Retirement of a Member: Baroness Stern
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, I should like to notify the House of the retirement, with effect from 2 December, of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, pursuant to Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. On behalf of the House, I should like to thank the noble Baroness for her much-valued service to the House.
Subscription Contracts: Right to Cancel
Lord Moynihan
To ask His Majesty’s Government, in making regulations under section 267 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, what plans they have to account for concerns raised by cultural and heritage organisations regarding the right of consumers to cancel subscription contracts.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have consulted on how the new subscription rules will work under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act—this includes what happens when a consumer uses their cooling-off right to cancel—and are carefully reviewing responses from cultural and heritage organisations. My officials have engaged directly with sector representatives and will continue to do so to ensure that the final regulations reflect their concerns and support both consumer protection and organisational sustainability.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I have had a number of exchanges with the Minister, for which I am very grateful. In considering next steps, will he take into account the worries expressed by charities, and arts and heritage organisations, about the inevitable decimation of their fundraising efforts? Would he agree that introducing the cooling-off period set out in the recently enacted DMCCA immediately on signing up would allow thousands of people to join, say, art galleries, take advantage of the membership benefits of reduced admission fees to exhibitions over, say, a weekend’s holiday in London, and then legally cancel their memberships under the cooling-off period set out in the new Act, which will cripple membership schemes as a fundraising model that are currently worth hundreds of millions of pounds to charities across the UK every year? Will the Government accelerate their consideration to exempt our charities, museums, galleries and national heritage homes, just as they have exempted gambling contracts and society lotteries under Schedule 22 in order to protect their fundraising efforts?
Lord Leong (Lab)
The noble Lord will know that, under the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013, consumers already have a cooling-off period for distance contracts, so this is not new for the sector. The digital content waiver is long established, and most charitable memberships are service contracts, not digital content. We consulted on extending the waiver, as that would reduce consumer rights. Having said that, gambling is excluded due to the existing specialist regulations. We recognise the concerns raised by charities and heritage organisations about potential misuse and will continue to work closely with charities as we finalise the secondary legislation.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, Section 267 gives the Government the clear ability to use the regulation-making powers to recognise the specific circumstances of particular services, such as streaming, charitable memberships and, of course, the news media. Do the Government intend to make distinctions between those sectors? If so, will the Government make sure that streaming services, the charitable sector and, indeed, the news media are protected from early termination?
Lord Leong (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an interesting point. Let us look at the policy. We are talking about unwanted subscriptions, which account for some £1.6 billion a year. This Act will save consumers some £14 a month, which is about £147 million a year. As it stands, charities have to comply with consumer law irrespective of charitable status. Companies, especially digital service organisations, have the legislation that is currently in place, so that will stay as it is. The cooling-off period under the new Act is just an extension from distance contracts to in person.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, how do the Government account for the concerns of privately owned heritage? The majority of members of Historic Houses, for example, are neither charities nor large heritage organisations, yet they are wholly dependent on subscriptions and membership for the preservation of our nationally significant heritage. I note my interest as a member of Historic Houses.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Earl for that. As far as heritage organisations are concerned, it is up to the individual organisation how its business model is structured. If it is a subscription model for contracts or services then it falls in scope of this legislation and the cooling-off period will apply.
Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend in his Question and welcome the tone of the Minister’s thoughtful reply. As a proud member of the British Museum scheme, I think there is a loophole and an unintended consequence of the good intention of the Act, which needs support. I assure the Minister that he will have widespread support in this House if he can find a way through this problem.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that. This is precisely why the Government are taking their time. We have consulted widely—the consultation finished at the end of February—and we are analysing the responses. There are various complexities. It also impacts on HMRC, as far as gift aid is concerned. We must ensure that we get this absolutely right, and we will make a decision in due course.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, while we are on this subject, is it not the case that our regulators and our consumer rights are letting Britain down, and that we are in what we call rip-off Britain? Do we not need to look at regulation and consumer rights as a whole and come forward with a package to address the problems?
Lord Leong (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right. As it stands, all consumers are protected under the consumer contracts regulations, which basically allow consumers to have that cooling-off period if they subscribe to a service online. The Act extends that to subscription in person so that consumers will be protected under this legislation.
Lord Grayling (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery. This issue is particularly important as last week’s Red Book shows that the DCMS’s budget is going to fall in the latter part of this decade. This means that public institutions will be under greater financial pressure. The last thing they need, therefore, is an issue of this kind. I offer my support to my noble friend and urge the Minister to do everything he can to get rid of this anomaly.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that. It is precisely what we are doing. We are taking our time to consider the consultation and we are analysing the responses. We must get this right. As I said, charities have to comply with current consumer protection regulations. As it stands, most charities, perhaps because they do not understand the implications of the Act, have been claiming gift aid, even though their membership may be for a provision of services. We need to ensure that HMRC and the DCMS work through the technicalities so that we are not caught in the loophole that the noble Lord mentioned.
Lord Bird (CB)
Is the Minister actually asking for reluctant subscribers to stay with a service just because it is a charity? I find that really difficult to understand. We have to think of that person who goes in, looks at something, says, “I don’t really want to be a part of this”, and chooses to leave. They should have a right to do that.
Lord Leong (Lab)
Every consumer has a right to do that under current consumer protections. They have a cooling-off period of 14 days to cancel that subscription if it is a distance subscription. Under the new Act, if the subscription is taken up or renewed in person, the cooling-off period is extended to 14 days, so consumers will have the right to cancel or stay within the subscription.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, the problem has been well set out by my noble friend Lord Moynihan and repeated admirably by the Minister. It is a problem that was identified when this Act was going through your Lordships’ House. At the time, my noble friend Lord Offord of Garvel committed to closing this loophole through secondary legislation. Of course, the election interceded, but that is now a year and a half ago. As we have heard, this is a pressing issue for organisations that are beset by cuts to the DCMS budget, the rising impact of national insurance contributions and much more. Will the Minister commit to working urgently to make sure that this loophole is not open in a way that will affect so many arts, cultural and heritage organisations that are loved across the country?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that. I assure him that my officials and I are working to ensure that we get this right. The new subscription regime will ensure that in particular situations, including after the contract automatically renews on to a 12-month term, consumers have a 14-day window in which to cancel. Should any changes be needed in secondary legislation that we publish, they will not commence until autumn 2026, so there is plenty of time for charities and heritage organisations to put their houses in order before this regime kicks in.
Lord Lansley (Con)
May I offer the Minister an opportunity to be popular by moving the regulations on online subscriptions further, so that all those who are subject to automatic renewals do not have to click more than twice in order to end a subscription that they do not want to retain?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that kind suggestion. I am sure my officials, who are sitting in the Box, have heard it.
Public Services: Online Communications
Lord Cashman
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that adults with learning and communication difficulties are not left isolated or disconnected because of increasing reliance on online communications for access to public services, particularly within the NHS.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, digital inclusion is a priority for this Government, which is why we launched the Digital Inclusion Action Plan. It sets out immediate steps to boost inclusion for everyone, including people with disabilities. In the NHS, we recognise that some patients may struggle or prefer not to use digital routes. That is why GP practices are required to maintain traditional methods of access, while digital health services are being designed to be inclusive, accessible and easy to navigate.
Lord Cashman (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the reply, but the reality, I am afraid, is very different. The negative effects on vulnerable people and people with learning difficulties accessing services online is deeply problematic. Many do not have access to the internet. Some cannot read or write. Others simply do not have capacity to deal with online programmes and apps. Many are isolated, in poor health and desperately in need of support, yet cannot get it because of these online obstacles. Will the Government improve online access for these people and others, and make it easily and widely available? Will they adopt more voice messaging and voice prompts, as well as simple-to-use spoken menu options and, indeed, dare I say, the option to speak to a human being? These issues of online access must be addressed if we are to tackle the hopelessness that is growing around access to public services, and particularly access to services within the NHS.
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that. We recognise that not everyone can manage complex digital systems—we acknowledge that—and that some vulnerable people risk becoming cut off as services change. Departments across government are reviewing digital pathways to make them simpler, clearer and supported by voice prompts, as the noble Lord mentioned, and voice-activated tools. We are also expanding easy-to-navigate menus and keeping the option to speak to trained staff. We aim to give people the support they need and to keep every route open, not closed.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, as chair of the Digital Inclusion Action Committee, I wonder whether I can intervene. I have just spent the last hour talking with two sub-committee chairs, the Minister may want to know, precisely about easier accessibility but also about a recent report about people with learning difficulties. We want to make sure that we start with where the person is and what their service needs are. My goodness, I wish that was how public services had been organised before digital ever came in. We are determined to give the Government options, first on accessibility, to make that much more straightforward, but also to make sure that departments support carers as well as individuals in particular groups so that they are able to get the best from whatever service they need in whatever service is going to suit them as individuals most effectively.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for all her work on the Digital Inclusion Action Committee. She is absolutely right. She is bringing all the leaders from government, industry and the voluntary sector to shape our national response to digital inclusion. Her committee is currently setting out its priorities and gathering insights from across the UK to inform recommendations to the Government. The Government have set up the inclusion action plan with a focus on practical actions—I emphasise practical actions—that make a difference to people’s lives.
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, of the 11 million people who do not have the essential digital skills for life, more than half are disabled people, and the barriers created by digital approaches everywhere increase the barriers that disabled people face. What steps do the Government take specifically to ensure that the NHS app is accessible to people who have learning and communication difficulties and to ensure that NHS services are still available to those who cannot use digital means of communication?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness. As I mentioned earlier, we are not closing off any of the options available, whether that is the voice-activated system or speaking to a human being. The option is still there. We know that millions of people in the UK are still unable to take part in this increasingly digital society and we recognise that digital exclusion falls hardest on disabled people. That is why this Government are committed to improving digital inclusion for everybody. In August, we launched a £9.5 million digital inclusion innovation fund, which supports community projects across the country and helps people build the skills and confidence they need to get online.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, can I pick up on the comment at the end of the question from the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, in relation to speaking to people voice to voice? Blind spots exist in the web and the web crashes on many occasions, so it is not just those unfortunate people who are disabled or do not have links who lose contact with vital services; on many occasions, it can be far broader, and every service should have access to a human talking to a human.
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, absolutely: digital progress must never mean less choice. The NHS continues to provide face-to-face routes, telephone access and supported appointments for those who need them. We are investing in accessible contact centres, clearer phone menus and trained staff who can guide patients through the next steps. At the same time, we are improving simpler digital options for those who want them. In line with the action plan, we are keeping non-digital routes open and strengthening assisted support.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, the Minister needs a reality check. For many people, moving to digital is not acceptable. The NHS 10-year plan moves from analogue to digital, with more services moving to the NHS app. For people with a learning disability, issues regarding poor communication come to light at present only at inquests, not through central government monitoring. What new central monitoring will the Government introduce to make sure that existing communication meets vulnerable people’s needs, rather than moving to digital, which will cause further problems?
Lord Leong (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an interesting point. That is why I mentioned earlier that my noble friend Lady Armstrong is working right across government departments to bring everybody together, look at what is available and ensure that nobody is excluded from digital services. As I said, the current situation where someone can speak to a human being is still there, and it will be there. Voice-activated menus will also still exist.
Lord Markham (Con)
I am a big believer in the use of AI and digital communications to improve public services for everyone, in the NHS and elsewhere. At the same time, I am aware that groups with learning difficulties are in danger of being left behind. But the way to square the circle is to make sure that they are involved every step of the way in the design of services, whether analogue or digital, and to use things such as AI to have voice-activated conversations. The Netherlands ministry of health is probably the number one player in involving people with learning difficulties every step of the way. Can we make sure that we do the same with our services?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for that. It is not only in the Netherlands but in other countries in Europe—for example, Estonia as well. Let us not forget that the UK Government are committed to ensuring that our adoption of AI across the public sector is ethical, safe and responsible. The Government Digital Service suite of responsible data and AI tools, such as the data and AI ethics framework, helps teams across government to build and display AI in the right way. Our ambition is really for AI to benefit working people directly by improving their health, care and education, as well as how citizens interact with the Government, while opening up new opportunities, as the noble Lord mentioned, rather than just threatening our traditional patterns of work.
The Lord Bishop of Hereford
My Lords, the passion displayed in this House for digital inclusion is extraordinarily commendable, but these difficulties are compounded in rural areas by very poor connectivity. Many areas endure significant restrictions in broadband and mobile connectivity, which compounds the problems. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that good connectivity is rolled out across the whole country?
Lord Leong (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate makes a very important point. Poor connectivity must not limit access to healthcare. The Government’s rollout of improved broadband and mobile coverage is continuing, with priority given to rural communities. In parallel, the NHS provides telephone access, face-to-face appointments and paper-based communications for those who need them. We are increasing support through community venues such as libraries and outreach centres. No patient should miss care because the digital signal is unreliable or not there.
British Embassy in Damascus
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
To ask His Majesty’s Government when they intend to re-open the British Embassy in Damascus.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
My Lords, we are regular visitors to Damascus through the special representative for Syria and recent visits from the Minister for the Middle East and the former Foreign Secretary. We continue to engage with the new Syrian Government and have committed to supporting them in delivering a more stable, free and prosperous future for the Syrian people. We are exploring options for a more permanent presence in Damascus and how we can engage further.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that response, and I note the positive tone. She will be aware the President Trump has already met twice with President al-Sharaa, most recently at the White House last month. She will also know that Germany, Italy and Spain are among 12 European countries that have already re-established diplomatic relations, but that none of the permanent members of the UN Security Council has done so. May I suggest it would be a way of further enhancing the Prime Minister’s reputation on the international stage if he were to do so on behalf of his Government, and to encourage the other permanent members to do so also?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I take my noble friend’s question as a note of encouragement to the Government to accelerate progress towards establishing a presence in Damascus and to go further than we already have in the relationship we are building with the new Government in Syria. I also thank him for his kind comments about the Prime Minister’s standing on the world stage; I think he is right.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)
While thanking the Minister for her helpful reply, may I ask her to consider maintaining the very strong embassy we have in Lebanon? At the moment, you go to Damascus, as I have done recently, through Lebanon. We have a magnificent Foreign Office team there, many of whom also served in Baghdad. This embassy is a very strong hub for all our Middle East work. Would the Minister consider continuing to strengthen that, despite the supposed weakness of FCDO funding, which we would all regret?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
As the noble Baroness said, we have an incredibly strong team in Lebanon, and it is important that that continues. The points she makes about the need for a regional approach, the instability we want to avoid and the importance of our presence across the region are well made; I take those and agree with her.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, can the Minister explain how UK spending in Syria is helping to build stability and tackle humanitarian crises? What steps are required to reopen the embassy, given that Syria has reopened its embassy in London? Can she also explain how the Government can maintain support for Syria, Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, and still maintain significant engagement with sub-Saharan Africa?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
There was a lot in that question. On the humanitarian question, we do not work directly on humanitarian issues through the Government in Syria, for reasons I think noble Lords will understand, but through NGOs and the United Nations. At the moment, that is the right approach to take. We look forward to a time when we can have a more normalised presence in Damascus and all the things you would normally associate with the government-to-government and diplomatic relations we seek.
On how we can spend the same in Syria while protecting Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza—and of course the Overseas Territories—the truth is that we cannot. But in a modern development partnership, the test of your effectiveness and impact is not the pound sign next to your ODA budget; it is the quality of your relationships, your diplomatic presence, your defence and security relationships, and your political links. All these things matter hugely. The volume of spend we are able to mobilise through the multilateral system, not least the World Bank and other multilateral development banks, far exceeds anything we could ever have put forward as a bilateral ODA programme.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, the US reopened the ambassador’s residence in Damascus some seven months ago. The UK Government, as the noble Baroness has said, are taking a somewhat more circumspect approach. Can she outline the reasons for that? Is it based on legal advice? For what reasons are Ministers hesitant to proceed?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is not based on legal advice as far as I am aware; I think it is just about making sure we do things in successful and sustainable way. It shows the reason why we are so reluctant to withdraw from a city or a country; once you have withdrawn and no longer have an embassy, it is very difficult and always takes time to re-establish that presence.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
UNHCR maintains that there are 16 million Syrians in Syria in need of humanitarian assistance. UK charities are seeking to help. Does the Minister agree that it would help them if we reopened the embassy in Damascus?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I think everybody agrees that it would be a positive step, but we do have a special representative in Syria, Ann Snow. As I say, we continue because, as the noble Lord says, there is still huge humanitarian need in Syria. I was in Jordan recently, speaking to Syrian refugees who would like to return home, but they want to feel that they would be safe and secure, that education would be available for their children and that healthcare would be available. In too many parts of Syria, that is still not the situation, so there is a huge amount of work to do and we continue to play our full part in rebuilding Syria.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
Mr Lords, are the Government concerned about the seeming resurgence of ISIL, and what is actually being done about that?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We are, of course, and we take our counterterrorism work in Syria and elsewhere incredibly seriously. One of the best things we can do for Syria and the wider region is to do everything we can to make sure that Syria has a stable Government with inclusive politics, and that the improvements we are seeing continue. This is the best chance we have had for Syria in a very long time, and we need to work collaboratively with our partners and allies on the threats the noble Lord refers to, as he would expect. But vital to this is maintaining a secure and stable Government in Syria.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in the context of the rise of ISIS again in Somalia and jihadism throughout the region, will the noble Baroness say something about the position of minorities in Syria, who have suffered genocide in the past? Recent attacks on Alawites and Druze in particular should give cause for concern. Will she make it a priority of our diplomatic presence in Damascus that we champion the position of the minorities, guaranteeing the real long-term stability of that country?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
That is a very important point. We were deeply concerned, as I know Members were across this House, about some of the events we saw last summer, particularly the targeting of the Alawite and Druze communities, as the noble Lord says. We are very clear with the Government in Syria about our commitment to freedom of religion or belief, and that we expect the new Government to be inclusive and representative and to take actions we would all expect them to take when we see breaches and when things occur that need to be responded to. The Government need to take a leading role in making sure that this sort of violence and victimisation is not allowed to persist in Syria.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned the millions of Syrians who are refugees in other countries, and we know that a significant number of them have attempted to get to this country by one means or another. Given His Majesty’s Government’s current policy on immigrants, legal and irregular, does that not give them a real incentive to invest in making Syria not only a more stable country but one with greater respect for human rights—particularly rights for women—and social stability?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I am very proud of the role this country played in hosting many Syrians at a time of desperate need during the Assad regime. Many Syrians came here, set up businesses and made lives for themselves. It is true that many wish to return now because they want to be part of the rebuilding of their country, and they are proud of what they hope will be its future. That is not the sole reason; there are many reasons why we want to play our part in supporting security, stability and prosperity for Syria, which is why we lifted sanctions very early on after the fall of Assad. But, as the noble Lord says, it is good if people who wish to return home are able to do so safely and in a way that enables them to rebuild their lives properly.
