Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill is a landmark piece of legislation that will implement obligations in the United Nations BBNJ agreement in UK law and enable us to move towards ratification of this historic agreement. I am sure the Bill will be welcomed by Members in all parts of the House. I recognise the contribution of Members, particularly those on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the Environmental Audit Committee and the all-party parliamentary group for the ocean, who have kept oceans high on the parliamentary agenda. In all fairness, I pay tribute to the previous Government, who did a lot of work on the Bill.

I am personally proud that we are turning words into action. In April 2024, I was the shadow Minister on a debate on this topic, and I made the commitment that if Labour were lucky enough to win the election, we would ratify this treaty, so I am very pleased to be able to say that we are going to. People in civil society, academia and industry will be delighted to see the introduction of the Bill. Organisations such as the National Oceanography Centre and the Natural History Museum have provided invaluable support to the UK delegation. I also thank the High Seas Alliance and the World Wide Fund for Nature, as well as many other environmental non-governmental organisations, for their unwavering commitment.

The BBNJ agreement is the result of years of dialogue and negotiation involving stakeholders from all around the world. In fact, I heard just this morning that negotiations started in 2012, so it has taken quite a while to get to this point. The UK’s role in these negotiations was informed by the expertise and passion of marine scientists, legal scholars and environmental advocates, and I thank them all for their contributions.

The Minister is absolutely right to say that there is support across the House for this really important Bill. She is right also to pay tribute to the previous Government for some of the work they have done, but it is true to say that, despite the fact that in the last Parliament there were many times when this Parliament did not have a great deal to debate, we never actually got this on the statute book. Just over one year into this Government, when there is a tremendous amount of legislation, we have managed to find the time to get this through. I pay tribute to the Minister. I think it is worth taking that bit of credit because we are doing something that has not previously been done.

I cannot disagree with my hon. Friend on that, can I? I thank him for his comments. As I said, it means a lot to me to be able to stand here today and say that I have fulfilled in government the commitment that I made in opposition.

We need to pass the Bill and the associated secondary legislation before we can take the next steps to ratification, so it is about not just the passage of this Bill but the statutory instruments that will follow it. I know that all sides of the House will want to see the UK playing a leading role in future discussions at the conference of the parties, and that is why we must maintain momentum.

The Bill marks a significant step in the UK’s commitment to protecting the two thirds of the world’s ocean that lie beyond the jurisdiction of a single nation. From one of the heaviest fish, the sunfish, to the delicate sea butterfly, this vast expanse of ocean is home to extraordinary biodiversity and ecosystems that are vital to the health of our planet. It sustains fisheries that feed billions, and it underpins weather patterns, coastal protections and the livelihoods of people across the globe, but these areas of the ocean are vulnerable to exploitation, degradation and irreversible harm.

I agree with the Minister that her engagement with various stakeholders—environmental NGOs, academics and universities—is crucial. I also acknowledge the parts of the Bill that underline the role of devolved Administrations and the important work that has to be done. Will her officials work closely with the devolved Administrations on the international impact of the Bill and that that will continue throughout this legislation?

I can offer the hon. Gentleman that reassurance. That is an important point well made.

The BBNJ marks an historic breakthrough. It is a multilateral treaty adopted under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea that is designed to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The agreement delivers on four critical fronts. First, it established new obligations to share the benefits arising from research into and the use of marine genetic resources from these ocean areas. Secondly, it created a mechanism to establish area-based management tools, including marine protected areas, which was an essential step to safeguard fragile ecosystems.

It is great that the UK is finally ratifying the treaty, and it is also great to hear the Minister talk about the benefits of marine protected areas, but if the Bill is to signify a new and invigorated Government focus on protecting our precious marine environment, does she not agree that the terrible, destructive fishing practice of bottom trawling obliterates vital habitats on our seabed? It makes a mockery of the entire term “marine protected area” that the UK Government have ignored the Environmental Audit Committee’s advice to ban bottom trawling from our own marine protected areas.

Of course, domestic marine protected areas are not within the remit of the Bill because we are talking about areas beyond national jurisdiction. What I can say is that the UK Government have introduced a consultation looking at banning bottom trawling in 41 of our marine protected areas. That consultation is out now. We are showing our commitment to oceans on not only an international scale but a national scale.

Thirdly, the agreement strengthens the framework for environmental impact assessments by building on the provisions of the UN convention on the law of the sea to ensure that new activities in these areas are sustainable and responsible.

Fourthly, it reinforces capacity building for developing states and promotes broader technological transfer. The journey to the agreement started with an ad hoc informal working group in 2006, before it progressed to a preparatory commission that worked through 2016 and 2017 and culminated in a formal inter-Government conference that negotiated the text between 2018 and 2023.

The UK has already played a leading role in shaping the agreement over the course of more than a decade of negotiations. In September 2023, we were one of the first countries to sign the agreement when it opened for signature at the UN, and today, through the Bill, the UK takes a major step towards ratification.

I will now outline the structure of the Bill, which is divided into five parts. Parts 2, 3 and 4 are designed to correspond and give effect to the three core sections of the BBNJ agreement relating to marine genetic resources, area-based management tools and environmental impact assessments.

I thank the Minister for introducing the Bill and for her deep interest in this subject. We are all very impressed by what the Minister does and we thank her for it. Further to intervention of the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Stephen Gethins)—he and I both represent coastal communities—I would like to say that marine biodiversity is the lifeblood of the fishing industry and that, as we have often said, fishermen are the greatest natural caretakers of the sea. Does the Minister agree that the input and the generational knowledge of the fishing sector is essential as we move forward?

I pay tribute to all the fishermen throughout the United Kingdom who play such a vital role in helping to feed our nation.

