Draft Marine Licensing (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment etc.) Order 2026
Debate between Mary Creagh and Steve Barclay(1 day, 17 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Marine Licensing (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment etc.) Order 2026.
What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir John. I am very glad that the rain has managed to hold off so far, so let the summer begin.
The draft order, which was laid before the House on 15 April 2026, is one of the legislative measures being taken to implement the UK’s obligations under the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction agreement—that is, 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—the fact that I have had such trouble pronouncing it shows why it is always called “BBNJ”. It helps to implement the UK’s obligations in relation to environmental impact assessments for activities carried on in areas beyond national jurisdiction within the remit of marine licensing. The UK must be able to meet all its obligations under the BBNJ agreement before we can ratify it. The draft order enables this by amending the marine licensing regime.
I will begin by underlining why it is so important that the House supports this legislation. The BBNJ is an implementing agreement under the UN convention on the law of the sea which aims to support the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. It is a landmark international agreement that creates a legal framework to protect the two thirds of the ocean that lies beyond any nation’s jurisdiction. These vast waters contain extraordinary biodiversity and ecosystems vital to the health of our planet; they are home to sharks, whales, sea turtles and countless other species, many of which we have not actually discovered yet.
Primary legislation was needed to implement our BBNJ obligations fully. Accordingly, the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Act 2026 was introduced last year and received Royal Assent on 12 February 2026, marking a significant milestone in our journey towards ratification. We are now taking forward the secondary legislation needed for the UK to implement the agreement. The draft order is part of that work, and it needs to be made before the UK can ratify the agreement and participate fully in the first conference of the parties, which we expect to take place in January 2027.
The draft order implements the UK’s obligations under part IV of the agreement, which requires environmental impact assessments for activities taking place in areas beyond national jurisdiction that could have a significant impact on the marine environment. Under the agreement, the UK is required to ensure that the potential environmental impacts of any planned activity in these areas are suitably assessed before a decision is taken to authorise the activity. The draft order makes provision relating to activities carried out in areas beyond national jurisdiction so that environmental impacts can be suitably considered in line with these obligations.
Currently, a small number of activities involving deposits, scuttling and incineration are already licensable in areas beyond national jurisdiction, but only two marine licences for such activities have been issued since 2011. The draft order extends the marine licensing regime to additional activities carried out in areas beyond national jurisdiction. These new activities correspond to the types of activities that are already licensable when carried out in UK waters, such as construction or removal activities. Licensable activities carried out in areas beyond national jurisdiction will include those carried out or controlled by UK persons, as well as activities undertaken from British vessels, aircraft, marine structures or floating containers.
This instrument also makes a number of amendments to the Marine Licensing (Exempted Activities) Order 2011. An exemption is added so that several of the new activities will not require a marine licence where they do not meet the threshold for needing an environmental impact assessment or a screening for an EIA as set out in the BBNJ agreement. The exemption reduces the burden on regulators and industry, while still ensuring that we can meet our BBNJ obligations by enabling the new activities to be assessed first, to determine whether they are lower impact or need a full EIA.
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
What is the maximum fine for a company that does not comply with this regulation?
Mary Creagh
I do not have that figure to hand, but I am sure that the magic of the officials’ box will enable me to give the right hon. Member the figure by the end of the sitting—or perhaps he knows and can enlighten the Committee.
Steve Barclay
My reading last night suggested that it was just £50,000. It is interesting that the Minister does not know what the fine actually is. What does she think the cost of complying with the EIA requirement would be for a company?
Mary Creagh
That would depend on the activity that it was being asked to do. As I said, only two of these licences have actually been allowed under—
Mary Creagh
I am sure that it is expensive. Does the right hon. Member want to tell the Committee what it is?
Steve Barclay
I fear that I may have read the legislation a little more closely than the Minister. Some media reports suggest what compliance with this regulation would involve for a company. We are talking about conducting an environmental impact assessment beyond national jurisdiction and significant further work. The cost of complying with the EIA requirement could run to a couple of million pounds. For me, the question is not the international ambition—of course everyone in the House wants our marine environment to be protected—but why the Minister is today introducing legislation the cost of compliance with which will be 10 or 20 times the cost of the fine for non-compliance.
Mary Creagh
Having been Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member knows the what is involved in monitoring activity in areas beyond our national jurisdiction. What we know is that this regulation will apply to British vessels, British persons and activities that are licensed and under our control. As I said, only two of these licences have been issued in the last 15 years.