Carer’s Allowance: Overpayments
(1 day, 5 hours ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
To ask His Majesty’s Government what the timeframe is for reassessing overpayments of Carer’s Allowance in line with the recommendations of the Independent Review of Carer’s Allowance Overpayments.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I acknowledge the Government’s positive response to the recommendations in the independent review.
The Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Sherlock) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government accept that between 2015 and summer 2025, the guidance on whether and how to average earnings in carer’s allowance did not accurately reflect the statutory position. We will therefore be reassessing earnings-related overpayment cases that occurred between 2015 and September 2025. Where it is found that overpayments were lower than originally calculated, carers will have their debts reduced or cancelled entirely, with the Government refunding any money already paid. We will set out plans for doing this in early 2026.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that response and for her patience at my persistence. After the problems for carers were ignored for so long by the previous Administration, and after systems did not respond to the clear evidence about the distress caused, carers naturally have a high level of mistrust about how their benefits are administered. Does my noble friend agree that rebuilding that trust must be a priority and that any changes must be completely transparent, with carers consulted and informed at every step of the way?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that question and for her work. I pay tribute to the millions of unpaid carers across this country; the Government greatly value them and the work they do. Carers are also fortunate to have some excellent advocates, including many Members of this House—and I think we would probably all acknowledge that supreme among them is my noble friend, whose work in this area has for so very long been recognised by us all.
Carer’s allowance provides support to around 1 million people and, for most of those who receive it, the experience is positive and the rules are clear. But my noble friend is right that, when we came into government, it became clear that there were far too many cases where working carers had been left with large overpayments to be repaid. That is why we commissioned an independent review of earnings-related overpayments. We are very grateful to Liz Sayce for her recommendations, but also to her advisory panel and especially to the unpaid carers who shared their experiences to make that right. We have accepted or partially accepted 38 of the 40 recommendations in the report, we have begun working on many of them already, and we will set out the details in the new year. We will be very clear and transparent: many of the recommendations regard reviewing how we write to people, how we make things clear and how transparent we are. Above all, when the Government make mistakes, they should acknowledge them and put them right, and that is what we are doing.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
When we discussed this matter a few days ago, I raised with the Minister the issue of the so-called cliff edge, whereby if you earn 1p over the earnings limit you lose the whole allowance. The Minister replied with characteristic sympathy, but she said that modernising the system would take “some years”. The independent review referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, takes a totally different view. It says that addressing the impact of a cliff edge is urgent, and asks the department to be
“creative in its thinking about options for short term changes to remove or reduce this impact more quickly”.
Does the Minister accept that recommendation?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, what I said last time we discussed this is absolutely the Government’s position. For the reasons I explained then—I will not go back into them again—carer’s allowance is traditionally not a classic means-tested benefit, so we want to find ways to tackle this. It will take time, because everything about the system has been built in ways that were designed around a simple, non-means-tested benefit. However, we have already done significant things to make a difference; one of the most important of those was to raise the level at which people could earn by the largest cash amount since the benefit was created. This means that if you earn less than 16 hours a week at the national living wage, there is no problem at all. We have also gone through to make sure that most of the ways in which people have fallen foul of the system can be corrected. For example, we have taken action on guidance and communications, and we are now checking automatically all the data that comes in directly from HMRC. We are doing all the things that can be done in the short term.
Much as I do not want to say this, the noble Lord will have to be patient. To be able to remove a cliff edge, the first requirement is to automate earnings coming from HMRC, which cannot be done overnight. We have already begun the work and we are looking for all possible workarounds in the short term. This problem has been around for a long time and no one paid any attention. We spotted it, we are taking action and we will sort it.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that. The Sayce review identified the problem. I am reminded, sadly, of Lewis Carroll’s “jam tomorrow”, a promised reward that is often postponed. I am not really encouraged by the point that it will be dealt with in 2026. I ask the Minister to be more definite and give us a date in 2026 when this will happen, so that it is not, in Lewis Carroll’s words, “jam tomorrow”.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, if I could give the noble Lord a precise date on which all the computer systems and all the systems will have changed, I would be glad to do it. Let me put this in context: we estimate that about 15% of people who get a carer’s allowance payment are also in paid work and 90% of people who reported earnings did so without difficulty, so we are talking about a very important but specific subset of people, most of whom had fluctuating earnings, which this is designed to address. The biggest challenge in the short term is to make sure that we have clear guidance, we communicate with people, they know what to tell us and we are able to manage that. There is a big prize at the end as we modernise all DWP systems to get this right. A lot of the improvements will be made by really old-fashioned analogue systems—by making sure that we have the right information, communicate well with carers and make it as easy as possible to get the information. Those recommendations may not be exciting, but they actually make a lot of difference.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, given that some 185,000 unpaid carers will now have their carer’s allowance overpayments reviewed following the independent report, will the Minister set out how these carers will be notified of the reassessment process and what steps the Government will take to ensure that communications are clear, timely and accessible?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her important question. Our data suggests that there are around 212,000 overpayment cases in the relevant period, between 2015 and September 2025. We will set out the details in the new year, but we plan to review every case to understand where mistakes were made. Cases that were affected specifically by our unclear guidance will have their overpayment reassessed. If the review confirms that the money was not due, we will make an appropriate refund or reduction. I should say that if it were to result in a higher overpayment, we will not ask anyone for additional money—I just want to reassure anyone who is listening. If the review confirms that the person still owes money, we will give the usual support to make sure that it can be repaid appropriately, because it is not to do with this question.
I want to reassure those who are listening that nobody needs to get in touch with DWP at the moment. Our intention is to work through the cases. We have data for most of these cases and we will contact people proactively. We will set out in the new year how that process will work and what we will do in any remaining cases, but no one needs to get in touch. Please do not phone us at the moment.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the independent review and the Government’s response, but what will happen to those carers who have already been convicted of benefit fraud as a result of the mistakes that have been made? Why did the Government decide not to offer compensation to those who have already been so badly affected and whose lives have, frankly, been made a nightmare by the mistakes?
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I said that we will set out in the new year the details of how the reassessment is going to work. We will be working our way through all the cases. I do not know how many, if any, of the cases resulted in prosecution. We will work through what will happen in cases where people, for example, either had overpayments or may have had a civil penalty or even possibly another form of administrative penalty. On compensation, it is not unusual for there to be reassessment exercises when guidance or other systems are found to be wrong, and DWP does not routinely make special payments under those circumstances. The noble Baroness may not welcome it, but I am very grateful that carers’ organisations have really welcomed the fact that we have taken the trouble to work out through an independent review precisely what went wrong and are putting it right. I am delighted that we are able to do it, and I look forward to our being able to right those wrongs.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, I hope I am right in thinking that the whole House is in support of what the Minister is trying to achieve, so well done. Can she extend this just a little further and help carers feel that they are recognised and listened to? Some of the points that I receive are of course about the financial arrangements, but more than that, many carers continue to feel aggrieved that their work and their worth are not recognised and valued.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, who makes a really important point. One of the good things about the Sayce review is that it involved carers directly and listened to them, and by listening to them was able to get to the bottom of what had gone wrong. My colleague Minister Timms, who is the Minister in charge of this, has carefully gone out to meet carers and is going to do so again. I know that he will want to hear not just what went wrong here but how people’s lives are impacted by the care that they give. How do the Government make their lives easier or harder, and how can we learn from that?
Finally, since the noble Lord prompts me to do the right thing always, I say once again that the whole House will want to join me in thanking carers for the service they give to those they love. Many in this House will have experience of either giving or receiving care, possibly both. It is an act of love and it is the Government’s job to support it and not get in the way, and we pledge to try to do that.
NHS Industrial Action
(1 day, 5 hours ago)
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Lord Kamall
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effects of upcoming industrial action in the NHS.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, strikes are disruptive and costly. The strikes in July cost around £240 million. Thanks to the heroic efforts of other NHS staff during the recent November strikes, the NHS was able to maintain 95% of planned care, while still maintaining critical services. I urge the BMA to reconsider its plans for more damaging strikes before Christmas, and to work with the Government to improve the working lives of resident doctors and to rebuild the NHS in partnership.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer and also pay tribute to those hard-working doctors who kept going, despite the feeling for industrial action by many in the BMA. The timing of the BMA’s announcement is surely no coincidence. Is it not the case that last week’s Budget, which displayed the Chancellor’s readiness to increase the burden on taxpayers in order to fund public spending, will have sent a clear signal to the BMA that there is scope for it to squeeze even more money out of the Treasury than it did last year, with the 29% pay rise that was awarded? Will the Minister take this opportunity to confirm the Government’s position? Do they agree that a further massive pay rise for resident doctors at this time is completely unaffordable?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
Quite frankly, I do not think any Secretary of State could have been clearer in his repeated words that he cannot increase the pay of resident doctors. They have received an average pay rise of 28.9% compared with three years ago: the highest settlement in the public sector. His door is open to discuss conditions, deal with the bureaucracy that they face and improve the conditions for resident doctors. The Secretary of State could not have been any stronger than he has been about his intentions on this.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, in light of that, have the Government learned the lesson that giving resident doctors a nearly 30% increase in future, when pay increases come, should be linked to reform, not just a blank cheque?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The reform plan for change has been very clear from the outset of this Government. There has been a clear recognition that things need to change, which has driven the efforts to do everything possible to improve conditions both for the workforce and for those in receipt of care. It has not been good enough; we have a huge job to do to improve the NHS, to make it fit for purpose and to continue to deliver excellent care for people up and down the country.
Lord Spellar (Lab)
My Lords, the fundamental issue here is that many previously professional organisations now seem intent on acting not as trade unions but as parodies of the trade unions of the 1950s. Underlying that are the appallingly low turnouts in the election for executives; they are normally in single figures. What are the Ministers in this department, and others, doing to try to win the battle for hearts and minds, to increase turnout to get more representative leadership?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I agree that it is essential that we move forward to modernise industrial relations, which is exactly what this Government are doing. We know that strong trade unions are essential for tackling insecurity, inequality, discrimination, enforcement and low pay, but we have to move to a situation where there is more communication, negotiation and space for collaboration in order to deliver our objectives and take people with us.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, during the doctors’ strike in 2023, I was left to die, with untreated gallstones and sepsis, in an NHS hospital. The only thing they offered me during that time was, “Do not resuscitate”. I am here today only because my friends and family managed to get me transferred to a private hospital for emergency surgery, just in time. I thank all of them for everything they did. But I know that, sadly, many others would not be able to do that, so when will enough be enough and what will the Government do to ensure that doctors fulfil their duty to patients? They exist only to do that and to serve.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I am very sorry to hear of the noble Baroness’s unfortunate experience and pleased to see her back on the Benches, fighting her corner. This is absolutely the backbone of what this Government intend to do. We knew when we came into government that standards had slipped. The pressures on medical staff have been enormous and it is our job to transform the service. That is what we have put in place.
Lord Harper (Con)
My Lords, I listened very carefully to the excellent question from the noble Lord, Lord Spellar, but I was astounded by the Minister’s answer. I think I heard correctly that she talked about modernising the trade union regime. In the Employment Rights Bill, the Government are going to make it easier—less difficult—for trade unions to call strikes on a lower turnout. That is going to make the situation worse, not better.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
We beg to differ completely with the noble Lord. We believe our Employment Rights Bill is the way forward. It will improve industrial relations and make sure that we have workplaces that are fit for purpose as we move forward through this century.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, will my noble friend tell us what proportion of resident doctors are taking action and what are the consequences for individuals when they do? You hear stories of individuals deciding to take a long weekend and in practice it is leave rather than anything else.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
I have the figures in front of me. The data we have received reported an average of 17,200 resident doctors absent from work in each of the November rounds, which is slightly higher than the 16,200 average during the last set of strikes in July. Resident doctors make up about 50% of the workforce of around 150,000 NHS doctors in England. I think that gives a pretty clear sense. Of course, our sympathies go to all the other doctors, medical staff and other staff in hospitals who performed so admirably during those strikes. We will continue to support them and make sure that they can deliver for the patients in their care.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, yesterday, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury gave an interesting report, repeated here, and we had a 40-minute debate. The Chancellor had four objectives, one of which was to reduce waiting lists, not to increase anybody’s pay. Doctors going on strike will increase waiting lists. What will the Government do, knowing that the Chancellor cannot, under her fiscal rules, spend unbudgeted expenditure? Who will persuade the doctors that theirs is a lost cause?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble and right reverend Lord is right that communication and talking are critical. That is why the Secretary of State has repeatedly made it clear that the door is open to have those conversations, recognising the challenges that doctors have faced, whether that is bottlenecks in training or money being taken out by compulsory payments for joining the Royal College of Physicians, and all those things. As we have heard, our absolute priority is to reduce waiting lists, putting the patient at the centre of the NHS. That is the mission we are on, and we are determined to deliver it.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
As the Minister will be aware, pay is only one part of what I understand the resident doctors are looking for. As I understand it, they are actually quite senior doctors—registrars, one step below consultants—often in their late 20s or early 30s, looking to form relationships, start families and put down roots. Yet they are given security of tenure of only something like six to 10 months in each posting. That is not acceptable to give them a sense of permanency and value. The Government need to look at this as a matter of urgency. Will they?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble Baroness and I have discussed this in another forum in this House. It is critical that we work with those doctors to find out what their priorities are and how we can work with them to give them more security and to make sure that the training posts are available. I am pleased to say that consultation is on offer around all these points. We have to move forward; the door is open, and we want to discuss how we can make improvements to the contracts.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, obviously, it goes without saying that the industrial action just before Christmas is completely unacceptable, but I would be remiss not to observe that at the time that the 28.9% pay award was made, the Health Secretary attributed problems of industrial relations with resident doctors to the former Government, rather than recognising that it is an ongoing problem. That is a matter of record. I ask the Minister: what estimate is the department making of the impact on other aspects of the NHS, particularly elective operations and primary care, of this completely unreasonable and uncalled-for industrial action?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
As I said earlier, we have done some analysis of the strikes that took place in July, and we are working on the data for November. Obviously, we will take the learning from that through to how we deal with the strikes. I repeat that everyone in the health service has stepped up to the plate to make sure that the impact on patients is as low as possible. We will not shy away from the fact that we think strikes in the week running up to Christmas are completely unacceptable, and I am pleased to say that we have the leadership in the Department of Health from the Secretary of State, who has made his views on this exceptionally plain.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, is it not the case that under the last Government, the health service was wrecked, and doctors’ salaries were controlled to such a level that they fell behind previous years? We have made a substantial increase in pay; should that not mean that doctors think we are committed to the NHS and that they should help us to deliver our aims and objectives?
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My noble friend puts his finger right on it. The facts speak for themselves, and I make no apology for repeating that resident doctors have had the highest pay award of the entire public sector this year: an average of 28.9% compared with three years ago. That is an enormous commitment. It is a recognition of the work they have done and of the fact that their situation had slipped behind. We call upon them now to get round the table and work it out, recognising that there is not more pay on the table at the moment but that there are other ways we can work together to improve their conditions and to make sure that we can all start delivering at full strength.
Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)
My Lords, in response to the previous question from the Benches opposite, I refer the noble Lord, Lord Watts, to a programme on Radio 4 this morning, which made it clear that, since 2015, junior doctors have had sufficient pay rises compared with other parts of the public sector—whether or not that is fair is another matter. Can the Minister tell the House how much the Government have saved on pension contributions that we will not be making to pensions forgone by the strike, as well as on employers’ contributions in relation to holiday pay? If she does not have those figures to hand, I would be grateful if she could write to me and put a copy of the letter in the Library.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The noble Lord has pre-empted my answer: I am very happy to write to him to give him the details he requested.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
Like everyone else, I think that this strike is unacceptable. Nevertheless, instead of consultation, would it not be possible for the Government to organise extra jobs with the NHS? That is one of the problems that I gather the resident doctors are so concerned about.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
The initial offer would have increased the number of training places by 1,000 over three years. The offer has since gone up to 2,000. We recognise that there are shortfalls—it is very patchy and there are differences between departments—which is why we need to have detailed consultations to make sure that the vacancies are in the places that need them. I absolutely agree that we need to increase the number of places available for those doctors.
Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill
(1 day, 5 hours ago)
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Lord Whitehead
That the Bill be read a second time.
Scottish and Northern Ireland legislative consent sought.
The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Whitehead) (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is a great honour to address your Lordships’ House for the first time, and particularly on a subject that has been close to my heart for as long as I can remember; namely, the health and welfare of our planet and how we can protect and repair our oceans—which will be greatly enhanced by the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill that I am introducing today.
I would like to commence my remarks, however, by thanking all those who have welcomed me to your Lordships’ House so warmly and have assisted with my introduction to it. My thanks go to the Garter King of Arms, to the clerks of the House, to Black Rod and, of course, to the esteemed doorkeepers of our House. Indeed, my thanks go also to the marvellous supporters at my introduction—my noble friends Lord Bassam of Brighton and Lady Blake of Leeds—both former council leaders in their cities, as I was for a number of years in Southampton, the city I have lived in all my adult life, and which I had the honour to represent as one of its Members of Parliament for some 27 years. I have spent much of that time in Parliament promoting, advocating for and supporting action to fight climate change, particularly through the establishment of low-carbon energy, and I hope to be able to continue that advocacy in my time in this place.
I have taken the title of Baron Whitehead, of Saint Mary’s in the City of Southampton, as my thanks to the place that has nurtured me and given me all my life chances, and to which I am hopelessly devoted. St Mary’s is the parish in the centre of Southampton and, remarkably, contains two institutions of national and international repute: the St Mary’s Stadium of Southampton Football Club and the National Oceanography Centre. The former is probably of national repute mainly in the minds of its supporters—one of which, alas, I am—but the latter really is a centre of international repute. It has already played a huge role in monitoring and promoting the health and welfare of our oceans and will continue to play a key role in the UK’s approach to the matter following, I hope, the adoption of the Bill.
This is a Bill of ambition and global significance. It will, alongside associated secondary legislation, enable the United Kingdom to implement its obligations in 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 BBNJ agreement—and allow us to take the essential steps required for the UK’s ratification. This is a landmark agreement. It represents the culmination of nearly two decades of international negotiation and determined scientific advocacy. It concerns nothing less than the future of the two-thirds of the world’s oceans that lie beyond the jurisdiction of any single nation.