The Bill also ensures that the UK has the necessary powers to implement decisions adopted at future meetings of the BBNJ conference of the parties, beginning with the marine genetic resource provision. Part 2 of the Bill sets out the requirements related to the collection and use of marine genetic resources from areas beyond national jurisdiction and digital sequence information generated on those marine genetic resources.

These measures mean that UK researchers conducting collection activities from UK craft or equipment, such as royal research ships or autonomous systems, will need to notify a national focal point within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office before and after the collection of these resources. Additionally, any users of marine genetic resources or digital sequence information will need to notify the national focal point once results of utilisation are available and make those results available in publicly accessible repositories or databases. The results of utilisation, including publications such as journal articles and patents granted, should detail the outcome of research and development on these resources. These notifications will provide valuable data on material collected and on the results of research in areas beyond national jurisdiction. These notifications will be passed on to a clearing-house mechanism—a core part of the future architecture of the BBNJ agreement.

The clearing-house mechanism will act as a global online notification hub, where parties to the agreement will submit their notifications, allowing researchers from the UK and elsewhere to see what is being collected from where and how it is being used. That function is key to the benefit-sharing mechanisms under the agreement, enabling researchers from developing countries to work from the same scientific data as a researcher in the UK. That will also facilitate the development of cross-national research groups crucial to supporting breakthrough scientific discoveries.

I call the shadow Minister.

I thank the Minister for her explanation of the Bill. It is an important piece of legislation, and I thank her for acknowledging that it started under the previous Government. I hope there will be a consensus, but there are many questions to be answered, and we need to go into this legislation in a lot of detail to ensure that there are not unintended consequences.

Nobody in this House doubts the importance of protecting our oceans. The high seas belong to us all, to every nation on this planet, and the United Kingdom, as a proud seafaring nation and a world leader in natural sciences with no less than 16 overseas territories spanning—for now at least—all five of the world’s major oceans, has always led the world in safeguarding them. The protection of our oceans is one of the defining challenges of our age. Two thirds of the world’s oceans lie beyond the jurisdiction of any single nation, and those waters are home to a vast array of life that sustains the planet’s ecosystems.

Britain depends on the seas for our trade. They have been a moat for our national security and are our bridge to the wider world. We therefore have not only a moral duty to protect them but a strategic one. One of the core values of the small c conservatism that I believe in, as the name suggests, is to conserve things that truly matter. That applies not only to our institutions and our way of life here in these islands, but to the preservation of our green and pleasant land and, in this case, that of the marine biodiversity, so that we can hand on to our descendants the natural beauty that I know we all cherish. That principle is certainly not in question today by anyone in this House of any party.

Nowhere is our record clearer than in the crown jewel of our leadership on the environment that is the blue belt programme. Through it, the United Kingdom and our overseas territories have created over 4.4 million sq km of marine protected areas from the South Atlantic and the Pacific to the Indian ocean. These waters safeguard king penguins on the Falkland Islands, green turtles on Ascension Island, grey reef sharks on the Pitcairn Islands and countless other species across the globe. I have had the privilege to visit the Falkland Islands and Ascension Island and see the amazing biodiversity that we are responsible for, and the oceans around those territories are vital to protect. The blue belt is one of the largest networks of protected ocean on Earth, and it exists because of British leadership alongside the Governments of the British overseas territories. We granted those creatures and their habitats protection from exploitation by others, from industrial fishing fleets and from countries that would plunder our resources without a second thought. That is something this nation should be immensely proud of.

I am listening carefully to what the hon. Member is saying, and he is absolutely right on the blue belt. Does he therefore regret that in all the debates we have had about the Chagos Islands, the Conservatives have not raised the importance of the conservation of the fish stocks and the biodiversity around those islands?

The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee is, I am afraid, incorrect. We have raised those issues on many occasions, and I have personally raised them on countless occasions over the years. Before too long, the right hon. Member will hear a bit more about the Chagos Islands and the importance of protecting marine stocks and biodiversity in that part of the world.

Despite what has been said today, I fear that at this stage the Government are riding roughshod over that record and undermining those very principles through their abject surrender of a marine protected area. The British Indian Ocean Territory might look like a scattering of remote atolls in a far-flung region of the planet, but they are home to 640,000 sq km of ocean—one of the most pristine marine ecosystems on the earth, an area of ocean the size of France. Within it live more than 1,000 species of fish and over 200 species of coral.

I had the opportunity to see it for myself in 2019 when I visited the Chagos islands, in particular the atoll of Peros Banhos, where I was greeted by the wonderful Chagossian coconut crabs, as I jumped out of the dinghy and walked on to the beach and into the uninhabited island—where we shamefully forced the people to leave their homes all those years ago and refused to allow them to return. Its waters shelter seabirds, turtles and dolphins. It is an environmental treasure that the world envies and that Britain has rightly protected over so many years.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Mauritius was one of the early signatories to the UN global ocean treaty? If so, I am not sure what his point is.

The hon. Member should examine how Mauritius behaves in reality, which I will come to later. If we want a nation that will actually take these issues seriously, it is the United Kingdom. It is easy to sign a treaty, it is not so easy to follow it through in practice.

In what I believe to be an act of historic folly, this Government are to hand that amazing territory over to Mauritius. That nation does not have the record, the capability or the will to protect such a fragile environment. Its own waters have suffered from overfishing and poor enforcement. Its close alignment with China, and indeed India, should concern anyone who cares about the Indian ocean’s future. Indeed, the evidence speaks for itself. In the 2024 Environmental Performance Index, Mauritius ranked 109th for marine key biodiversity area protection, with a score of just 0.8 out of 100; 83rd for marine habitat protection; and 131st for marine protection stringency, down nearly 78%. Are these the credentials of a nation ready to steward one of the world’s most delicate ecosystems? The Government appear to think so. I disagree.