We want the areas beyond national jurisdiction to be protected. Those are often areas of deep ocean, where we do not understand and have not mapped the seabed. During my extended sabbatical I went to see some of the marine science work, including marine mapping, going on at the University of Southampton. We want the high seas to be open and accessible to all. These controls are about making sure that, under this new convention, British vessels are not in breach of international agreements. With the right hon. Gentleman’s permission—
The Chair
Order. The right hon. Gentleman has a perfect entitlement to contribute to this debate, so perhaps he should wait until the Minister has concluded and then choose to make an incisive but pithy contribution.
Steve Barclay
I thank the Minister for giving way. I will take your steer, Sir John, and make this my last intervention. The Minister has tempted me to intervene once more, because the exact justification that she gave for the cost of compliance being 10 or 20 times the cost of the fine relied on enforcement, but the reason why there have been only two licences granted in the period she cited is that there is so little enforcement because this is beyond national jurisdiction. The Marine Management Organisation has no vessels in the Pacific. There is no impact assessment with this regulation. How will it be enforced in areas beyond our jurisdiction if there is no impact assessment and no additional funding for that enforcement?
Mary Creagh
I will correct the record. The magic of the officials’ box has informed me that the maximum penalty is an unlimited fine, not a £50,000 fine, and/or a term of imprisonment of up to two years. That is significant, so it certainly would be worth a company’s while undertaking an assessment, depending on the activity that it is trying to do. If it were deep sea mining and things like that, it might be financially worth it, but it is certainly worth the company thinking about it.
Of course, we do not need physical vessels to do enforcement, because we have eyes in the sky via satellite, and we can map these things. The right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire knows that we have satellites, because he contracted with Earth system satellites, which can map down to 100 or 200 metres. We do not need ships there; we can send ships where they are needed and take enforcement action.
Before the right hon. Gentleman’s question, I was talking about the activities that will not need a marine licence and about reducing the burdens on regulators. An exemption will be introduced for the removal of specified subsea cables carried out in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The removal of these cables has a low environmental impact and is considered to fall consistently below the BBNJ screening threshold.
Alongside today’s statutory instrument, I would like to highlight the Marine Licensing (Miscellaneous Amendment) (Scotland) Order 2026, which makes corresponding provision for activities within Scottish competence—activities regulated by the Scottish Government under devolved powers. The Scottish instrument adds new licensable activities to the licensing regime under the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 and makes other changes to that regime. That will ensure that the Scottish licensing framework aligns with the United Kingdom’s obligations under the BBNJ agreement. The Scottish order was made in March 2026 and will come into force on the same day that the BBNJ agreement enters into force for the United Kingdom.
To avoid dual regulation, so that a marine licence is not required under both our licensing regime and the Scottish Government’s marine licensing regime for the same activity, this statutory instrument provides for an exemption in relation to certain activities that are regulated under part 4 of the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010. It also makes consequential amendments to ensure that existing exemptions and registration provisions can apply appropriately to activities in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
The statutory instrument implements the necessary changes to marine licensing to enable the ratification of the BBNJ agreement. We are confident that its provisions will improve environmental protections in areas beyond national jurisdiction while avoiding unnecessary regulatory burden.
The Marine Management Organisation’s enforcement strategy includes a range of tools, from advisory letters to formal enforcement action, applied proportionately, based on risk and available evidence. Conditions can be placed on licences, requiring licence holders to keep records and make returns or to provide information to the MMO. It will develop intelligence gateways in areas beyond national jurisdiction to assess where there may be non-licensed activity taking place and how to address it. As it is intelligence-based, we would not be expected to say what those methods would be. Having just talked about satellites, I am sure that the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire will know that that may be one of the routes.
Mary Creagh
The difference is that we are actually now saying where the money is coming from, how we are going to meet that target, and how we are going to aggregate the land and seas. An undertaking to do something, without having a plan to deliver it, it is not worth the paper it is written on.
Hon. Members will appreciate that future industry activity is difficult to predict in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Our consultation and previous engagement with stakeholders identified some likely activities in such areas, including telecommunications cable activity, marine scientific research, space flight activity, and deep sea mining, but not all such activities will be in the scope of marine licensing.
The right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire asked about licence applications and the costs. There have been only two licences granted for an activity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. One was for the Virgin Orbit launch in 2022—I am not sure if he was the Secretary of State at the time; there were so many in those two years that I cannot be expected to remember who was where at that time. It was before his time, was it?