These vast areas of ocean—remote, largely unexplored but fundamental to life on earth—regulate our climate, sustain fisheries, support communities and host ecosystems of staggering complexity and beauty, yet they are increasingly vulnerable to overexploitation, pollution and the cumulative pressures of climate change. The BBNJ agreement is the world’s collective answer to this challenge. The Bill gives the United Kingdom the means to play its full part in that shared endeavour.
The United Kingdom was among the first countries to sign the BBNJ agreement when it opened for signature at the UN in 2023. We did so because we recognised that the two-thirds of the oceans beyond national jurisdiction must be governed responsibly, transparently and with a shared sense of stewardship. The Bill provides the domestic legislative framework to implement the three core pillars of the BBNJ agreement, relating to marine genetic resources, area-based management tools, including marine protected areas, and environmental impact assessments. It provides for regulation-making powers, allowing us to implement future decisions taken by the BBNJ Conference of the Parties, ensuring that the United Kingdom can remain at the forefront of global ocean governance in the years ahead.
The Bill is divided into five parts, with Parts 2 to 4 aligning directly with the three substantive sections of the BBNJ agreement. Part 2 introduces obligations around the collection, storage, use and reporting of marine genetic resources of areas beyond national jurisdiction and of digital sequence information on those resources. UK researchers operating from UK craft—for example, our royal research ships—will be required to notify a national focal point within the FCDO before and after collecting marine genetic resources, including digital sequence information on those resources in areas beyond national jurisdiction. Repositories and institutions holding marine genetic resources from areas beyond national jurisdictions will be required to provide access to samples under reasonable conditions. This will apply to bodies such as the Natural History Museum, the National Oceanography Centre and UK universities. Similarly, UK databases containing digital sequence information on such resources will need to ensure public access.
Those who make use of such material, whether for academic research or commercial innovation, will be required to notify the national focal point once the results of such research are available, including when those results take the form of published papers or granted patents. The FCDO will send these notifications to the BBNJ clearing house mechanism, an open-access platform enabling parties to the agreement to understand what is being collected and where, and how it is being utilised. This transparency is the foundation of the BBNJ agreement’s benefit-sharing regime. It ensures that researchers in developing states have access to the same scientific information as their counterparts in developed economies.
Marine genetic resources may be the source of tomorrow’s medicines, new sustainable materials, novel enzymes and breakthroughs that we cannot yet imagine. The UK is proud to be home to world-leading institutions such as the Natural History Museum, the National Oceanography Centre—there it is again—and our many outstanding universities. The Bill ensures that they can continue to operate at the cutting edge of marine science while contributing to a fair and inclusive global framework.
Part 3 gives the UK the necessary powers to implement internationally agreed measures relating to marine protected areas and other area-based management tools established under the BBNJ agreement. These measures will be agreed at future meetings of the BBNJ Conference of the Parties and may include restrictions or management measures that apply to activities taking place in areas beyond national jurisdiction. This part enables the UK to implement emergency measures—for example, in response to a sudden environmental disaster requiring urgent international action. In essence, Part 3 ensures that when the international community collectively agrees to take measures to protect a vulnerable ecosystem in areas beyond national jurisdiction, the United Kingdom has the means to act accordingly.
Part 4 updates the UK’s domestic marine licensing regime to incorporate the environmental impact assessment requirements of the agreement as they apply to licensable marine activities taking place in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The Bill grants powers to update domestic legislation as new standards and guidelines are developed by the Conference of the Parties. The ocean economy is evolving rapidly—new technologies, new industries and new pressures. This part ensures that the UK’s regulatory framework remains modern, agile and aligned with international best practice. Put simply, these measures future-proof our environmental assessment process for activities on the high seas.
In addition to this primary legislation, a small number of statutory instruments will be required before the United Kingdom can complete its ratification. These relate in particular to environmental impact assessments and the definition of digital sequence information, and will be laid after Royal Assent. Once that secondary legislation is in place, the UK will be in a position to deposit its instrument of ratification with the United Nations.
As noble Lords may know, the BBNJ agreement will enter into force on 17 January 2026, having now reached the crucial threshold of 60 ratifications. The inaugural Conference of the Parties is expected later that year. Importantly, the UK can attend that conference as a state party only if we have ratified at least 30 days beforehand. That is why timely passage of this Bill is of genuine importance.
The Bill may appear narrowly scoped and targeted, but its implications are profound. It supports the United Kingdom’s commitment to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. It reinforces our belief in multilateralism and the rules-based international system at a time when both face increasing strain. It allows us to address global challenges—climate change, biodiversity loss and food security—not in isolation but in partnership with allies and developing states alike.
The UK’s leadership in the early BBNJ negotiations was informed by the extraordinary expertise of our marine scientists, legal scholars and environmental advocates. Many of them have waited a long time for this moment. Their passion and persistence have been instrumental in bringing this agreement to fruition.
Allow me to recognise the considerable contributions made by noble Lords from across the Chamber, by civil society organisations and by our research community, all of whom have shaped the UK’s approach to the BBNJ agreement. In the spirit of cross-party relations, I pay tribute to the Ministers in the previous Government, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, who were part of the team that signed the treaty on behalf of the UK Government in 2023. I also thank my noble friend the Minister for International Development for the opportunity to open this debate.
The health of our ocean is inseparable from the health of our planet. Although we may not often see these ecosystems with our own eyes, the responsibility to protect them falls on all of us. The BBNJ Bill is our opportunity to rise to that responsibility to safeguard fragile ecosystems, to support sustainable development and to ensure that the benefits of ocean science are shared fairly and responsibly. The United Kingdom has always played a leading role in advancing global ocean governance. With this Bill, we have the chance to continue that leadership. The ocean cannot wait, and nor should we. I beg to move.
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.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to open for the Official Opposition on this important Bill. Before I speak to the Bill, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, to his place on the Front Bench and congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech. He served for many years in the other place and I know that he will bring that wealth of experience to his new role in your Lordships’ House.
Our oceans are home to more than 260,000 species, and their health is essential to the health of our planet. Unlike biodiversity within our borders, every nation has a responsibility to protect the high seas. Two-thirds of the world’s oceans lie beyond the jurisdiction of any single nation. They are wonderfully biodiverse, but we know that they are threatened by a whole host of harms, the most challenging of which include overfishing, manmade pollution and the impact of climate change. It is the duty of us all to take the responsible action needed to safeguard marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdictions.
For many years, Britain has led the way on protecting our oceans. In our domestic waters we have established a network of 296 marine protection areas, protecting over 200,000 square kilometres of sea. Even more significantly, we established the Blue Belt programme, supporting our UK overseas territories to assist them in creating and maintaining healthy and productive marine ecosystems. That programme shows how committed we are to tackling the serious global problems of overfishing, species extinction and climate change. As noble Lords will be aware, the UK overseas territories are estimated to be home to up to 90% of known endemic UK biodiversity, hosting a huge range of unique and endangered species.
Consequently, we have a unique responsibility to protect that biodiversity. Through the Blue Belt programme, the UK and our overseas territories have created over 4.4 million square kilometres of marine protected areas, from the south Atlantic and the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. Can the Minister provide an update on work the United Kingdom Government are doing with our overseas territories to continue that excellent programme as part of the Government’s manifesto commitment to our overseas territories?
During the debates in the other place, serious concerns were raised about the impact of the UK-Mauritius agreement concerning the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, on the protection of marine biodiversity around the Chagos Archipelago. I know the Minister may feel that this issue is not directly concerned with the Bill, but we will be seeking to explore the impact of that agreement on marine biodiversity during the debates on the Bill. It is only right that noble Lords on this side of the House should be given the opportunity in Committee to probe the issue of marine biodiversity in the area around the archipelago.
Turning back to the Bill itself, we are firmly supportive of the Government’s ambition to boost protections for our global marine diversity. As the Minister mentioned, we signed the treaty in 2023 under the previous Government, and we are unwavering in our commitment to biodiversity. That said, as a reasonable Opposition we will scrutinise the Bill in detail to ensure that Parliament has had the opportunity to hear how Ministers intend to use the wide-ranging regulation-making powers contained in the Bill. We will also seek to understand more fully how the Government expect our involvement in the BBNJ’s Conference of the Parties to be managed. We are interested to know where the first marine protected areas under the agreement will be located. I wonder whether the Minister can give us an update on that matter.
On the Conference of the Parties, the agreement has now been ratified by 60 signatories, which means it will come into force in 2026. Once the Bill is passed, do the Government have a target date for ratification so we can play a full role from the moment the treaty comes into effect?
As many noble Lords will know, our UK fishing industry is struggling. The Government have already capitulated on EU access to our fishing waters. What impact do the Government expect the new marine protected areas to have on our domestic fishing fleet, and what steps will be taken to monitor this over time?
We are clear that the United Kingdom must uphold its obligations under this landmark treaty, but we must also keep our own domestic interests in mind at all times. Where MPAs include prohibitions on fishing, what representations will the fishing industry in both the UK and other affected nations be able to make to the Conference of the Parties so that the full impact of those prohibitions can be considered before an MPA is implemented?
We will also seek to probe the UK’s rights should we wish to leave the treaty. We do not expect to find ourselves in that position, but it is only right that we consider how we could practically manage an exit from the treaty should a future Government decide that it is expedient for us to do so. What thoughts have Ministers given to that, and can the Minister outline her expectations of how that process might be managed should the situation arise?
In conclusion, we are firmly supportive of the Bill’s intentions. The Government are right to press ahead with legislation that will allow the treaty to be ratified, and we are proud to have made the UK a signatory of this landmark treaty when we were in government. Marine biodiversity matters, and it is right that we should play our part in protecting it. But that does not mean that we should step back from our duty to do the work of a revising Chamber, to scrutinise the Bill in detail and propose improvements where necessary. We will do that work thoroughly and carefully to ensure that this is the best Bill it can be when it goes on to become law. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I join others in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, to the Front Bench and congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech. I was particularly glad that he gave several marketing plugs for the National Oceanography Centre, which I was responsible for setting up when I was the chief executive of the Natural Environment Research Council. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, for her helpful briefing session on the Bill last week.
I fully support the Government’s intention to ratify the high seas treaty by mid-January 2026 and can see no good reason for preventing this. As the legal adviser to the Alliance of Small Island States said, before the treaty, the high seas were known as the “wild, wild wet”. They are the classic example of the tragedy of the commons. Against this background, I would like to ask the Minister three questions. First, what are we talking about when we refer to marine biodiversity? Secondly, what are the main threats to marine biodiversity? Thirdly, how will the treaty be enforced?
The treaty aims to protect marine biodiversity in the high seas outside exclusive economic zones, but no one knows how many species there are in the oceans. According to the world register of marine species, there are about a quarter of a million known marine species and new species are being discovered at a rate of nearly 2,500 per year. Most of these new species are microscopic benthic crustaceans, molluscs and annelids. It is estimated that there are probably between 1 million and 2 million species still to be discovered. In other words, about 90% of marine biodiversity is unknown, and if we include bacteria and other micro-organisms, the number remaining to be discovered is much greater. In short, we do not know what it is that this treaty aims to protect. Therefore, can the Minister assure us that the Government will support research efforts in our universities, museums and research institutes to fully document marine biodiversity so that we have a better idea of what we are aiming to protect?
My second question concerns the threats to marine biodiversity. There is widespread agreement that human activity is causing the extinction of many species both in the oceans and on land. The Marine Conservation Society lists overfishing, by-catch, climate change, pollution and other human activities such as deep-sea mining among the major causes of loss of marine species. Nearly 38% of the world’s stocks are overfished and an estimated 9 million tonnes a year of fish and other marine organisms are thrown away dead as by-catch. According to the latest figures from Defra, 54% of fish stocks in UK waters are currently overfished. Can the Minister therefore assure us that the Government will press for sustainable management of fisheries in the high seas and reductions in by-catch and, at the same time, set a leadership example by managing our own fish stocks sustainably?
Can the Minister also tell us whether deep-sea marine mining will be included in the treaty? Flora and Fauna International points out that the hotspots for marine biodiversity are often associated with deposits of rare minerals such as cobalt and manganese. These hotspots include the hydrothermal vents where tectonic plates meet and are home to extraordinary creatures able to survive in near-boiling water full of highly toxic chemicals.
I now turn to my third question, on enforcement. The Marine Biological Association says:
“If we have learned anything about marine protected areas within national jurisdiction, designating marine protected areas does not mean effective protection”.
As I understand it, the current regime for enforcement of the law of the sea is based on flag state responsibility. Countries are expected to create offences under national laws and prosecute if there is a violation. The difficulty is that under this regime, vessels can opt for flags with countries that have poor regulation and poor records of prosecution. Can the Minister therefore tell us how the Government envisage the treaty will be effectively enforced?
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, I plan to speak in favour of the Bill before your Lordships’ House at Second Reading, but first I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, on his maiden speech. My first recollection of Southampton was visiting the Royal Research Ship “Bransfield” before it departed for the Antarctic. As a 10 year-old, it was so exciting to explore that ship before it travelled to some of the harshest high seas on the planet.
The world’s oceans support biodiversity, regulate climate, store carbon, sustain global food webs, and provide critical genetic and biological resources. Protecting them is vital not only for ocean health but for the stability and well-being of the entire planet. I thus thank the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, together with the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, for bringing this Bill and for seeking its speedy but well-scrutinised passage so that the UK can have a seat at the first Conference of the Parties to the UN BBNJ.
I start my observations with some medieval manuscripts. Many of the cathedral libraries of this nation contain wonderful collections and, over the years, I have been struck by the amount of graffiti in the margins of such documents—doodles by monks and scholars down through the centuries, which quite frequently are little drawings of scary sea-monsters. The leviathans jump out at you as you turn the vellum. These sea monsters and the mysteries of the recesses of the deep captured the imagination of our forebears.
The flood and Noah; the parting of the Red Sea; the exploits of Jonah in the belly of the whale; the trials of Job when he is asked:
“Have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?”;
the sea journeys of St Paul, with his dramatic shipwreck; and the Book of Revelation’s glassy sea—all have been analysed and interpreted, and, yes, doodled. Long has been the respect for the sea and the oceans: this place of chaos beyond our taming, of mystery with depths beyond human reach, and with glimpses of its wonders reported back by adventurous travellers. Indeed, 32 of the 150 psalms refer to the sea. For example, the psalmist speaks of how:
“Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the mighty waters. They saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works in the deep”.
Those wondrous works in the deep are under threat. We have lost respect for the high seas in favour of an exploitative attitude. Deep-sea mining, overfishing, pollution, ocean acidification, oil and gas extraction are all threats being faced. Our oceans provide diverse ecosystems, including hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, with many endemic species within a small area. Our oceans act as the largest carbon sinks on the planet, storing it in deep-sea sediments, reducing atmospheric CO2 and slowing global warming. Our oceans are nursery grounds for commercially important species and play an important role in the lifecycle of many others, including creatures great and small—known and yet unknown, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, outlined. Our oceans recycle nutrients that eventually resurface and support marine food webs. Our oceans are reserves of genetic and biological resources, including species with such unique adaptations that they can live in extreme pressure—in darkness and toxic chemical environments—all of which are potentially valuable in biotechnology, medicine and industry. The list goes on.
In ratifying the BBNJ agreement, though, we need to ensure that our own waters are conserved and well managed, particularly the biodiversity of our marine protected areas. That is why I urge His Majesty’s Government to publish their response to the consultation on bottom-trawling in marine protected areas. Can the Minister also update your Lordships on progress towards a complete ban on that seabed-damaging activity in these areas, as advised by the Environmental Audit Committee? Protecting our oceans is vital not only for ocean health, but for the stability of the entire planet and the flourishing of humanity. That is why the Government are right to bring forward the ratification of the high seas treaty, and I fully support them.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, the adoption of the high seas treaty in 2023 marked one of the most significant achievements in international environmental governance in decades. The treaty fills a crucial gap in ocean regulation by establishing a comprehensive framework to conserve and sustainably use marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction. That area makes up nearly two-thirds of the world’s ocean. I am proud that the United Kingdom played a decisive role in securing this agreement, with the UK Government helping to push the negotiations towards a successful conclusion. I am grateful to the Minister for giving me and my noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon some credit. I think it is also worth crediting my noble friends Lord Goldsmith and Lord Benyon on their role in the negotiations, even if I did modestly play a part in it myself. Also, Boris Johnson drove a lot of this environmental work in the previous Government.
I regret the five-minute advisory speaking time; it seems to be a habit of the Government to try and curtail speeches, though so few people have put in to speak on this very important Bill. Nevertheless, what I do not regret is seeing the new Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, in his place. He was a Member of Parliament for over 25 years and a shadow Energy Minister for over nine years. It is great to see him finally—it is not the first time he is a Minister—be an Energy Minister in this Administration. I know from the work I enjoyed with him when I was in the Commons how thoughtful, considerate and competent this new Minister truly is. I look forward to working with him on many other issues affecting our planet.
While I am conscious the Minister mentioned a timely passage being important, I will not be churlish by saying that it has taken over a year to get the Bill to this stage. However, I want to ask the Minister why in this Bill we need further regulations to bring this into effect. While I had hoped that we would not need any amendments, I suppose I am giving due warning that I will be tabling an amendment to try and remove that. From my perspective, it seems entirely redundant, especially when we know that the treaty in effect will come into force not just next year but next month, as more than 60 countries have already ratified it. It is important that, having been at the leading edge of making sure that we have got this treaty with many negotiations that were, frankly, pretty tough at times, we continue to make sure we have a seat at the table when the COP first resumes.
One of the things that has been important in getting to this point has been demonstrating by our domestic leadership what we were able to do without threatening our economy, being fully mindful that, while the ocean has given so much to us, we have not recognised that until recently. It is absolutely vital to recognise that we have taken advantage of the ocean more or less for free. We now need to repay that and actually give the ocean a rest. The importance of biodiversity is critical in our oceans. That is going to be taking quite a lot of the relationships that we have developed over many years.
I also want to ask the Minister—my noble friend Lord Courtown referred to this—about the Blue Belt, which has been one of the most important elements of UK government policy in working with overseas territories in trying to enhance the biodiversity in our oceans. But I have noticed in this Bill no specific overseas territory is currently included. While an Order in Council can make that happen, in the UK Overseas Territories Biodiversity Strategy, which was published within the last week, only one overseas territory made any reference to the BBNJ, and that was Bermuda, in thinking about and particularly referencing the Sargasso Sea. I am very keen to understand what discussions the Minister has had with overseas territories regarding this because, candidly, we need to get the overseas territories fully engaged. By the way, that may mean us coughing up some cash. We certainly did plenty of that, never mind through the Blue Belt fund but also through a variety of other mechanisms, as my noble friend also referred to earlier regarding the Commonwealth charter. It is vital that we have them fully engaged in something which is so precious to our planet going forward.
