Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, what progress he has made on preparing legislation to transpose into UK law the provisions of the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement; and when he plans to ratify that treaty.

The UK signed the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement at the first opportunity on 20 September 2023 and laid the Agreement before Parliament on 16 October, the first Parliamentary sitting day after signature. The scrutiny process has now been completed. The Government aims to implement and ratify the BBNJ Agreement by the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice in June 2025. In line with this ambitious deadline, work is in hand on the legislation and other measures needed to translate the detailed and complex provisions of the Agreement into UK law before we can ratify the Agreement.