Mary Creagh
The other was for a dye tracer study in 2015. I am not sure what that means, but perhaps they were putting in chemicals to trace something—currents, for example. We might think, “Well, that’s a bit weird,” but if it is about finding where the currents and tides go, and where the winds are blowing, it all feeds into the brilliant science and weather forecasting we are able to do here in this country. We do not anticipate many activities being covered—I know the right hon. Gentleman is concerned about the volume of activities—although the lack of past case studies makes it difficult to determine the volume of activities that might take place in the future.
The hon. Member for Epping Forest is right to raise the issue of the incredibly important marine environment around the Chagos Islands. It is home to 220 coral species—corals are on the frontline of the climate crisis and we are doing some great work, particularly in Cayman Islands, around tackling stony coral disease—855 fish species and 355 mollusc species, so it is incredibly important. However, I am sorry to say that decisions on what is or is not going to happen with the Chagos Islands are not a matter for Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs Ministers, and he is tempting me to stray beyond my brief. So with your permission, Sir John, I will leave it there, and agree it is an important protected area.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mary Creagh and Steve Barclay(6 days, 17 hours ago)
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Mary Creagh
We are working on successor schemes to the green gas scheme. It is imperative that that poultry litter is not spread on land and that an alternative is found. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this topic.
Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker, as long ago as September 2024, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was notified of a category 1 incident, the most serious category of pollution incident, which occurred near Whittlesey in my constituency. When no prosecution occurred following the incident, I raised the issue on the Floor of the House in March and the Minister promised to write to me. When no response was received after a number of weeks, I escalated it to you, Mr Speaker, in a letter at the end of April. The Department committed to a reply by 8 May. We are now a further month on from that date and still there has been no reply. If the Government have changed their policy and are no longer prosecuting the most serious category 1 water incidents, should that change of policy not be notified to the House, or is it that Ministers simply, despite repeated requests, have no idea what is happening in their own Department?
Waste Incinerators
Debate between Mary Creagh and Steve Barclay(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Mary Creagh
I have set out the actions that we are taking to drive up recycling rates, one of which is to put paid to the proposal we inherited for up to seven bins through the simpler recycling reforms. We have been really clear that we will have black bin waste and mandatory food collections in every local authority, because that does not happen. It obviously happens in Islington, but it does not happen with uniformity across the country. Mandatory food waste recycling came in for businesses on 1 April this year, and it will come in for local authorities on 1 April 2026. That standardisation of recycling and collections should help us all to do better and play our part.
I take on board the right hon. Gentleman’s point about collecting from flats. There are really serious problems. One issue is that recyclable waste is often put into black bins, so they get full very quickly, when actually a lot of stuff could be taken out. The deposit return scheme, the simpler recycling reforms and the extended producer responsibility scheme are really big changes developed under the previous Government and carried on by us at speed, because we have no time to waste. We have to move away from our linear, unsustainable “take, make, throw” model, where we just extract things, make things and throw them away. We want to end the throwaway society, and for things that are made in Britain to be built to last, as they were in olden times.
Steve Barclay
Just to follow the logic of the Minister’s point, if more recycling is being promoted by the Government, which is what she has set out, self-evidently both the composition of waste and the existing capacity for incineration will be sufficient. In their December paper, the Government said:
“While there are a number of waste incineration facilities that are consented, but not yet under construction, it is highly unlikely that these will be brought forward.”
If that is the Government’s expectation, and if the Minister is increasing recycling and the capacity is sufficient, why not give clarity to the public and her own Back Benchers by saying, “No more incinerators”?
Mary Creagh
The right hon. Gentleman asked about a couple of things in his speech, so I will respond to those first. He asked about composition analysis—we are getting into deep technical detail—and it is about what is actually being incinerated. What is being burned? The right hon. Member for Islington North asked why we do not just put plastic in the ground, as it would just sit there, inert. What is going into incineration?
My understanding is that the emissions trading scheme was consulted on under the previous Government—that bringing local authority energy-from-waste facilities into the ETS from 2028 was consulted on in 2024, so it was an in-flight proposal—but I am very happy to be corrected if I am wrong. The residual municipal waste composition study, covering the period from May 2024 to May 2025, will be published later this year, and I know we cannot wait. It will be interesting, because it is essentially the baseline. It is where we will see if the changes are going to start feeding through.
We said in our manifesto that we would reduce waste by transitioning to a circular economy, which is one of the Secretary of State’s five priorities for DEFRA. I am really proud to be the Minister responsible for that.