Thinking through some of the other aspects of the Bill, I will not digress into other issues that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, referred to, such as a deep-sea mining. I appreciate that this is not the role of this specific treaty, and certainly in this Bill we are referring to elements of the legislation that need to be adapted. But I wanted to clarify, in Clause 8, why this does not apply to the Antarctic. I am conscious that there is already an Antarctic Act and a treaty, but I appreciate that CCAMLR is precarious—no, that is not the right word, but I am conscious that it can be quite challenging considering the role of the Antarctic. However, I would have thought that this area of the world would lend itself massively to having a BBNJ MPA designation.
On other aspects of BBNJ—
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Lemos) (Lab)
I note the noble Baroness’s comment about the advisory speaking time, but I would be grateful if she could bring things to a close.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
I am grateful for the advice, but I will carry on with a few things. We get criticised in Committee for doing Second Reading speeches when we are trying to understand the passage of the Bill at this key point.
Another aspect that has been mentioned is: where could it be? It had widely been expected that the first BBNJ MPA would be waters between the Galápagos Islands and Ecuador, but there is a golden opportunity to consider those between Tristan da Cunha and a Commonwealth country: Namibia.
I am conscious of what the Whip has just said, but we need to explore why some of the other clauses are in here. Looking at other parts of Clause 25, can the Minister explain subsection (3)? Clause 25(5) seems to be the classic, “In case we’ve forgotten something, we’ll shove this in here” part of the Bill. I would not like to think that that is what we need to do with this treaty, but I am sure that we will explore that in Committee, sadly —because I had hoped we would not need amendments. I want the Bill to go through as quickly as possible, but we need to remove some of the barriers currently in the way, making sure that we can be part of the first COP in 2026.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I too welcome the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, of Saint Mary’s, to his seat in your Lordships’ House and to the Dispatch Box. It was wonderful to hear such a green-minded speech; over the past few years, they have become more common here, but they are still very welcome. I particularly liked his commenting on protecting and repairing our ocean and high seas. It is absolutely crucial that we understand how much damage we have done already and that we try our best to recover it if we can.
The UK was one of the first countries to sign up to the UN agreement on the law of the sea, and we have been active in shaping the treaty, so it makes sense to pass this Bill as soon as possible. I want to flag up some reasons why this agreement is a good idea but also what protections Ministers should seek next. The good things are as follows. It is good for UK science: our very own National Oceanography Centre is one of the world leaders in ocean scientific research, and this Bill will ensure that marine science and technology can develop to further understand and meet the demands of a changing climate. It is good for marine life and ecosystems: our oceans are full of beautiful things, and protecting our oceans ensures that that beauty survives. We are far too careless about such a precious complex of ecosystems that we barely know anything about. It is also good for UK food security: a thriving sea is full of life, and some of that life can help to sustain our lives and our economy. We must regulate and manage the competition for marine genetic resources that can be used to support the development of new drugs, cosmetics, food and industrial processes.
But, currently, our oceans are collapsing under the strains of plastic pollution, bottom trawling, massive mining projects, toxic dumping and climate change. It is this combined assault on ecosystems that will collapse life in the seas. These problems make international treaties crucial and urgent. The scale of this agreement is huge. It will help to protect two-thirds of the world’s oceans. It has the kind of vision that will help us to deal with the rapidly developing impacts of climate change. However, as is usual with this Government and the last, Ministers are trying to grab additional powers via secondary legislation. It would make sense to increase parliamentary scrutiny of secondary powers. Good policy requires accountability.
We need to ensure that our Government listen to a range of experts, not just to those people with loads of cash who can use money and personal contacts to gain access to the detailed discussions. My biggest concerns are monitoring and enforcement: I simply do not understand how those two things will happen in any sort of efficient way. I would like us to become a world leader in pushing for the establishment of marine protected areas in places beyond national jurisdiction. We should be aiming to protect 30% of the world’s marine areas by 2030—and I do mean “protect”. For example, Greenpeace has found that 90% of our marine protected areas are not really protected at all. There is no meaningful site-wide regulation of the most destructive fishing activity. Greenpeace says of our MPA protection that it is rhetoric over reality, and I think this treaty could be the same. Being a world leader means enforcing the strictest regulation of the existing marine protected areas in UK territorial waters, with an end to bottom trawling and devastating mining operations. I hope that the Minister will help us to do that in a very fast way.
So far, the Trump Administration have not ratified the treaty and have pursued issuing deep-ocean mining licences unilaterally, ignoring the UN-backed International Seabed Authority. The demand for mining minerals is rising, when we barely know anything about our deep seabed. We must also end the public subsidy of pollution within freeports, as we saw up in Teesside, when the dredging of industrial chemicals that had been buried for decades allegedly led to the mass deaths of crabs and lobsters along the north-east coast of England. More deregulation of freeports will mean more environmental problems and more taxpayer money spent cleaning up the mess at a future date.
While I am sure that most here would like this Bill to pass so that we can sign up to international law, 30 days before the ratification, I would say that it does not go far enough to protect our ocean. Can the Minister tell me how strongly this Government will live up to the rhetoric?
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?
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, on his opening speech, his maiden speech, opening his scoring in this House. May his subsequent contributions be as good as this one: it will be a fine record.
The Bill to which we are giving a Second Reading today, the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdictions Bill, has a complex and difficult to understand title, and an equally complex content. Nevertheless, I argue that it is a necessary and desirable major step towards implementing some of the obligations the UK assumed when it signed two other important international treaties, the Law of the Sea Convention, known as UNCLOS, and the Biodiversity Convention, both of which we signed more than 30 years ago and subsequently ratified. I should perhaps admit that I was Britain’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations when the negotiations of those two founding treaties were concluded. Both were concluded under a Conservative Government whose Prime Minister was John Major, who picked up the baton first held by the late Baroness Thatcher, who came to realise that collective global action was a necessity if the challenges of global warming and loss of biodiversity were to be reversed, or at least mitigated. So I suggest at the outset that this implementing measure deserves to be treated on a non-party basis. Whether it will be is for others to decide.
The urgency of the legislation we are discussing has been spoken to by several noble Lords. It will enable the UK to participate from the outset in the governance procedures of this convention, protecting the biodiversity of those sea areas that fall outside national jurisdictions—what is often known as the “open seas”. Those seas are open too to abuse amounting to plunder, and thus require protection, and Britain’s record justifies and requires its presence on these governance procedures, which, whatever we decide, will enter into force at the beginning of 2026. The historical record of those who fish in and otherwise exploit the resources of these waters is not, let us face it, a good one. Modern technology has facilitated overfishing of stocks, some of them to extinction, and the enlargement of the areas where exploitation can take place is an inevitable result of global warming, particularly in the Arctic, making the problem more extensive and the need for protective regulation, such as this convention provides the basis for, more urgent. That regulation cannot be successfully achieved on a national rather than an international basis, as the provisions of this Bill eloquently demonstrate.
We often hear in this House about the need to defend the rules-based international order. That catch-all phrase probably confuses as much as it persuades, but there can be little doubt that that order is under serious threat on issues relating to international peace and security, world trading rules and the environment. Here is an opportunity not just to circle the wagons around existing rules but to extend their scope, which is, in general terms, the Government’s policy and that of the Official Opposition. We need to take it up.
This debate would not be complete without a reference to one notable and substantial absentee: the United States of America. The US Congress has declined to ratify the Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS, despite its provisions being so valuable to its strategic interests—for example, in the South China Sea—that the US recognises UNCLOS as customary international law. It declined to sign the biodiversity convention in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and has sustained that refusal ever since on the erroneous grounds that it would damage the US’s biotechnology industries, even though the main failing of the biodiversity convention is that it is too weak, not too strong. America will decide for itself what is in its interest, but I hope the Minister will confirm, when winding up the debate, that we will continue to urge the US to join these conventions and to hold the door open for it, should it have a change of heart.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Whitehead on joining this House. He and I worked together in the 1997 Labour Government, when he was an enormous support to me. I know he will make a huge contribution to the House.
I was a member of the International Relations and Defence Committee when it wrote a report in 2022 called UNCLOS: The Law of the Sea in the 21st Century. Underlying its recommendations was the committee’s view that:
“As a major maritime power, the UK has a strong role to play in the development and maintenance of the law of the sea”.
As such, the UK must meet 21st century challenges to ensure the usefulness and relevance of UNCLOS. Many of the report’s recommendations related to issues that are not the direct subject of the Bill, but will the Government make a progress report on their more recent work covering these matters, including human rights and labour protections at sea? There are shocking examples of human rights law being broken, with forced labour and appalling working conditions. These include breaches of maritime security, including piracy and armed robbery at sea. Many such crimes take place partly because of the failure of regulation resulting from the system of flags of convenience, which cries out for reform. There is a need for an oceans strategy, as requested by Sarah Champion MP in another place. Can the Minister respond on that?
I turn to the central purpose of the Bill. The Select Committee also identified the importance of protecting biodiversity in the context of climate change and dangerous increases in the temperature of the ocean. In doing so, it pointed out the huge role the oceans play in absorbing carbon dioxide released since industrialisation. It also took evidence on the damage that land-based pollution causes to the marine environment, such as ocean acidification and changes to ocean circulations, which in turn can destroy marine species and the vital environments, such as coral reefs and mangrove forests, that support them.
I therefore welcome this Bill and congratulate the Government on introducing it. I ask that it completes its enactment in time for the ratification of the treaty. The Minister has explained the urgent need to put into domestic law protections that apply to international rather than domestic waters.
The Bill is largely technical, but the section on marine genetic resources strikes me as particularly important. Valuable scientific projects on the high seas are being carried out by British teams, often in international collaborations. I support new regulatory requirements extending reporting to the Secretary of State and do not believe that responsible scientists should see this as overly intensive regulation. I also support the area-based management tools set out in Part 3.
I have two questions for the Minister. First, with their new powers to act in international waters, will UK regulatory bodies such as the Marine Management Organisation need to abide by principles set out in the Environment Act 2021, such as the “polluter pays” and precautionary principles? Secondly, how do the Government intend to work with non-signatories, in particular—following up on what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said—with the US, which signed up originally but will not ratify the treaty? It is surely vital that we try to persuade it to take into account the issues that the treaty raises.
I end by welcoming what the Minister in another place said about UK support for a moratorium on deep-sea mining. I also welcome her statement that the UK will lead the world in the vital protection of our shared oceans, which was endorsed by my noble friend the new Minister in opening this debate. I am sure the Minister who winds up will want to say the same.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his place and express my admiration that he has made his maiden speech in proposing such an important debate.
We know that the areas outside territorial limits, which we know as the high seas, belong to us all. Nobody would sensibly talk against the sensible proposals to protect the deep blue lungs of the world and the natural fauna and flora that live there. I have sailed across the Atlantic on a tall ship. I have sailed a Topper dinghy in the Sargasso Sea, which my noble friend Lady Coffey mentioned. Probably few noble Lords have been as close to the briny as I have. Last week, I was highlighting deep-sea shipping in Trinidad, bringing 50,000-tonne deadweight tankers via ocean trade to the United Kingdom. Those are my bona fides.
I will focus on two themes. First, the deep ocean supports shipping, fibre-optics, pipelines and the connectors that sustain a global economy. This cannot be just about the turtles, important as they are. Secondly, among all the mutual back-slapping and self-congratulation in this Room, there is a proverbial elephant—or blue whale. I refer to the risks of the uninsured dark fleet, the Wild West which operates outside the conventions and rules of the sea. By omitting to mention these two items, the Bill is deficient. This Second Reading provides an opportunity for the Government to repair that defect.
The natural environment must be shared with the commercial environment, which is the medium across which ships pass between countries in pursuit of the global trade which brings 90% of goods to our nation. I am disappointed that the Bill does not realise the reality that London is the place where global shipping meets, trades and agrees rules and contracts. That is a missed opportunity and ignores the global expertise on our doorstep. I depart from my noble friend Lady Coffey in saying that the Bill should be amended; it should. I am concerned that Part 3 and Clause 11 in particular allow the Secretary of State to make proposals for the inclusion of certain areas and Clause 12 provides for enforcement, but neither in this part nor in the Bill more widely are the economy or London stakeholders mentioned or referred to.
I have read the treaty. It makes passing reference to the IMO, but I would have expected the Bill documentation to have made reference not just to the IMO, which is based in London, but also to Lloyd’s—marine insurers, the publishers of Lloyd’s List—based in London; the global P&I clubs, the regulatory syndicates, which are hosted in Leadenhall Street, in London; Clarksons and Braemar, the world’s leading shipbrokers, just around the corner in Trafalgar Square, in London; and the Baltic Exchange, in London. I have not even mentioned the whole panoply of other professionals, including specialist shipping lawyers such as Clyde & Co. In essence, we do not own ships any more, but the ships play by London’s rules. But you would never guess it from the Bill. We should rectify that deficiency.
Where are the statutory tests that will require the Secretary of State, in pursuance of the powers, to consider the important balance between the economy, shipping, our interests and our regulatory interest based in London? Failure to reach the appropriate balance could end up with the equivalent of another £100 million bat bridge or another useless £700 million fish disco. That is the jeopardy we face.
I said that the shipping world plays by London’s rules. For the most part, it does, but we are missing the reference to the “dark fleet”: a network of ships, often poorly maintained, transporting illicit cargoes, with obscured ownership, a lack of insurance, deceptive tactics, going dark, flag hopping, and bilge cleaning at sea—and full of hostile actors. We had a debate last week on that narrow point. I am mentioning it because the dark fleet poses significant risks of damaging not only maritime safety but the environment that the Bill seeks to remedy. Silence on our approach to the dark fleet and other hostile actors diminishes the effectiveness of the Bill.
I know it is the Minister’s maiden outing, but he has a huge amount of experience, having been a Member of Parliament in the other place for Southampton. I therefore respectfully ask him: how can we spend precious parliamentary time on only half the benefit, without considering those modern pirates of the high seas? If we are sincere about protecting our fragile ecosystems, we need to ensure that all ships, not just ships of compliant nations, recognise the objectives of the Bill. Once we slap each other on the back, we need to recognise that London—and, in its wider sense, the economy—is balanced between these well-meaning and important biodiversity objectives. But, without a strong economy, we will not be able to protect the environment in the way we want to, in a world that is full of bad actors.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, as the new Minister. I particularly agree with his comment on the excellence of the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. There is another important maritime organisation based in Southampton, namely the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, the regulator of the maritime sector and shipping. I declare my interest as its chair, and also as an honorary officer in the Royal Navy.
I am therefore prompted immediately to respond to some of the important points just made by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. I totally agree with his paean of praise for the importance of the maritime sector in the UK, although, in fairness, we have to accept that the scope of the Bill is restricted specifically to the implementation of the BBNJ treaty. I therefore interpret his speech as a call for a broader piece of maritime legislation in a future King’s Speech, which would enable us to tackle many of the vital points he has just raised.
Lord Fuller (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. It is important, because I have read the treaty, which says:
“Nothing in this Agreement shall prevent a Party”—
us—
“from adopting more stringent measures with respect to its nationals and vessels … with regard to activities under its jurisdiction or control in addition to those adopted under this Part, in accordance with international law and in support of the objectives of the Agreement”.
I therefore hear what the noble Lord says about scope, but we have the power in front of us to extend that scope—and I think we should, because London is the heart of global shipping. People look to London to set the lead, and we have an opportunity to do so, but the Bill does not.
Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)
I will come on to discuss that very point. I think the noble Lord is referring to Article 25 of the treaty, on which it would be worth testing the Government more.
Before getting to that, I start by saying, like other noble Lords, that we must recognise that the BBNJ treaty is an important evolutionary moment in international maritime law, going back to the debate that kicked off in the early 1600s between Grotius and Selden about open seas and closed seas. Here we have the common heritage of the oceans and a practical mechanism for making at least incremental progress. However, we should not get too carried away with optimism because, frankly, the scale and urgency of the challenge around what is happening in our oceans—our life-support system—demands, at the very least, the measures set out in this Bill, and probably more.
Therefore, the question that we will want to test is: as the Bill, and the treaty more generally, are implemented, what will be the practical impact? There are several areas that I will raise with the Minister. First, there is the question of the exemptions for intellectual property around marine genetic resources. There is a reasonable balance to be struck here. I believe that the Minister in the Commons, Seema Malhotra, has said that the Government will not notify for data that is protectable under IP provisions, but it would be useful to hear more from Ministers on how they think the IP regime will work in juxtaposition to the broader public goals of the treaty itself.
Secondly, a number of noble Lords have cited the links between the Bill and other maritime legal regimes, in particular the International Seabed Authority. The area does not correspond to the high seas, as we know. I totally endorse the point from the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that mining, even if it is under the ISA’s exploratory category, will clearly have consequences for marine biology and diversity. Therefore, it would be of great importance to understand from the Government what influence and forcefield can continue to be placed around the ISA to ensure that, for example, it adopts the more rigorous environmental assessment standards implied by the BBNJ agreement, and to hear more about how that will work in practice.
Finally, on enforcement, the reality is that, under UNCLOS, as we have heard from other noble Lords, IUU fishing and overexploitation in coastal MPAs—and certainly in the high seas—are continuing. Flag hopping, flags of convenience and fake flags all stand in the way of the goals set out in the treaty. Coming back to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, my question relates to Article 25.4, which states that parties can adopt measures over and above the flagging measure set out in our domestic Bill,
“to support the implementation of the decisions and recommendations made by the Conference of the Parties”.
Does that mean, for example, an enhanced role for constabulary or fisheries protection-type interventions in the high seas, where they are designated as area-based management zones or MPAs? An early test case for this might be the opportunity to develop an MPA covering the so-called “blue hole” north of the Falklands on the EEZ border with Argentina, where this is precisely the sort of mechanism that could correspond to a long-standing problem. If we saw action there, we would begin to believe that the Bill—the Act—has teeth.
Lord Lennie (Lab)
My Lords, I speak as a Member replacing the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, on the Environment and Climate Change Committee and as a resident of the North Shields Fish Quay on the mouth of the Tyne—you will find it if you go to Newcastle and turn right—which is currently celebrating 800 years since its foundation. It is well worth a visit for anyone who has a day or two to spare.
