the tag team partners on energy matters.

I am very glad to welcome my noble friend to your Lordships’ House and look forward to his many innovative approaches on energy, not least on fuel poverty matters, where there is now an opportunity to utilise DCC’s smart meter network to improve identification and tailor timely, accurate and cost-effective interventions for fuel-poor households, such as direct to the meter credit and the development of a social tariff. I look forward to his many further contributions to our debates and his leadership on energy policy developments.

There could be no better debate for my noble friend to make his maiden speech in than today’s Second Reading of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdictions Bill—a Bill that, like the Climate Change Act, will be universally acclaimed and world-leading in supporting one of the greatest challenges in protecting the high seas outside national jurisdictions. These areas of no recognised national authority cover half the surface of the planet and are already threatened, not least from claims in the Arctic for valuable minerals and in other areas from overfishing, pollution from abandoned fishing nets, plastics and the impacts of warming sea temperatures. Some 90% of the heat from greenhouse gas emissions is absorbed by the oceans, 30% of CO₂ emissions are absorbed by them and 90% of global trade is transported through them, yet only 1.2% of the oceans are currently protected. Species such as whales have constantly been under attack, and the threat of ever-deeper sea mining and excavations only increases.

It is imperative that the UN, through its Convention on the Law of the Sea, has provided this framework for international maritime law, and defines the high seas as international waters where all nations may fish, navigate and conduct research under shared principles. Since the UK’s accession to the convention in 1997, the UN General Assembly has focused on the sustainable use of marine biodiversity in those areas, including the oceans and the seabed. The COP 15 Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework of 2022 established targets and culminated, in 2023, in the formal adoption of binding agreements established and developed by consensus. This framework established the 30 by 30 biodiversity target—conservation and protection of 30% of sites by 2030—to which the UK is committed. The BBNJ Bill is drawn up to align UK law with this international agreement and consensus on biodiversity.

I welcome the Bill. It sets out the requirements for UK-based activity and affiliated projects, vessels and equipment processes, and collecting and researching marine resources, in international waters. It includes advanced notification, post-activity reporting and public access to reports and information. Aside from two clauses relating specifically to Scottish law and Ministers, the Bill will apply to the whole of the UK and can be extended to British Overseas Territories by Orders in Council. This is very promising.

The Bill establishes a system of support to undertake co-operative arrangements among projects, teams, countries and alliances through capacity building and technology sharing. It also establishes an ability to create emergency protected areas in any disaster scenario. It has as an example the workings of the Antarctic Treaty system, which already operates as a framework for international management of the Antarctic for conservation.

The other place has welcomed the Bill. The Government have already adopted a 30 by 30 approach as it refers to domestic national jurisdictions on land and sea up to 200 nautical miles offshore, and established a network of 297 marine protected areas covering some 210,000 square kilometres, representing 23% of the UK’s domestic waters.

Here I declare my interest as serving on your Lordships’ Environment and Climate Change Committee, which reported on 30 by 30 in July 2023. This report found that, even on the domestic front, there is a long way to go beyond declarations and drawing areas on a map. On land, what sites will count towards 30 by 30 when perhaps less than 10% of England is covered by designations such as SSSIs, special areas of conservation, special protected areas and Ramsar sites?

The report found a widespread lack of clarity about the level of nature conservation and protection. There is a poor level of monitoring data, which limits understanding of current conditions. On land, only 22% of SSSIs have been monitored in the last six years. In UK waters, the position is even more precarious and unknown; MPAs are still at the rudimentary stage.

From this domestic background, the challenge of the high seas seems daunting. Will my noble friend the Minister confirm in her reply that at least the signatories to the BBNJ agreement are approaching the situation with the precautionary principle in mind? Can she give any indication of how conversations about the treaty and how it will work in practice are developing?

The practicalities of taking forward the work from this Bill seem extremely daunting given the approaches towards the latest COP in Brazil and from the Trump Administration and others towards climate change in general and deep-sea mining in particular. Will the Government develop a strategy behind the Bill regarding how they will undertake their approach, how they will develop a baseline of data from the UK’s MPAs into consistency with data on international waters, how they will develop monitoring plans around the world, and how they will encourage co-operation and support from the overseas territories? All this presents a costly challenge when budgets may find it difficult to maintain the required level of expenditure.

While welcoming the aspirations and imperatives of the Bill, I encourage my noble friend to define the practicalities of how the UK can set priorities and develop expertise of approach to achieve best outcomes. In this, I would welcome confirmation of extensive public engagement, which could be undertaken to encourage the proper accountabilities, and reports that the Bill is being taken seriously alongside climate change. The UK Government can be encouraged to take up the challenge from this endorsement of the shared stewardship of the planet into the future with the world-leading oceanography site in Southampton.