The right hon. Member for Islington North asked why we cannot just landfill waste plastics, but there are wider environmental impacts from landfilling plastics than simply carbon emissions, including the issue of microplastics. We do not yet fully understand how plastics degrade in landfill in the long term. Emerging research is exploring the potential of plastic-degrading bacteria in landfills, which could break down plastics and in turn impact greenhouse gas emissions. However, I gently say that we cannot solve today’s problems by storing them up for future generations.
The UK emissions trading scheme is minded to expand the scope of the emissions trading scheme to include energy-from-waste facilities. A consultation on this was published in 2024, which included a call for evidence on incentivising heat networks. With the energy-from-waste plants, there is electricity generation, but there is also a massive excess of heat. Most of that heat just dissipates, but it would be much more efficient to use it, as Coventry city council has with its mile-long pipe under London Road, which heats the local swimming pool or Coventry University’s buildings. I understand that the authority will respond in due course.
At the end of last year, we set out that we will require proposals for new facilities to demonstrate that they will facilitate the diversion of residual waste away from landfill or enable the replacement of older and less efficient facilities. This position reflects the evidence and analysis we have published. It also reflects the waste hierarchy and is congruent with the transition to a circular economy.
Even after the successful delivery of our recycling reforms, there will be sufficient residual waste capacity to treat forecast municipal residual waste arising at national level. On that point, my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South is correct. However, there are five areas in England where more than half the residual waste collected by local authorities was sent to landfill in 2023-24. Landfill was also still relied on for an estimated 5.4 million tonnes of non-municipal, non-major mineral waste in 2022, which is the most recent year for which data is available.
We know about the waste that goes into our bins, but there is a lot of other stuff coming out of construction sites, and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) and I had a chat about this issue in the Lobby, but the analysis the Government published at the end of last year sets out the regional disparities and the regional capacities. It is a good read.
Waste and Recycling
Debate between Mary Creagh and Steve Barclay(1 year, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship this evening, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) for raising this issue—he has certainly had a busy day, having moved from the Front Bench to the Back Benches—and I thank everyone else who has taken part in the debate.
The Secretary of State has made it clear that resources and waste are a priority issue for DEFRA, and I am pleased to share our plans in this regard. The Government are committed to the transition to a circular economy—a future in which we keep our resources in use for longer, reduce our carbon emissions and invest in critical infrastructure and green jobs in every nation and region, and in which our economy prospers and nature thrives. We want to abandon our linear and unsustainable “take, make, throw” model, which means that we extract resources from the Earth, make things and then throw them away, because there is no such place as “away”. If the whole world consumed resources as we do in the UK, we would need 2.5 times the Earth’s raw materials to sustain our current systems. Meanwhile, nearly 100 million tonnes of residual waste is disposed of annually, and waste crime alone costs our economy £1 billion every year.
That cannot continue. We must and will move toward a system that values longevity, repair and reuse over disposal. In our manifesto, we pledged to reduce waste by moving to a circular economy. That is why we have committed ourselves to developing a circular economy strategy for England, which we will create in partnership with experts from industry, academia, civil society, local government and beyond.
Steve Barclay
I am glad that the Minister has described this as a priority. She has a statutory target to halve residual waste, but what she has not mentioned is the impact that will have on mega-incinerators that are being built essentially to burn plastic. Does she accept that more than 30 environmental charities—charities usually linked to her party and the left—are strongly opposed to those incinerators, and will she commit herself to publishing an impact assessment on the effect of reducing residual waste on the need for incinerators?
Mary Creagh
I will come on to those points later in my speech, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will intervene if he does not get the satisfaction and clarity that he seeks. Good things come to those who wait.
Let me begin with the strategy. We want to have an economy-wide transformation of our relationship with our resources, which is all about supporting the Government’s missions to kick-start economic growth, make Britain a clean energy superpower, and accelerate the path to net zero through our efforts to tackle waste crime and take back our streets. To answer the question posed by the hon. Member for Stockton West, preventing food waste is key to my Department, and we are reviewing a range of issues associated with food waste in the supply chain. We hope to make further announcements soon.
Let me address the collection and packaging reforms, which the hon. Member outlined. They are an important starting point in transitioning to a circular economy, and we are proud of the steps that we have taken so far. Over the next three years, simpler recycling, extended producer responsibility and the deposit return scheme will deliver transformational change, creating thousands of new jobs and stimulating billions of pounds’ worth of investment. Those three areas make up the three-legged stool of this Government’s plan to kick-start the circular economy, so I will briefly take each one in turn.