I have never considered the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, to have been an eco-warrior—but fair play to him. He was one of the early signatories, of the 145 representing different nations, to the agreement that gives rise to this piece of legislation. So credit where credit is due: without that signatory, we would not be where we are today. I also give credit to the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for her role in that.
I welcome the return to Parliament of Labour’s own green-energy warrior, Alan Whitehead—my noble friend the Minister—who spoke with great authority, experience and expertise when making his impassioned maiden speech, for which he is to be truly congratulated.
Among others celebrating the regulation of the deep blue seas, which we are about to pass, will be the sharks, whales, turtles and other marine life that can be assured that nations recognise the need to exercise control over their own activities and craft sailing in the high seas. This is excellent news and the Government are to be congratulated on committing to this legislation. It is unfortunate, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, pointed out, that some countries have not yet signed, but the door remains open for that to happen.
Our failure to pass this legislation—and I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, has some objections to it—would have a seriously detrimental effect on the UK’s ability to influence a wider community and would present a risk of reputational damage to our position as one of the leaders in achieving global biodiversity targets.
The Bill will achieve a number of important things. MPAs will be established on the high seas, meaning that they should benefit from protections, just as national waters do, and there will be fair and shared access to the benefits of research and discovery, which will benefit the health and well-being of all signatory nations, meaning that smaller nations and less economically powerful nations will not be disadvantaged as breakthroughs are made in medicine and agricultural fields. It will strengthen our environmental impact assessments in determining whether potential gains outweigh the risks of marine exploration. It will increase and improve capacity in building, and technology transfer is making for a sustainable and inclusive ocean economy and overcoming the unlicensed approach.
I have just one question for the Minister. How big a deal is the absence of nations such as the United States from the early signatories of this agreement?
Baroness Redfern (Con)
My Lords, I thank your Lordships for allowing me to speak in the gap and congratulate the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, on his excellent maiden speech. As he said, the Bill is about ambition.
This important piece of legislation will protect two-thirds of the world’s oceans with the jurisdiction of a single nation—the home of precious inhabitants and the ecosystems that provide the delicate health needed. It provides marine protected areas for generations to come. As we all know, our world’s oceans are under significant threat. The Bill incorporates protecting and improving the marine environment in the UK, as well as internationally, to meet the global commitment of protecting 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030.
Oceans need action now from international communities helping to forge international relationships to ensure that exploitation is curtailed. Bottom-trawl fishing is highly destructive, damages the seabed and is still permitted. I vehemently hope that this practice can and will be halted.
The UK’s attention is drawn to hidden overfishing. Illegal discards and by-catch are unaccounted for in our fishing quotas as we continue to overfish and pollute our oceans, so action is very much needed. In the equation, too, is plastic production and waste, which have doubled in the last 15 to 20 years, to the extent that we now see plastic floating in our oceans. That has to be taken to task in order to breathe life back to protect our vital marine corridors for endangered marine mammals and birds. Oceans matter. They are host to almost 80% of all forms of biodiversity, which transcend our national borders.
It is pleasing that the figure of 60 countries having ratified the treaty was reached in September 2025, when Morocco and Sierra Leone deposited the 60th and 61st instruments of ratification. It will come into force next month, in January 2026, and is a huge step forward.
The Chagos Islands have vast marine protected areas around them and provide a safe corridor for migratory species. If we are to hand over the islands, what assurances have been given by Mauritius for marine protection, with ensured future funding?
The Bill will play a significant part in enabling and protecting our shared blue belt from further irreversible harm to enable healthy oceans for a healthy planet. I support the UK in meeting its international commitments, reinforcing its leadership in global ocean governance and supporting sustainable marine resource use. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, to the Government; I used to work closely with him in opposition. I guarantee to him that if we can continue the co-operation that we had in trying to achieve the areas in climate change and energy that we often discussed, these Benches will be absolutely behind him. When he said he was going to resign from his seat at the next general election, I said to him that I was sure he would rebound back into this House, and here we are, so our congratulations from these Benches.
The Liberal Democrats and these Benches really welcome the Bill, and indeed the treaty, and it is always great to speak in the House when all sides of the House are pretty well at one. I just have a slight trepidation in that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, who is following me, has a reputation in this House for being quite combative. I will be interested to see what he has to say. I am still in some trepidation as to the unanimity of the House, but we will see. The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, sounded positive, so that is something.
The way in which we judge this from these Benches—I have said this to Ministers before—is by looking at how ambitious the United Kingdom is, not just in ratifying this treaty but in making it work, do something and add to global biodiversity and the health of our planet. I am pleased that the Minister was very positive in that way. But like the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, I read the UK Overseas Territories Biodiversity Strategy, which was released last week, and there is just that one mention of the BBNJ in there. As she pointed out very well, it was mentioned only once in some 120 pages, on Bermuda and the Sargasso Sea. I will be very interested to hear from the Minister, when she responds to this debate, about other specific areas, such as the Falklands, particularly as regards the Argentinian connection. That is an excellent suggestion. Let us have an agenda there that works.
One area in particular is not really covered by this biodiversity treaty—and we have to remember the major frustration that we cannot amend the treaty, only the legislation. I am sure we would all have liked it to be stronger, but we cannot change it. Ironically, one of the areas it really leaves out is fisheries, which are the biggest threat to biodiversity and have been over time, maybe apart from climate change and acidification, which others have mentioned. We are a member of five so-called regional fisheries management organisations, which span those high seas: two tuna ones, one in the Indian Ocean, a salmon Atlantic one, and the north-east Atlantic and north-west Atlantic fishing organisations. Because of the enforcement problems that we know we have, those organisations have great intentions and are important but are not as strong as they need to be. My question to the Minister is: do we have an agenda, a wish and a determination, apart from just ratifying this treaty, to make those regional fisheries management organisations work better and to be more effective to, if you like, surf the wave further towards helping biodiversity?
I was delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, mentioned the UNCLOS treaty, because like her I was on the International Relations and Defence Committee when we looked at it. In a way it is the Achilles heel of this treaty, because its fundamental status is to say, from way back in history, that outside territorial waters and certainly outside EEZs on the high seas, you cannot intervene on other flagged vessels without going through a very long process. That is a particular problem because of the way in which flag states operate.
Noble Lords will know that the major nations with the biggest fleets and tonnage are Liberia, Panama and the Marshall Islands. The UK is 27th on that list. We have 1,000 vessels of over 100 tonnes. Panama has eight times that number. However, when it comes to tonnage, we have only 1/25th of the tonnage that Panama has because operators and state companies choose their own flag of convenience and are often not able to respond in the way that they do. Fundamentally, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, pointed out, to make the enforceability and effectiveness of this treaty much better we have to try to tighten up on that situation. The report that we referred to asked the Government to look again at the 1986 UN Convention on Conditions for Registration of Ships. That was some time ago. There have been only 17 ratifications; it needs 40 to come into force. I would love the United Kingdom to re-energise that treaty and try to get it implemented. It would make a huge difference in terms of enforceability for the Bill.
Moving on to the genetic and digital sequence side, we have mentioned the United States of America, which, under the Biden Administration, did sign this treaty but will never sign it during the Trump Administration. We might talk strongly to the United States, but there is no way that it will sign this treaty. The International Maritime Organization that we have talked about, working on the other side of the Thames, is really important. Two months ago, through intimidation, America stopped an international agreement on carbon emissions of vessels on the high seas that was about to be signed. That treaty was sunk by the United States through very aggressive activity. There is no chance whatever of the United States signing this one.
My question to the Minister is: what stops the excellent data sharing and sharing of scientific information for genetic material and digital sequence information? If British companies or British people wish to do that, what is to stop them offshoring that activity to the United States and carrying it out there without having to comply with this treaty? That is a difficult one. I would be interested to understand whether the Government have thought about that and what they might do.
Internationally, we need to look in the mirror. A number of noble Lords have said this. We are not perfect at looking after our biodiversity within our own waters and our own EEZ. Defra’s recent draft strategic look at fisheries and biodiversity has pointed out that the north-east Atlantic is one of the worst for depletion of fisheries and biodiversity. We have that in our own backyard. We need to get this right. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I have often called for remote electronic monitoring—of not just our own fleet but anybody that comes within our EEZ. The Government have a consultation out on that. It is one of two trials that have had very little reaction from the fisheries industry, but this would be good for it as well as for us. Let us do that.
These Benches welcome this treaty. We want to get it through quickly. We want it ratified. We want the United Kingdom to be positive, an implementer and one of the nations that ensures that this treaty, difficult though it is, is a real success for the high seas.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, I join others in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Whitehead, to his place on the Government Front Bench. When I was a Minister in DESNZ and he was shadow Energy Minister in the other place, we often appeared on panels and at seminars together and very rarely disagreed on most of the issues. He understands the energy brief extremely well and I am sure he will be a great success in his ministerial position. I look forward to seeing how he progresses.
I am sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, but we support this important Bill implementing a landmark agreement that we signed when we were in government, as my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lord Courtown reminded us. Biodiversity is important both here and abroad, and the Government are right to continue our work to protect marine diversity both at home and on the high seas.
As my noble friend Lord Courtown said, in government we had a strong record on biodiversity. Beyond signing 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—quite a mouthful —we implemented our world-leading Blue Belt programmes supporting our overseas territories in delivering protection for endemic marine biodiversity. Meanwhile, we ensured that around 40% of the UK’s domestic waters are protected by appropriate marine protected areas. These efforts, which are a continuation of the policy started by the previous Government, put the UK at the forefront of the global effort to protect 30% of global seas by 2030.
Ministers will have our support as they work to protect the world’s oceans from the harms of overfishing, pollution and climate change, but we need to get the details right, and we will be monitoring the Government’s approach to ensure that they really are doing the best that they can to protect marine biodiversity in our home waters as well as playing a full role in our worldwide effort to protect our oceans.
As we have already heard from a number of speakers, the UK is doing a great deal already to protect marine biodiversity, but protecting our oceans, as a number of noble Lords have reminded us, cannot be achieved unilaterally. When she replies, will the Minister provide the House with an update on the work that her department and others in government are doing to ensure that our partners across the world are doing their part in also protecting our oceans? What processes, for example, exist under this treaty to ensure that signatories fulfil their obligations and what consequences would there be for a nation that is a signatory to the treaty which fails to fulfil those obligations? Without firm commitment from all signatories, we will struggle to achieve the benefits for marine biodiversity, so it is essential that the UK continues to play a full role in encouraging other global partners to step up to the demands of this treaty. Can the Minister also confirm whether the UK will support other signatories where they lack the necessary administrative or scientific expertise, for example, to fulfil their obligations under the treaty? If so, what form would that support take and how would it be funded?
The location of the new marine protected areas, as my noble friend said, is important. Any clarity that Ministers can provide on that would be helpful to the House as we consider this treaty. It has also been noted that it will come into effect in early 2026. I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that. Any other timelines which go along with the secondary legislation would also be helpful to the House.
How many of those MPAs will include prohibitions on fishing when they are introduced? We on these Benches are proud to back the UK fishing industry, so of course we need to get the balance right between MPAs that rightly prohibit overfishing and continuing to protect the sustainability of our fishing industry. I will not repeat the point on EU fishing rights in UK waters, but we are disappointed with the Government’s approach on this. We will continue to hold the Government to account. It is essential to get the balance right for our fishing communities, which have been, in our view, badly treated by the agreements that this Government have made.
My noble friend Lord Courtown summed up our approach to this Bill very well at the beginning of this debate. We will not seek to delay or undermine this important piece of legislation, and we want to support the Government in getting the Bill, which is necessary for ratification, on to the statute books in good time, not least to allow ratification to happen before the treaty comes into effect early next year.
That said, we will of course look at the Bill in detail as it progresses through its stages. In the other place, we sought to amend the regulation-making powers to improve parliamentary accountability, and a number of Members have referred to that. We sought to require Ministers to report to Parliament on the use of those powers under this Bill and the enforcement of the treaty. We will return to the issues of accountability and reporting in Committee, as well as looking at the impact of the treaty on UK-based businesses, particularly, as I mentioned, the sustainability of our fishing fleet.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and my noble friend Lady Redfern, mentioned the important issue of the UK’s approach to the Chagos Archipelago. We debated this extensively during the recent treaty legislation and the Minister knows well that we are extremely concerned about the Government’s political decision to hand over the islands to Mauritius. This means that the UK will no longer be able to play a full role, as we would have played previously, in protecting the rich marine biodiversity around those islands.
Mauritius is also a signatory to the UN agreement on marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction, and the UK’s treaty with Mauritius establishes a marine protected area around the islands—although we are extremely concerned with its ability to enforce it. Will the Minister please take the opportunity to set out what levers and mechanisms the UK will retain and be able to use under the UN agreement to ensure that Mauritius fulfils its obligations on marine biodiversity?
We will not waver in our support for global collaboration on marine biodiversity. Healthy oceans are essential, and this treaty is, in our view, a real step forward in the fight against the harms of overfishing, pollution and climate change. Ministers are right to continue the excellent work that we started in this area, but we reserve the right to scrutinise the Bill in detail—and perhaps disagree with some of the details—when it progresses to its next legislative stage.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
My Lords, I begin, as others have done, by congratulating my noble friend Lord Whitehead on his excellent maiden speech. He brings to this House a wealth of experience from his distinguished career in energy and environmental policy. I know that both the House, and the Government in particular, will benefit greatly from his insight in the months and years ahead. I speak personally in saying that he brings great insight and experience and an incredibly dry sense of humour. Behind his very serious demeanour, he has an incredible wit, and has had me in stitches on many occasions. I will leave everybody else to look forward to those moments ahead.
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to today’s debate. It has been thoughtful, constructive and rigorous. Many of the views that we have heard this afternoon reflect the House at its best. It has been particularly encouraging to hear broad support across all Benches for this important legislation.
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, made a very important point, which I expect I shall be making on repeat as we move forward with the Bill: yes, there are many things that we might wish to see done around fishing, bottom trawling, protection and marine protected areas—all of these things—but this Bill is about implementing a treaty. The trouble with international treaties is that they have to be negotiated. The process is long, it can be fraught, and there are trade-offs. A treaty is never only what we would wish to see; there are inevitably compromises. This is about implementing the outcome of that process. It is good but it is not perfect, and there is a long way to go. Not everything that we may wish to do is in this implementing legislation, but it is still the right thing.
It is important that the UK is a signatory to this and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, says, that we get on with it and are able to take our place at the Conference of the Parties early next year. She wants assurances that we will do that. Without wanting to ratchet the pressure on noble Lords, that is kind of down to us. The UK cannot ratify any treaty until we have our own legislative house in order. That is what this Bill is designed to do.
Many noble Lords encouraged us to try to persuade others who have not yet decided to sign up to take part, including the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Lennie, the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and others. I think we should do that, and we intend to do that. Our ability to persuade others to become signatories will be greatly enhanced once we have done our implementing legislation and we are signatories to the treaty.
Allow me to return to first principles and remind the House why the Bill and the BBNJ agreement are vital. The agreement represents a landmark step forward in the stewardship of our shared ocean. It provides the international framework needed to protect the two-thirds of the global ocean that lie beyond the jurisdiction of any single state—areas that contain some of the most biodiverse, fragile and least understood ecosystems on the planet. The agreement will help deliver the ambitions of the coming Montreal global biodiversity framework, including the global target to effectively conserve and manage at least 30% of the ocean by 2030. These ambitions are not merely environmental aspirations; they are economic necessities. The agreement also advances the UK’s wider climate and nature agenda. It reinforces our commitment to multilateral co-operation and strengthens the rule of international law. In doing so, it reaffirms the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as the cornerstone of global ocean governance.
The Bill positions the United Kingdom to take full advantage of the opportunities presented by this new international regime, something that the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, and my noble friend Lord Whitehead got at in their contributions. We are home to one of the world’s leading marine science communities: the National Oceanography Centre, the Marine Biological Association and our world-class university departments are at the cutting edge of global marine science. Provisions in the agreement promoting transparency, open data, capacity building and the equitable sharing of benefits from marine genetic resources will help ensure that this scientific excellence continues to flourish. These reforms will foster collaboration, support innovation and deepen global understanding of the high seas, while keeping the UK at the forefront of ocean research and discovery.
If the House indulges me, I will answer a couple of questions that noble Lords raised about matters that are not in the Bill, because I know they are of profound interest to many noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and other noble Lords asked about deep-sea mining. To make it clear, the UK supports a moratorium on deep-sea mining until robust environmental safeguards and appropriate regulations are in place. This means that the UK will not sponsor or support the issuing of exploitation contracts by the International Seabed Authority unless there is sufficient scientific evidence to assess the potential impact of deep-sea mining activities on marine ecosystems and strong, enforceable, environmental regulation standards and guidelines that have been developed and adopted by the International Seabed Authority. Noble Lords can take their own view on how likely that is to happen any time soon.
The issue of bottom trawling, which is not included in the Bill because it is not part of the agreement, is nevertheless important to many noble Lords and was raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich and the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern. The Marine Management Organisation has consulted on restricting bottom-towed fishing gear in 41 offshore marine protected areas, covering around 30,000 square kilometres of English waters. The consultation closed on 29 September and responses are now being analysed. This forms part of the Government’s ambitious programme to protect, where needed, all English marine protected areas from harmful activity to meet national and international commitments. The noble Lords’ points were well made and the Government take them on board, even though the issue is not, strictly speaking, part of the Bill.
Many noble Lords are understandably interested in enforcement, not least the noble Lords, Lord Krebs, Lord Stevens and Lord Callanan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. The BBNJ agreement establishes an implementation and compliance committee to facilitate and consider the implementation of and promote compliance with the provisions of the agreement. Part IX of the BBNJ agreement contains provisions on the settlement of disputes.
As far as domestic plans go, enforcement plans here differ within each specific measure in the Bill. For marine genetic resource measures, Clause 9 of the Bill includes a power to make provision about the enforcement of requirements in respect of marine genetic resource obligations. This allows for the imposition of civil sanctions, including monetary penalties, stop notices and compliance notices. For area-based management tools, regulations made under Clause 11 may include provision about enforcement. The nature of enforcement provisions may differ depending on the regulations made—I will say something about regulations in a minute—and the activities they are regulating. However, enforcement could include civil or criminal sanctions or powers to detain craft.
On ratification, we are making the necessary domestic legislative changes in this Bill, as I have said, and the relevant secondary legislation to ensure that we are able fully to implement our obligations under the agreement before ratifying very soon. Once this Bill and associated legislation is passed, the UK can proceed to ratify the agreement by depositing the instrument of ratification at the United Nations.
On delegated powers, it really would be the end of days to get through a Bill such as this without having a long discussion about powers and I am very sure that we will return to this in Committee. The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Jones, and several other noble Lords referred to this. I am going to read out what I have here, and then we will return to this next time we meet.
Delegated powers have been taken to ensure that the UK can continue to comply with its international obligations under the BBNJ agreement. The powers will, in many cases, be exercised following future decisions or determinations taken by the Conference of the Parties to the BBNJ agreement. Following the passage of the Bill and relevant secondary legislation and subsequent ratification of the agreement, the UK will be a party to the agreement and will have the opportunity to shape future decisions taken at meetings of the Conference of the Parties. What I think this means is that we need the flexibility in order to implement future decisions, but we can discuss the appropriate process that should be taken and the need for parliamentary involvement and oversight of those things. I am sure that we will do that thoroughly.
My noble friend Lady Blackstone referred to scientists and researchers. Our impact assessments for the BBNJ Bill have not identified any significant costs for scientists and researchers. For example, the pre and post-cruise notification requirements mirror, to a large extent, the information that researchers are already required to provide as part of an application for consent to conduct research within the territorial sea or EEZ of a state. The BBNJ is not expected to have a significant or disproportionate impact on small or micro businesses. The number of UK-linked small or medium-sized businesses operating in the affected sectors is not expected to be high. The agreement offers important opportunities for the UK, which is one of the world’s leading marine scientific research communities.
On the cost of implementation, which my noble friend Lord Grantchester asked about, I suppose at this stage it is difficult to say what the final institutional size and structure of the BBNJ will look like. It is realistic to look at something such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, which is based in Montreal. Using that as a model, the UK thinks that its contribution, including the standard assessed contribution, the institutional budget and the 50% top-up, could total around £1 million annually.
On the issue of the overseas territories, which I recall the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord Teverson, mentioning, it is important that we are clear about the extent of this. There are no immediate plans for the UK to extend the BBNJ agreement to the overseas territories or Crown dependencies, but if any of them were to decide that in future they wish for the BBNJ agreement to be extended to them, then they would need to have appropriate domestic legislation in place before doing so. That is why a permissive extent clause is included in the Bill which would enable part or all of this Bill to be extended to any of the British overseas territories or the Isle of Man in future, if they wished, as part of their domestic implementation of the BBNJ agreement. This clause has been included following relevant engagement with the overseas territories and the Crown dependencies of the Isle of Man, the Bailiwick of Jersey and the Bailiwick of Guernsey.
Nobody asked about devolution, but I feel I should say anyway that we are working closely with the devolved Administrations, including the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive, to ensure legislative consent for the Bill. These discussions are ongoing, and we hope to have legislative consent Motions secured from each legislature by the time of the Lords Report stage of the Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, asked about Antarctica. As she knows, the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is governed by the Antarctic Treaty system, which has placed the question of territorial sovereignty over the continent in abeyance. Article 5.2 of the BBNJ agreement states that it shall be applied in a manner that does not undermine other legal frameworks. The UK made a declaration on signature of the agreement stating that the Antarctic Treaty system comprehensively addresses the legal, political and environmental considerations unique to that region and provides a comprehensive framework for the international management of the Antarctic. As such, the measures in this Bill with respect to marine genetic resource will not apply to marine genetic resource activities carried out in Antarctica, as defined in the Antarctic Act 1994, or to marine genetic resources and digital sequence information on these resources from Antarctica. It is for the Antarctic Treaty system to regulate these activities.
The noble Earl, Lord Courtown, asked about the impact on UK fishing. The BBNJ does not contain any provision in respect of UK fishers conducting commercial fishing activities. I appreciate that noble Lords have many views on this—and this is a great opportunity to express them—but this Bill does not have those provisions within it because these activities are governed under the Fisheries Act 2020. Fishing and fishing-related activities are exempt from the requirements of the BBNJ agreement relating to marine genetic resources. As such, the BBNJ Bill excludes UK fishers conducting commercial fishing activities from the application of its provisions on marine genetic resources. Requirements to conduct environmental impact assessments in relation to fishing are managed through existing legal frameworks and global and regional fisheries bodies. As a party to the agreement, the UK will be involved in the decision-making process for area-based management tools and will carefully consider any proposals to understand any potential impacts on UK fishing. That is why it is important that we are able to ratify so we can take our seat at the first Conference of the Parties and make sure that we have a say in these sorts of issues.
The noble Lords, Lord Stevens and Lord Teverson, asked specific questions on marine genetic resource. Article 10.2 of the BBNJ agreement is clear that the marine genetic resource collection provisions do not apply to fishing and fishing-related activities. Clauses 8(1)(a) and 8(1)(b) of the Bill implement this exception. I am sure we can come back in more detail to these issues when we get to Committee.
I thank Members from across the House for their thoughtful and constructive contributions to this debate. I have tried to address as many of the points raised as I can, but I am sure that we can come back to anything I have missed when we meet very shortly. This is a landmark piece of legislation. It ensures that the UK can ratify and take full part in the international BBNJ work at the United Nations. The measures it contains will not only safeguard marine ecosystems and strengthen our environmental security but will also deliver real benefits for the UK’s research and innovation community. The Bill represents the UK taking decisive action, protecting the ocean that sustains us all while empowering the scientists, innovators and institutions that are shaping its future. I commend this Bill to the House.
Draft Statutory Guidance on the Meaning of “Significant Influence or Control”
(1 day, 5 hours ago)
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Lord Moynihan
That this House resolves not to approve the draft Statutory Guidance on the Meaning of “Significant Influence or Control” in the Context of the Football Governance Act 2025, as it creates uncertainty regarding the eligibility criteria; increases the likelihood of legal and ownership challenges; creates a conflicting regulatory regime for the licensed football clubs; and has the potential to damage the financial success and growth of the regulated leagues.
Relevant document: 41st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I have initiated this debate because the question of who is captured as a person of “significant influence or control” under the Football Governance Act inextricably links to the regulatory regime they will have to follow, and that will determine the success or failure of the Act. We need to get it right; clarity is the key word here. We need clarity to have effective regulation, and good regulation is essential for the success of EFL clubs and Premier League clubs alike. Unlike in debates during the passage of the Bill, we are all at one on this. We need to get this right, because that is the best way of ensuring the financial success of professional football.
Just one reason was given by the Minister for Sport in introducing the statutory guidance in another place on 27 October. She stated that the purpose of the statutory guidance on the meaning of “significant influence or control” under Section 1 of the Act was to
“ensure that fans can identify the real persons exercising control of their clubs, notwithstanding any opaque or complex ownership structures. This will give fans the much-needed transparency they deserve”.
She added just one further observation:
“This delivers the Government’s election promises to combat poor governance and financial mismanagement of football clubs in this country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/10/25; col. 1WS.]
Unfortunately, as drafted, it does no such thing.
As the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, helpfully contributed during the passage of the Bill, the concrete benefits to fans are a few statutory protections, mainly of heritage items, typically club names, crests— courtesy of my noble friend Lord Parkinson—home colours and home ground; and consultation, which already exists in most of the professional clubs in this country. There are no fan veto powers. What it does is create far tougher owners’ and directors’ tests than exist anywhere in the world, and it overlaps with UEFA and the Premier League and EFL’s requisite regulation.
There is no clear definition in the guidance of the meaning of “integrity” or “competence”, or indeed “source of funds”. In fact, the stated objective of the regulator is to go further than the Premier League does at the moment, requiring each and every club to list in the personnel statement those of “significant influence and control”. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that the final rules on guidance and regulation will come before the personnel statements that are requested from clubs.
Most Premier League clubs sit inside a multi-club organisation and most of their owners live in jurisdictions abroad, where identifying those with “significant influence or control” is exceptionally difficult to determine. To say that the ownership of professional football in this country is complex is an understatement. In the Premier League, only two clubs have a solitary shareholder. The staggering complexity of the challenge for clubs is clear when you realise that the ownership of Premier League football clubs is primarily international. As of this summer, American ownership is 40%; Chinese, 5%; Saudi Arabian, 4%; Swiss, 4%; Egyptian, 2%; international institutions and others, 2%; Greek, 5%; the UAE, 4%; Uruguayan, 2%; and Czech, 1%. UK ownership stands at 22%. Yet clarity is everything, so let me ask the Minister about just one club. Since the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, and I are both avid supporters of Leeds United, I have chosen that club.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I am in football paradise, but not for the reason the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, mentioned. It is because my team, Arsenal—I declare my interest—are top of the Premier League and top of the Champions League group, as all noble Lords will know. I also declare my interest as counsel to Manchester City Football Club in long ongoing disciplinary proceedings brought by the Premier League.
I will make three points on the Motion tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. First, the Football Governance Act imposes a duty on the Secretary of State to prepare and publish guidance on the meaning of the phrase “significant influence or control”. That is in Schedule 1(15)(1), read with paragraph 2.1. The Secretary of State has no choice; she has to produce guidance.
The second point is that this is, in football terms, a hospital pass. Significant influence or control is one of many legal concepts which are amorphous; they depend, essentially, on the facts and circumstances of the individual case. I can give many examples, such as reasonable care, driving without due care and attention, indecency or obscenity. None of these concepts can be defined with the precision the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, seeks. There was a famous obscenity case in the US Supreme Court in the 1960s, during which Mr Justice Potter Stewart said that he could not define obscenity, but he certainly knew it when he saw it.
Parliament uses a phrase such as “significant influence or control” and fails to define it here and in other contexts where it is used, such as the Companies Act, precisely because Parliament wants to ensure sufficient flexibility to cover such cases and circumstances as may arise from time to time that fall within the general mischief at which the Act is aimed. That is the whole point of having a phrase such as this, and Parliament—us—not defining it in the legislation.
I very much hope that, when the Minister responds to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, she will not rise to the challenge of attempting to pronounce on the Floor of the House how “significant influence or control” applies to the people the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, mentioned. If I may respectfully say so, it would not be appropriate for a Minister to attempt to prejudge how this concept applies to particular persons.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I am also in football paradise because my club, Birmingham City, after 30 years actually has very decent owners. Seeing the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, reminds me that Birmingham beat Arsenal in the League Cup in 2011, as he may well recall.
The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has raised an important issue, essentially about definitions, but I just want to ask him: why a fatal Motion? Only a handful of fatal Motions have ever been passed by your Lordships’ House. I listened very carefully and I do not think he gave one justification for a fatal Motion. I do not know whether he is allowed to come in again, but it would be helpful to this debate to know what on earth this is about.
Baroness Debbonaire (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly. My interest in this matter is in the Football Governance Act itself, and less in football. I have no football club interest whatever to declare. I just want to ask: what is the noble Lord trying to achieve here? There are all sorts of people in both Houses who seem terribly keen on stopping the football regulator getting on with what they are supposed to be getting on with. This Bill originated in the Tory party prior to the general election, and it was picked up willingly by the Labour Party while we were in opposition. I was the leader of that team at the time: I pushed for it to be in our manifesto and I am absolutely delighted that it is there. There is an excellent chair of the regulator in David Kogan, who has the respect of all sides of football and is uniquely well qualified in his knowledge of both broadcasting and football. All we need here is for the regulator to be allowed to get on with the job. It is my understanding that it is doing so at great speed, in the interests of football clubs.
The noble Lord refers to specifics. Surely, he wants those football clubs to survive and thrive. That is what this regulator is about and what this party wants to see: is the game of football surviving and thriving up and down all quarters and parts of the country? That is what the football regulator was set up to ensure and I really hope that the noble Lord is not trying to stand in the way of progress.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Debbonaire said that the Bill originated as a Tory proposal when she was a shadow Minister. I do not think she had joined your Lordships’ House a year ago when we were going through this Bill and had the marvellous sight of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, who had moved the Bill for the Tory party prior to the election, turning handstands to say why it was not suitable, why we really did not need it and why all sorts of changes had to be introduced before it could make any progress—the text for, “We don’t really want it to make any progress at all”. I understand that that was not always personal on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and that there were forces behind him, shall we say. In many cases, they were influenced by connections with Premier League football clubs.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, whom I hugely respect, particularly in sporting matters—I am loath even to question his motives—that I wonder why he is doing this. Is it not rerunning some of our debates a year ago, when there was opposition to the Bill per se? I am not suggesting that he is acting on behalf of anyone else—he is well capable of speaking for himself—but it seems to me that, when he gave the Leeds United example, that was personal. He unpicked the layers, almost like an onion, of who controls the club, and I understand why there were questions there: but that seems to be more about Leeds United than about the Bill and this guidance.
I cannot understand why the noble Lord thinks the guidance is unclear. Paragraph 2.7 talks about
“significant influence or control … For example, absolute decision or veto rights”
relating to eight examples. It is quite clear. We can look too closely at what “significant influence or control” actually means: it is usually quite clear, and those involved know whether they have that. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, talked about effectively turning people away from football because of the test they will have to meet. I suggest that, if people are not prepared to be open and transparent about what they are doing and perhaps why they are doing it, they will not be any loss to football, because there is more to that than just the financial terms.
I will make one last point. The noble Lord cited his own football club, which I think I am right in saying was not a Premier League club at this time last year, when the Bill was going through. But it seemed that the main thrust was about Premier League clubs, rather than EFL clubs. If we are declaring our interests, I declare that I am a proud part-owner and season ticket holder at AFC Wimbledon, further down the pyramid. The noble Lord said, “We didn’t think the guidance was about existing owners; it was about new owners hoping to come into the game”. Well, I did not get that impression when we had the discussions a year ago. Look at the clubs at level 2—Reading, Cardiff City and Sheffield Wednesday, which he mentioned—which could not get rid of owners who were really dragging those clubs down. It is not just about the Premier League; it is about clubs at a lower level that may have aspirations to get to the Premier League. There are more mundane examples than the high-fliers that hope to be the Arsenals of this world. So, again, like my noble friend Lord Hunt, I am not sure what the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is seeking to achieve, other than to undermine the force of the Act.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, when I saw that we were going to pray against the Bill, I thought, “Oh, this is interesting”, because I know that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is good at this. He casts the fly across the water and drags it out to see what will rise and bite. Well, this trout is biting—not at the fly but at the line. The Bill is going through and we will have precedent and case law very quickly on how this is operating. We will have to let the regulator get on with it.
I agree with the noble Lord on one point: the ownership of these national bodies is incredibly complicated. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, has just mentioned it. If you think this is complicated, look down the chain. The origins of many of these institutions go back to the Victorian period, and they have been through many evolutions, changes and traumatic experiences along the way, wrapped around them. There is a great mess about these institutions, which is why they get into so much trouble and why we need the regulator.
You will have to have a series of general terms, which will be defined by experience, case law and the attitude of the regulators. I hope the current regulator is a success. Let us face it, the regulator has not exactly arrived to universal fanfare, but I hope it is a success and we set a precedent for how this should be done, because we need that. It is too complicated to get the definitions and clarity the noble Lord seeks here. I know he opposed the regulation of this sport and is worried about other bits. I happen to disagree with him on this; I may agree with him on something else tomorrow, but on this I disagree with him. We should let the regulator get on with it and observe. We have other things coming in the “state of the game” report, and the Government cannot look away from this. We have to make sure that it happens independently. I hope that we just let the regulator get on with it because, let us face it, we have talked about this enough.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, I apologise for speaking when the Front Benches have started speaking—I was going to stand up, but the noble Lord, Lord Addington, jumped up far too quickly.
When it comes to football, I want to use a phrase that the late Bishop of Southwark, Roy Williamson, applied to me. We had been working hard to get the Holy Trinity Church restored; it was a very poor congregation and fundraising was really very difficult, but we managed to do it. He came to open this amazing refurbished place, with the organ returned to its great glory. The church was full, and he said, “Your vicar, John Sentamu, can almost be compared to a Yorkshire terrier—never letting go, or only doing so in order to get a firmer grip”. That is how I see the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan: when it comes to football, he is like a Yorkshire terrier. He does it not wanting to control or anything but just because he loves football, and he knows a lot about football. He is doing this with an honest attitude. I do not think he is doing it to prevent regulations and all that is happening. But because he is like a terrier, I think this is the moment he needs to let go.
This stands on a three-legged stool. The first is what we passed here in your Lordships’ House—an Act of Parliament, the primary legislation. If you go there, you discover that the Secretary of State has power to do what he has just done. He is not doing it out of any reason other than that the Act that we passed gave him that power. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said exactly the same thing.
Secondly, there is the regulator, with powers given, again, by an Act of Parliament. The third leg is guidance—but I always look at guidance not as the key driver of things, which is why it cannot be clearly defined on every occasion. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, guidance always has to be understood in context. You cannot simply talk about what happens to my little club, which is not in paradise. York City Football Club is climbing up slowly, but it fell out of League Two a long time ago. You cannot say to the people of York City that paragraph 1.6 should not apply to them, when it says that
“regulated football clubs will be required to submit and publish a personnel statement identifying all owners. The definition of ownership, including the concept of significant influence or control, will ensure this statement publicly identifies the correct persons as owners, providing transparency to fans and the wider public”.
That will also apply to my little York City Football Club. Therefore, I do not see those phrases needing to be more precise.
This three-legged stool of the Act, the regulator and the guidance provided by the Secretary of State will, I am sure, make even my little club of York City feel emboldened that it actually knows who really owns it and who those people are. I think this is a good thing. I beseech the highly admired noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that this is the time to drop the Motion. He can continue to be keen on football, but this is not the time—otherwise, you are going to play a game that is not going to take you anywhere.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I for one am grateful to my noble friend Lord Moynihan for giving us the opportunity to consider this guidance in full and for acting, if I follow the metaphors correctly, like a trout-fishing terrier who loves football too much but did not read the Tory manifesto with enough diligence. Of course, had my noble friend not brought this Motion, I doubt we would have had quite as many people here, or quite as many speeches, or spent such a long time looking at the guidance that is before your Lordships’ House—and I am glad that we have, because much has changed even since the debates we had on the Bill before it left your Lordships’ House and went to another place.
For instance, we saw just yesterday the sanctions that the EFL has handed to Sheffield Wednesday, following multiple breaches of its regulations relating to payment obligations. The EFL has given that club a six-point deduction and banned its former owner from owning any club in the English Football League for three years. Had we known that example at the time of the Bill’s passage, we might have taken it into consideration when discussing the amendments allowing some of the regulation to be delegated to the leagues themselves—but that debate has passed.