The first area is simpler recycling. We recently affirmed our commitment to delivering simpler recycling in England, which will be introduced for businesses from 31 March 2025 and for households from 31 March 2026. This Government inherited legislation introduced by the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) that could have required households to have up to seven bins. As the hon. Member for Stockton West rightly said, some councils have up to 10 bins, but that is because they thought they were doing the right thing, given the signals that were being sent out under the previous Government. That places an unnecessary burden on people and businesses, and unnecessary clutter in everyone’s front and back gardens. We are simplifying the rules to make recycling easier for people, while stimulating growth, maximising the benefits and ending the postcode lottery for recycling. Across England, people will be able to recycle the same materials at home, work or school.
The legislation for simpler recycling has already come into force. To confirm the final details of the policy, we laid regulations before Parliament on 3 December. The policy will support our ambition to recycle 65% of municipal waste by 2035. It is important to remember that figure, because when the last Labour Government brought in the landfill tax reforms in 2002, the original target was to have a recycling rate of 50% by 2015—a target that, sadly, was lost under the previous Government. Ten years on from that date, the target has still not been met.
The policy will also deliver an estimated £11.8 billion-worth of carbon savings between 2024 and 2035. As we have heard, local circumstances differ across the country, so we are making sure that councils and other waste collectors have the flexibility to make the best local choices. We know that local authorities may want to review their waste collection services to ensure that they provide best value for money. As is currently the case, local councils will continue to decide the frequency of waste collections in a way that suits the needs of their local community. The Government’s priority is to ensure that households’ needs are met, so we have recently published guidance to support councils in this area.
The second area is extended producer responsibility for packaging. To help fund simpler recycling, we are introducing in parallel extended producer responsibility for packaging, or pEPR, which will require obligated producers to pay the full end of life costs associated with the packaging that they place on the market. That will bring more than £1 billion of investment into local government waste collections, and incentivise producers to reduce unnecessary packaging and make what they use even more sustainable. Those regulations have now been debated in both Houses. They received unanimous cross-party support and will come into force on 1 January 2025.
The third and final leg is the deposit return scheme—DRS—for drinks containers. We have seen this work in over 50 countries around the world. The DRS will make a real difference to people’s lives by tackling litter and cleaning up our streets. Recycling rates will increase and the drinks industry will benefit from the high quality recycled materials that the DRS will provide. We are committed to delivering a deposit return scheme in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland in October 2027 and we will continue to work closely with industry partners, the Scottish Government and the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland to launch the scheme.
Mary Creagh
What we saw there was a local community campaigning to stop the stink, and I am pleased that the regulator has taken swift action.
On the point raised by the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire about energy from waste, his Government failed to reach their recycling targets. We do not support over-capacity of energy from waste, and incineration should be an option only for waste that cannot be prevented, reused or recycled, such as medical waste or nappies.
In the waste hierarchy, recovering energy from waste is still preferable to disposing of waste in landfill. It maximises the value of the resources being disposed of, and avoids the greater environmental impact of landfill, which continues for generations, as we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee). We cannot solve today’s problems by storing them up for future generations, so we will shortly publish our analysis of the need for further energy from waste development in England, following delivery of our reforms. However, I make it clear that it is for the relevant planning authority to determine the need for proposed developments. Our capacity assessment will help inform decision making on planning.
Steve Barclay
In a classic example of joined-up government, many of these incinerators, including the Wisbech incinerator, are classed as nationally significant infrastructure, so decisions on them are made by the Government, not devolved locally. I welcome the Minister saying that she does not support over-capacity of incineration, just as I welcome her ambition to increase recycling, but given that she wants increased recycling, there will be over-capacity of incineration. We need to see the impact assessment so that we can see the trajectory, and can see the increasing rate at which waste will be recycled. We can then avoid the over-capacity. When will we see that impact assessment, so that we do not have too much capacity in incineration?
Mary Creagh
I am a bit mystified by the right hon. Gentleman’s question, because he put a stop to planning decisions on energy from waste. Did he not conduct an impact assessment beforehand?
Steve Barclay
I do not want to intervene too much, but as a point of clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker, I was recused as the Minister, so I certainly did not make that decision. I am making the argument against incineration; I would have thought that the Minister would support that, because she wants more recycling. Over 30 environmental charities say that incineration is the dirtiest way to produce energy—that it is as dirty as coal. Five years of analysis by the BBC found it was the dirtiest. I am highlighting the contradiction between the Government saying that they are for the environment and clean energy, and there being a risk of over-capacity in incineration, which burns plastics and is harmful to the environment. I am highlighting that contradiction and saying that that is the reason why the Government should publish an impact assessment.