We are also meeting this evening after the Commissioner for Public Appointments appeared before a Select Committee in another place, where the appointment of the chairman of the Independent Football Regulator was likened to a
“mafia appointment in Sicily sometime in the 1950s”.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
Well, those were the comments of the chairman of the Select Committee in another place. But rather more pertinent are the comments not by a politician but by the commissioner, Sir William Shawcross himself, who spent the morning giving evidence to a Select Committee of Parliament and who said that he had never seen an appointment with as many breaches of the Governance Code on Public Appointments as this one. He said that it was
“not easy to set those breaches aside”
and called that very disappointing. I am sure we all agree that it has been a very disappointing process.
Baroness Debbonaire (Lab)
I thank the shadow Minister for giving way, but are we not somewhat straying from the subject of this Motion? We appear to be now discussing the football regulator and some very flowery language used by the chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee this morning, which was wholly unfair and wholly unreasonable, when we are actually supposed to be discussing the guidance. Are we not just using a political opportunity to have a go?
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
This is guidance and this is a Bill that is to be enforced by a new independent regulator. We did not know the name of the Government’s preferred candidate for the regulator when the Bill went through, regrettably. We know now who is entrusted with applying this new regime, and we know that the Commissioner for Public Appointments has criticised not just the Government but this morning Mr Kogan himself for a lack of transparency. It is straying from the guidance, but I wonder whether the Minister, when she rises, will have anything to say about the comments made by the Commissioner for Public Appointments today.
The noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, is right: the focus of this debate is the guidance before us. On this too, my noble friend Lord Moynihan has raised a number of pertinent questions, some of which we touched on during our scrutiny of the Bill and some of which are raised by the guidance that has now been published. Under particular consideration today is an issue that we spent considerable time on. When we were looking at the Bill, we were provided with rather scant information about what significant influence or control would mean in practice. We now have draft guidance—but, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan says, that appears to raise rather more questions than it answers.
As my noble friend pointed out during our scrutiny of the Bill, there is no requirement in the legislation to consult before publishing the guidance, which has now been published. I think that is regrettable. I see from some of the comments that there has been informal consultation with some in football, but maybe the Minister can set out in a bit more detail the consultation and discussions that were had, which led to the drawing up and publication of this draft guidance.
A second and rather more serious point of contention regarding the new owners’ test, again raised by my noble friend in his speech and his Motion today, is the significant departure from the current concepts of ownership employed by the Premier League, the EFL, UEFA and others in football. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made some remarks about obscenity—not obscene remarks, I note carefully—drawing attention to other areas of law, both in this country and in the United States, where different tests are made. But in a football context alone, the Premier League’s handbook uses the notion of control and control only, whereas here in the guidance we see the new concept of significant influence or control. So this is introducing some new thoughts into this particular sphere of football regulation. The draft guidance states:
“The right to exercise significant influence or control over a club may result in that person being considered an owner for the purpose of the Act, regardless of whether or not they actually exercise that right”.
Surely the combination of this broader interpretation of the meaning of owner and the fact that one does not actually have to do anything to be considered as such, under the Act, means that this guidance would capture a far greater number of people than one might initially anticipate.
Lord Pannick (CB)
Of course the guidance goes further than addressing ownership. That is because the legislation which Parliament enacted requires attention to “significant influence or control”. That is the whole point.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My question to the Minister is: will that capture more people than one might imagine? I think the lay person looking at this imagines a single owner of a club, but as in the legislation that Parliament has passed, a number of people can be considered an owner and to have “significant influence or control”, and I will come on to a few more examples of that. For instance, on page 7 of the guidance, paragraph 2.11 states:
“A person might exercise significant influence or control if their recommendations or instructions are always or almost always followed by other owners and/or officers, due to the financial relationship of the person to the club”.
What does that mean, for instance, for a club sponsor? They have a clear financial relationship with the club, and they might make recommendations to the club which are often followed by the officers of the club. Does that mean, under these regulations and the Act that we have passed, that they could be considered to have “significant influence or control”? Would a sponsor in any circumstance count as an owner under these regulations?
Lord Sentamu (CB)
I do not like interrupting the noble Lord, because he always puts the facts as he wants to put them, but the question that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, asked was: would it catch everybody? Yes, if they are regulated football clubs. Paragraph 1.6 states that
“regulated football clubs will be required”,
so it will catch everybody. Everybody must do what paragraph 1.6 says.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My point was a broader one about whether, under the definitions in paragraph 2.11, a club sponsor could be considered to have “significant influence or control”. It seems to me, on a reading of the guidance, that they might, but I look forward to the Minister’s response. It certainly seems that there is quite an expansive list of people that the regulations might apply to. Paragraph 2.12 states that a former owner who sold his or her shares to a close friend could still be considered an owner if he or she makes recommendations on how to vote to the person to whom he or she sold those shares. So, under the guidance, a person with no current financial stake in the club at all could actually count as an owner. I would be grateful for confirmation of that from the Minister. I see her nodding, but I look forward to her confirmation.
My noble friend Lord Moynihan set out, through the history of Leeds United, the complicated arrangements by which football clubs are owned. Another example might be Bournemouth. In 2022, Turquoise Bidco Ltd obtained 100% of shares in Bournemouth Football Club. Turquoise was then renamed Black Knight Football Club UK Ltd, which is a UK-based holding company wholly owned by Black Knight Football Club US based in Nevada. That American entity is in turn owned by Cannae Holdings, Inc. According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Cannae owned 44.3% of Black Knight, but Cannae is in turn owned by institutional investors, including BlackRock and the Vanguard Group. An American businessman, Bill Foley, owns 7.7% of Cannae, meaning that his beneficial ownership of Bournemouth is 3.4%, but a filing in April this year disclosed that his economic interest in Black Knight is 28%. That adds to the example of Leeds given by my noble friend Lord Moynihan of the complexity of even the most straightforward football clubs and the difficulty that will be involved in setting out all the people that might need to be regulated, investigated and brought before the regulator.
I conclude by echoing the question that my noble friend asked, as the Minister would expect, given my roots in Tyneside. The question that my noble friend posed will be of great interest to my friends and family there: would she advise the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to continue to invest in Newcastle United, through the Saudi Public Investment Fund, given what this might mean for him and for the club? That is just one of many questions of great interest to football fans, which is not made clear through this guidance. I am very grateful to my noble friend for giving us the opportunity to probe those in a rather fuller House than I think we would have had in Grand Committee.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, my life would be truly boring without the chance to talk about football in your Lordships’ House, so I am very pleased to have the opportunity to provide clarity on the draft statutory guidance on the meaning of “significant influence or control” in the context of the Football Governance Act 2025, guidance that was laid before both Houses of Parliament on 27 October 2025. I thank the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for the scrutiny provided on this draft statutory guidance. The committee did not draw the guidance to the special attention of the House and no objections were raised in the other place.
It is always a pleasure to debate issues relating to football regulation with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. However, I cannot help but share my surprise and regret that he felt the need to do this by tabling a fatal Motion against the guidance. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hunt that this feels like a disproportionate approach. I am also tempted to agree with my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is attempting to rerun the debates we held over the past year. I regret this not least because I sent the draft guidance to the noble Lord myself and offered to meet to discuss the guidance in a letter sent to him, and a number of other Peers with a known interest, over a month ago, an opportunity I also offered to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. Notwithstanding this, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, raised no concerns directly to me or my team before this evening’s debate—not when he received my letter, nor even when the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee reported on this guidance on 13 November. I am a little confused about the noble Lord’s quoting of the Minister for Sport, as beyond her Written Ministerial Statement, this has not been discussed or had concerns raised about it in the other place. I am grateful, however, for the opportunity to stress how vital this legislation is in delivering for fans.
The implementation of this regime, which prioritises the protection of clubs from unsuitable owners and financial distress, and the interests of fans nationally, is a priority for this Government. That is why, during our lengthy discussions on and scrutiny of the primary legislation, the Government committed to producing this guidance before clubs are required to identify their owners in the personnel statement. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, that this guidance does not add clarity. The Government are pleased to have delivered on this commitment and to provide clarity regarding the concept of “significant influence or control”. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, did not find it clear. I read it twice and I thought it was clear. If I understand it, as somebody who is not a regulator, I believe that it is relatively clear.
This guidance plays a key role in the regulator’s regime, with this unexpected Motion disrupting progress and preventing David Kogan and his team from getting on with their important job. As my noble friend Lady Debbonaire made clear, the regulator now has an excellent, experienced and well-respected chair in post. He has wasted no time in meeting clubs and stakeholders from across football, including the top five English leagues, consulting industry on new rules and building up an executive team of regulatory experts. I hope that noble Lords across the House agree that the regulator needs to be able to make progress on these priorities without delay. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, we need to let him get on with his job.
As someone who has a terrier, I might not agree with the phrasing of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, but I agree with the sentiment of his interventions. We just need to look at the plight of Sheffield Wednesday to understand the urgency of giving the regulator the tools to get to work. With regard to concerns raised by noble Lords today, it is important to note that this guidance was drafted collaboratively. I make it absolutely clear that officials have worked with both industry and non-industry experts to ensure that it is clear, useful and user-friendly.
The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, asked about consultation. I give him an assurance that this has been extensive. Officials have spoken to UEFA, to all the competition organisers, to a wide range of clubs throughout the different leagues and to DBT officials about their comparable Companies Act guidance. In developing the draft, we have drawn on the approach used in the Companies Act “persons with significant control” regime to ensure that we are aligned with current precedent. Building on the Companies Act guidance, it introduces industry-specific examples that have been tested with the football industry, makes these concepts more tangible for those who will have to interpret the guidance, especially clubs, and ensures that this guidance is suited to the regulated industry.
In relation to the point on consultation from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, I say that, crucially, the guidance has also been tested with the regulator itself to ensure that the concepts are clear and that the non-exhaustive examples are helpful. David Kogan and his team have confirmed that this guidance provides them with the product they need to undertake their important work.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for answering the questions that were posed. I apologise if I missed this, but does she accept that, under paragraph 2.11, it might be possible for a sponsor of a club to be considered as part of the new owners and directors test, if the sponsor’s recommendations are usually followed by the club? That is the test that paragraph 2.11 shows.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I will have to defer to the Box on that point, but I will be happy to pick that up with the noble Lord afterwards.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
I thank the Minister for her response. I will pick up on some of the points she has made and try to answer the other interventions that came from the packed Benches on the Government side, which I am delighted to see for this debate. I have rarely been called a trout-fishing terrier. I love trout fishing and I also love terriers, so I take those both as compliments. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, that I am passionately committed to football, both amateur and professional; I always have been in 40 years involved in sport. There is no one who would regard my intervention on this subject as coming from any other position than being passionate about sport and football.
The Act is detrimental to the future of professional football; it is a view I spoke about a great deal in Committee. This evening, I did not address any of those points but focused exclusively on the guidance. I say to the Minister and to others that the debate this evening does not stop the regulator for one day. The statutory guidance is laid before both Houses until 5 December, and there is the opportunity to debate it in either House until that point. It is not a delaying tactic; it does not delay the regulator getting on with its job. To say that and to imply that is fundamentally wrong. We cannot do anything about this until 5 December, when both Houses will have had the opportunity to consider it. We have had the opportunity in advance of that to have a debate.
I say to the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Watson, who are passionate about sport and highly knowledgeable about football—they may not take this as the greatest compliment coming from me, although it is meant to be a compliment at the highest level—that I tabled this Motion because, if we have secondary legislation, we have the opportunity to review it in the normal way, but if we have draft statutory guidance the only way we can debate it is by tabling a fatal Motion. I have no intention of pressing it to a vote, but I absolutely intended to make sure that what we looked at during the passage of the Bill—the decision to bring forward statutory guidance on this so that the whole of Parliament could consider it—was given due consideration.
Having read the guidance, I made it clear to the House this evening that I was concerned it went too closely along the lines—which the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said was inevitable and important in the drafting—of being kept purposefully and precisely vague, to use his phrase. I was a little nervous that, in responding, the Minister might do exactly what the noble Lord encouraged her not to do and provide clarity and precision. Understandably, she could not, because it is vague, and intentionally so.
I say to the Minister that this could be far better written. I genuinely believe that it is important to take it away and write it with greater clarity, because the guidance needs to strike a balance between, on the one hand, the need for the regulator to look into significant interest or control and, on the other, having to think about investors and the best interests of every club. It is my firm belief that, if you go too closely down the road of being so precisely vague and wide ranging, it could deter investors in professional football. That is why I felt it important to have this debate.
This Motion does not delay the regulator at all and gives this House the opportunity to consider something it requested in Committee on the Bill and which the Government granted. This debate has been very well attended. I am exceptionally grateful to those who have contributed. I avoided completely going down the line that the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, thought I might by focusing exclusively on and going into detail on this guidance. Having placed this on the record, I hope that the regulator and the world of football will be able to go away and consider whether there are ways to improve the statutory guidance and that, when we sit down with the football clubs, we avoid overlapping with the regulatory frameworks of UEFA, the EFL and the Premier League, which is also vital and to be avoided here.
I am grateful to the Minister for sitting through another debate on football and for the very helpful contributions from, in particular, the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Watson, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, feared that we will see this in case law; I fear that he is absolutely right.
It may help the noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, if I repeat one point. I was absolutely opposed to this legislation all the way through and thought that it would be bad law. I believe it is bad law. I thought Boris Johnson’s knee-jerk reaction to go to legislation on the Monday after the Saturday announcement of the super league was wrong. That is not the right way for professional sport in this country. But I did not go down that road this evening. I focused on this because I want to make it as good as possible and passionately want this Act to succeed now that it is in statute, in the interests of football and investors as well as of regulation. I wish the regulator every success with this. I hope it gets it right and has the opportunity to reflect on what has been said on both sides of this House. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Criminal Court Reform
(1 day, 5 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Baroness Levitt) (Lab)
My Lords, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place. The Statement is as follows:
“With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a Statement on criminal court reform.
As the House is aware, the first part of the independent review of criminal courts was published in July. I am grateful to its chair, Sir Brian Leveson—one of the foremost judges of his generation—and to his expert advisers, Professor David Ormerod, Chris Mayer and Shaun McNally. In this review, Sir Brian has produced a blueprint for once-in-a-generation court reform. That is desperately needed, because the Government inherited an emergency in our courts: a record and rising backlog currently standing at 78,000 cases, and victims face agonising delays, with some trials not listed for years. All the while, defendants bide their time. The guilty plea rate has decreased every year since the year 2000. In the year to June, 11,000 cases were dropped after a charge because victims no longer supported or felt they could support the case.
Behind the statistics are real people. Katie was repeatedly abused by her partner. She reported him to the police in 2017, but then had an unbearable six-year wait for justice. During that time, she lost a job because her mental health deteriorated. She became increasingly isolated, lived in fear and lost faith in the court system. That is not isolated; it is systemic.
We are all proud of our justice system, rooted in Magna Carta, but we must never forget that it implores us not to
‘deny or delay right or justice’.
When victims are left waiting for years, justice is effectively denied to them. That is a betrayal of our legal heritage and of victims themselves. Some will ask why we do not simply increase funding. This Government have already invested heavily in the courts, including nearly £150 million to make them fit for purpose, a commitment of £92 million per year for criminal legal aid solicitors, and funding for a record number of sitting days in our Crown Courts—5,000 more than those funded last year by the previous Government.
Today, I can announce up to £34 million per year in additional funding for criminal legal aid advocates, to recognise the vital support that they give to those navigating the system. I will also accept Sir Brian’s recommendation to match-fund a number of pupillages in criminal law, to open a career at the Criminal Bar to more young people from across society. I will also negotiate sitting days with the senior judiciary through the usual concordat process, aiming to give an unprecedented three-year certainty to the system. I am clear that sitting days in the Crown Courts and magistrates’ courts must continue to rise, and my ambition is to continue breaking records by the end of this Parliament.
However, as Sir Brian has made clear, investment is not enough. The case load is projected to reach 100,000 cases by 2028, and without fundamental change it could keep rising, meaning that justice will be denied to more victims and trust in the system will collapse. To avoid that disaster, I will follow Sir Brian’s bold blueprint for change.
First, I will create new ‘swift courts’ within the Crown Court, with a judge alone deciding verdicts in triable either-way cases with a likely sentence of three years or less, as Sir Brian recommends. Sir Brian estimates that they will deliver justice at least 20% faster than jury trials. While juries’ deliberations remain confidential, judges will provide reasoning for their verdicts in open court, so this will hard-wire transparency into our new approach.
Sir Brian also proposes restricting defendants’ right to elect for jury trials—a practice not found widely in other common-law jurisdictions, and let us be honest: it is a peculiar way to run a public service. Our world-leading judges should hear the most serious cases, and I agree that they and the magistracy should decide where a case is heard. That will prevent defendants from gaming the system, choosing whichever court they think gives the best chance of success and drawing out the process, hoping victims give up. I will limit appeals from the magistrates’ courts so that they are only allowed on points of law, to prevent justice from being delayed further.
Alongside those changes, we will increase magistrates’ court sentencing powers to 18 months, so that they can take on a greater proportion of lower-level offending and relieve pressure on the Crown Court. I will also take a power to extend that to two years, should it become necessary to relieve further pressure. When it comes to exceptionally technical and lengthy fraud and financial trials, judges will be able to sit without a jury where appropriate. While those cases are small in number, they place undue pressure on jurors to sit for months—a significant interference with their personal and professional lives.
These reforms are bold, but they are necessary. I am clear that jury trials will continue to be the cornerstone of the system for the most serious offences—those likely to receive a sentence of over three years and all indictable-only offences. Among others, that will include rape, murder, manslaughter, causing grievous bodily harm, robbery and arson with intent to kill.
I would like to clear up some misconceptions that colleagues unfamiliar with this area might hold. In England and Wales, magistrates have long done the vast majority of criminal cases. That was true in the Victorian era, right through to Winston Churchill’s time, and today magistrates hear about 90% of criminal cases. In fact, only 3% of trial cases in England and Wales will ever go before a jury, and almost three quarters of all trials going to the Crown Court will continue to be heard by one under our changes.
Conservative Members talk about the Crown Court as if it were an ancient institution. I should remind them that it was established in 1971—the year before I was born—to replace a patchwork of part-time courts unable to cope with a rising case load. Parliament acted because the country needed a more efficient system that could command public confidence. We now face an emergency in the courts, and we must act. As Lord Chancellor, my responsibility is to ground reform in the rule of law and the right to a fair trial. We will ensure cases are dealt with at the right level, proportionate to their severity, and deliver the swifter justice victims deserve.
I am also clear that we must future-proof our approach. Technology is changing almost every aspect of our lives, and the courts can be no exception. That means we must modernise. We have asked Sir Brian to write a second report, focused on efficiency and how we can make much better use of technology to deliver the modern and effective courts the public rightly expect.
We will also continue to support victims, to make sure they have the confidence to come forward and see justice through to its conclusion. I announced this week that I will provide multi-year funding for victim support services, including specialist emotional and practical support for victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence, and increase budgets to reflect rising costs. That will give providers the certainty to plan for the next three years. It amounts to a total record investment in victim support services of £550 million—more than half a billion. I want those victims to stay the course.
Finally, we must also be honest that this is a problem that has taken years to build up, so it will take years to fix. The changes I am proposing will require legislation, which will take time to implement. Our investment will also need time to have an effect, but we are pulling every possible lever to move in a positive direction, and my ambition for the backlog to start coming down by the end of this Parliament remains. I commend this Statement to the House”.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, I am obliged to the Minister for repeating the Statement from the other place. I thank the Secretary of State for Justice for his Statement on jury trial, although I wonder whether he understood many of its implications before delivering it to the press and then to Parliament. The Government’s troubling habit of engaging in legislation by leakage, of which their recent Budget is another precedent, should, however, not distract us from the content of this Statement.
In 2017, while leading the review of racial bias in the criminal justice system, the now Secretary of State for Justice declared that juries were the only stage of the criminal justice system without racial bias. In 2020, he declared:
“Jury trials are a fundamental part of our democratic settlement”.
Now, the Secretary of State for Justice declares that, in order to preserve jury trials, he must abolish most jury trials. This has echoes of the logic of the lunatic asylum. Herod declares that to preserve the family unit, he must strike down the firstborn. Or, more recently, there was Gordon Brown’s decision to preserve Britain’s wealth by selling off half of our gold reserves at near the bottom of the market. That decision left the country poorer; this decision will leave the justice system weaker.
This is the Government dismantling the institutions they claim to defend, then insisting that destruction is somehow salvation. A judge sitting alone in a Crown Court trial will have to provide not just a verdict but reasons for the verdict. Does the Minister agree? Such reasoning is bound to be the subject of scrutiny and then potential appeal. If so, are the Government planning to abolish such a right of appeal on the merits of the decision? In that event, parties with no right of appeal may have recourse to judicial review. Or do the Government also plan to abolish the right to judicial review in such circumstances?
Just how deep do the Government plan to cut into the body of the justice system, and do they actually believe that our system of criminal justice can survive such radical surgery? The Secretary of State for Justice tells us that this radical surgery is required to deal with the enormous backlog of cases in the Crown Court, estimated at almost 80,000 cases. So will the Minister tell us whether this proposed legislation is going to be retrospective? That would be an unprecedented and unconscionable attack on an accused’s rights. If in an each-way case, for example, an accused has already decided upon trial by jury and is now preparing for and awaiting that jury trial, are the Government going to retrospectively remove that fundamental right? If so, can the Minister cite a precedent for such retrospective changes to our system of criminal law?
However, if these changes are not to be retrospective, then the tens of thousands of cases that the Secretary of State for Justice refers to as justification for this exceptional measure remain untouched. The backlog will not be cut. Victims and accused will be no closer to justice. In stripping away a centuries-old right, the Government will sacrifice principle but fail to fix the problem. To significantly dismantle the right to trial by jury and gain virtually no benefit is not just an exercise in incompetence but an act of constitutional vandalism. We are being reminded of a problem, but we are not being presented with a solution.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, at the heart of this Statement is a wholesale attack on the jury system. The Government intend first doing away with jury trials in all but indictable-only offences or offences where the likely sentence is three years or less and, secondly, doing away with the defendant’s right to elect for jury trial altogether.
On the first, a radical restriction of jury trials, do the Government accept that they propose going far further than the Leveson report suggested, both on which cases would be tried by a jury and on the make-up of the new courts? Two fundamental questions arise. Importantly, since, apart from robbery and some other offences generally involving violence, offences under the Theft Act are not indictable only, would not all but the most serious cases of dishonesty be triable by judge alone?
Do the Government really think that the likely length of a prison sentence is the only true measure of severity? Is that not a fundamental mistake? Let us take the Horizon scandal. Almost no postmasters received a sentence of more than three years. Harjinder Butoy received the longest sentence—three and a quarter years—only to be released after 18 months when his conviction was overturned, leaving his life in ruins. Most sentences were between six and 18 months, yet those cases destroyed hundreds of lives, driving many to a breakdown or suicide. Those defendants would have no right to a jury trial.
What about the public servant or the professional who stands to lose career, income, reputation and family when charged with minor shoplifting, and who wants the defence of honest mistake or absent-mindedness determined by a jury? What about the teacher or health worker charged with indecent exposure, who will never work with children again if convicted but who is denied the right to a jury trial to decide on a defence of false identity?
The proposal is for judges or magistrates to decide on the likely length of the sentence and the mode of trial, apparently to prevent the defendants gaming the system. In the Statement, the word “gaming” is in bold. Does that give a clue to the Lord Chancellor’s thinking? That is an absurd preconception. Do not many defendants elect jury trial precisely because they want a trial by their peers, with no preconceptions or predetermination of their guilt? The public believe that jury trials are fairer. They recognise that 12 heads are better than one. They know instinctively, as advocates know from experience, that judges vary, one from another, in their prejudices and judgment. Does the Minister not agree? The public trust juries, and public trust in the fairness of our justice system is severely threatened by these proposals.
How are judges or magistrates to assess the likely sentence before a case has even started or any evidence been heard? Does the Minister believe that that would be either possible or fair? At the very least, should defendants not be entitled to a proper hearing to put their arguments for having a jury trial before the court? Should not these measures be temporary or provisional until waiting lists are reduced? In the Commons, Kim Johnson, a Labour MP, suggested a sunset clause, but the Lord Chancellor rejected that.
Jury trial has been a fundamental right of citizens in this country for more than 800 years. Lord Devlin described it as
“the lamp that shows that freedom lives”.
The Statement mentions Magna Carta and it prioritises ending delays over jury trials. But Magna Carta does not do that. King John was not asked to take his pick between Article 39 on jury trials and Article 40 on justice delayed or denied—the Barons insisted on the right to receive both jury trial and timely justice, and we should do that now.
Will the Government not take further steps to reduce delays? Steps should and could be taken, including having many more court sitting days, repairing the courts, having more efficient listing, and using more and smarter technology. Do the Government really insist that the delays could not be cut over time with greater investment? Possibly in some long, technical fraud trials—where the points taken are genuinely not jury points, such as dishonest intent or who knew what and when—the mode of trial might be changed. More generally, do the Government really want to sacrifice the right to jury trial because they admit defeat on cutting delays?
I have a final but entirely unrelated question on the Statement. The Lord Chancellor said that £550 million extra was to be spent on victim support services over three years, but said not a word on how it was to be spent. Can the Minister give us more detail, either now or in writing later?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, for the points they made on these reforms. I have a great deal of respect for the insight that both bring and their observations about the Statement.
I begin with the remarks of the noble and learned Lord. Many people may think that it a bit rich of the party opposite to complain about this, when everybody knows that this is a situation created by them due to the consistent cuts in the criminal justice system over many years. Victims are now reaping what the party opposite sowed. We on these Benches have to try to put this right.
Many matters were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Marks; I hope he will forgive me if I do not respond to them all in my short response now. However, there are answers to almost all of them. For example, he asked how we estimate the likely sentence. That it is done using the sentencing guidelines. It is done all the time at the moment; magistrates do it day in, day out in the magistrates’ courts, when they decide where someone should be tried. It is a task that can be undertaken.
One of the things I want to say from the Dispatch Box is that I have changed my mind. I have been a criminal barrister for many decades. When I practised as a criminal barrister, I too felt that any attempt to touch what happens with jury trials was fundamentally wrong. However, I then became a judge in the Crown Court and saw what was actually happening. Every judge in the Crown Court up and down this country will have experienced sitting with other judges at lunchtime and saying, “I cannot believe that this case I am trying here and now is actually in the Crown Court. It shouldn’t be here”.
We are not sacrificing jury trials—of course we are not. It has never been that every criminal case was tried by a jury; 90% are currently tried in the magistrates’ courts. The question is, where do we draw the line? That is why this Government asked Sir Brian Leveson to conduct an independent review, and we will accept his conclusions. It would be frankly irresponsible not to do so; we cannot ignore what he is saying. We are not going far further, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks, implied; we are doing exactly what Sir Brian suggested: having a Crown Court Bench Division to deal with cases where the likely sentence is three years or less.
This is a package to deal with the problems we face with the criminal justice system; it is not about cutting jury trials. There are three limbs to it. The first is about investment: record investment is being made in the criminal justice system in sitting days and legal aid payments to the criminal Bar and criminal solicitors, whose fees went down for ages. The second is about structural reform, which is what we are discussing now; that includes the removal of the right to elect, the reform of appeals in the magistrates’ courts, the Crown Court Bench Division and some reforms to fraud trials. The third is about efficiency, and that is what Sir Brian is considering in the second part of his report.
Gaming the system is a real problem. I am afraid that there are rumours out there that some people are less than scrupulous once they get arrested by the police. Some of those people know that the delays are such in the Crown Court that, if they elect trial by jury and decide to sit around and wait, particularly if they are on bail, they will have not just one Christmas at home, but at least two or maybe three. They will probably be tagged, and when they come back to the Crown Court when their trial date finally arrives, many of them plead guilty there and then. That means that the time they spent on the tag then has to be taken into account and offset against any available sentence, so they walk away with time served. I have seen that, and that is gaming the system. We cannot have it. It cannot be right that victims of serious offences wait for years for their cases to be heard—possibly dropping out—meaning that unscrupulous defendants can do that. These are real people’s real lives. If tradition is going to survive, it has to adapt.
Timeliness is an essential ingredient of fairness. Sir Brian estimates that juryless trials would be at least 20% faster than those conducted with a jury. It makes sense—of course it does—because you do not have to swear in a jury; such things take time.
Governments must make sure that public services are able to meet the demands of the day and to deliver for the public and the most vulnerable. This means that every generation may well face the prospect of significant reform in order to make things better.
One of the things that the Crown Court is having to contend with is that trials have become more complicated. There is good news: the police are arresting more people, and more of them are coming through the courts. That is what we want to see. But things such as advances in science, such as DNA, advances in techniques, such as the prevalence of CCTV evidence, and social media make proving a case, and, indeed, defending a case, much more complicated than it was. That is why we simply have to move the line to a slightly different place.
For the courts, there is no single thing government can do to resolve this crisis that would not require the system to deal with some change. The delays to justice faced by thousands of victims across the country are unacceptable. They cannot be allowed to grow unchecked. There is no quick fix. The changes we are proposing to make will require legislation. We are intending to fix the system so that it is good for the next generation. That is why we are not intending to impose a sunset clause here. These are meant to be lasting reforms, not an unstable system where nobody is quite sure what is happening. These are lasting reforms to make the system fit for purpose.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, would she kindly answer the question: is it intended that these proposals will be retrospective? If not, how on earth are they going to impact upon the present backlog?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
At present, there are no plans to make them retrospective, but that is why it is going to take time. That is why it will take time to work its way through. But if we do not do this, not only would we not be tackling the current backlog, we would be letting it grow. That is why it cannot continue.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, was the Minister as surprised as I was by the terms of the attack made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, on these proposals. He suggested that these proposals involve the “destruction” and “dismantling” of jury trials and an “act of constitutional vandalism”? Does she agree that these proposals are nothing of the sort? There has never been an absolute right to jury trial. Pragmatism has always determined which prosecutions are to be heard by a jury and which are to be heard by judges or magistrates.
Does the Minister agree that these proposals shift the dial but that they shift the dial for very sensible, pragmatic and practical reasons? She emphasised the impact of delay on victims, and she mentioned defendants who game the system. Would she agree that the scandalous delays that occur at the moment in the Crown Courts also have an appalling impact on a defendant who is innocent? The man who is accused of rape and has that charge hanging over him for years cannot get on with his life. That is also outrageous. It is outrageous for the victim and for the defendant. I support these proposals.
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for the points that he made. It will not surprise him to hear that I will not respond to most of them other than by saying yes. But in relation to the defendants, it is a point very well made. I was a defender for much of my career, and I entirely agree with what the noble Lord said. There will be people within the system waiting for their trials who are unable to get on with their lives because they are on bail for an offence. We need to think about them as well.
Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I too welcome the Statement. I congratulate the Government on having the courage to confront a really difficult issue. The status quo is quite unacceptable. I would rather hope that this House and Parliament in general could treat this on a non-party-political basis. There are a lot of reasons why there were delays; some of them were due to Covid, which is a non-party-political issue. But I have long thought that fraud trials, for example, are very often wholly unsuitable for juries. I am glad that the Government acknowledge that.
As to the question of judges and reasons, I have just two questions I would like to ask the Minister. I would have thought that judges, when they do determine these things, might well give reasons. That would be consistent with Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. There would be a considerable advantage to potential appellants, because they would know the reasons why they had been convicted; whereas at the moment, with jury verdicts, you have the board verdict of guilty or not guilty. You do not know whether they have taken into consideration relevant consideration or irrelevant considerations.
My other question is this. The Statement reads:
“Our world-leading judges should hear the most serious cases”.
Standing back, does it occur to the House and, indeed, to the Minister that it is slightly odd that the 90% or so of the trivial offences are tried by those with professional experience, and yet we give the most serious cases to 12 conscientious but random people taken off the street?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his observations. As far as reasons are concerned, yes, absolutely: judges sitting alone will give reasons. Not only is it useful for appellants to know why but it can be useful for witnesses as well.
One often hears victims who have been through the system say that if the case results in an acquittal, that is bad enough, but not knowing why the defendant was acquitted is really hard for them. Transparency is important in the criminal justice system, as it is in all systems. That is one of the reasons why we are now going to make the magistrates’ court a court of record. All proceedings in the magistrates’ court will be tape-recorded, and we are going to use artificial intelligence to provide transcripts so that people can get transcripts of what has happened much more often and can follow and read at their leisure.
As far as the point about serious cases is concerned, I have been very careful not to talk about seriousness but to talk about length of sentence. Every case is serious to those involved in it, particularly to the victims, and it would be wrong to downplay that. It is also important to note that the magistrates’ court consists of not just lay justices—justice by your peers—but professional magistrates, known as district judges these days. It is a combination who deal with these matters.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, at the end of the day, are not random and conscientious people taken off the street the best safeguards of our civil liberties against an overmighty and oppressive state? If any one of us here were to be charged with a criminal offence, would we not rather put our trust and confidence in a jury rather than in a state appointee? Are not juries the best way of linking ordinary people to our criminal justice system?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
My noble friend might have a point if it were not for the fact that 90% of cases are currently being dealt with in the magistrates’ court. They are not dealt with by juries.
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
They are not all dealt with by lay people at all; they are dealt with by district judges as well. They are state appointees. They used to be known as stipendiary magistrates—my noble friend knows this perfectly well; he has practised in those courts. Stipendiary magistrates have a part to play and so do lay people. The important thing is that they have to give reasoned rulings. We have to have a system that is proportionate and fair and deals with everybody’s interests, not just those of a few.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, my question follows on very clearly from that of the noble Lord, Lord Boateng. I declare an interest, since a number of my friends and colleagues have been acquitted by juries of charges against them relating to actions of political protest. My question focuses on democracy. Does the Minister agree that juries are not just part of our legal system but important defenders of our right to protest, something our democracy is built around? Given the repressive anti-protest legislation passed in recent years under the previous Government, which it appears this Government have no intention of repealing, are these plans not a serious threat to our democracy as well as our legal rights?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. I will repeat what I have already said. Over 90% of criminal trials are already heard in magistrates’ court, which does deal with some protest cases without a jury. It is likely that many protest-related offences are dealt with there. The important thing is that no one group of defendants is more important than any other. Everyone is equal before the law. We cannot have a carve-out for a particular group of offences or a particular group of people. We have confidence in a professional judiciary, highly trained in things such as diversity. They will do a good job.
Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)
My Lords, the Justice Secretary repeatedly emphasised the lengthy waiting times in bringing cases to court. I am not a lawyer—I am one of the non-lawyers in the Chamber today—but I was disappointed that the Statement did not acknowledge the difficulties that had been brought about by the Covid lockdowns, across two or three years, which should be acknowledged. Notwithstanding that, the Minister pointed out that all the evidence, including from social media, that now has to be collected for any trial these days takes an inordinate amount of time to collate. Nevertheless, when it comes to unnecessarily lengthy waiting times, this is pure hypocrisy, given that the same Justice Secretary supports bringing to court former British soldiers who served in Northern Ireland 50 years ago. In addition, the Government have certainly managed to find time recently to bring to court, pretty quickly, people who had maybe put not very nice posts on social media. Neither the public nor, I think, many in the judiciary support the steps that the Government wish to take—certainly from what I have heard. I therefore urge the Minister to reconsider this ill-judged proposal and defer bringing it forward.
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her observations, which echoed what the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said. I did my best to try to keep this non-partisan as far as possible until provoked into it by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie. It is true that Covid had an effect on the backlog, but that is not the only element; a lot of it is due to the cuts in the criminal justice system. For example, one of the questions that I am sure somebody will ask me at some point is why we simply do not open up all the unused courtrooms. The reason is that a court is much more than just a room. It is staffed by a lot of people, which includes the barristers and the solicitors, and we do not have enough criminal barristers any more because of the cuts to legal aid—about which the party opposite was warned at the time they made them. That is why we are going to increase funding for legal aid and the match funding for pupillages to try to grow back up that venerable body of practitioners. I will not comment on individual cases or categories of cases; this is a systemic problem that requires a systemic solution.
Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement and I welcome almost everything in it. I wanted to raise one point which I am less happy about. Brian Leveson recommended for the Crown Court Bench Division that it should be a judge and two magistrates but the Statement said it would be a judge sitting alone. Brian Leveson in his review was very clear why he thought magistrates should be involved in the Crown Court Bench Division. First, it retains an element of community involvement and the judgment of one’s peers, by the lay magistrates sitting with the judge, and one could argue that three heads are better than one. Secondly, there is greater diversity within the magistrate cohort than there is within the judge cohort, so that would go some way to creating diversity within the three people sitting making those judgments. The third point which Brian Leveson made was on the safety of the judge sitting alone. It is safer if there are three people making that decision, because there is not a single identified decision-maker. Since we are all concerned about the safety of judges, that was a factor in keeping the decision-making for three individuals in the new Crown Court Bench Division. Will my noble friend keep an open mind about adopting the recommendations of Sir Leveson?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I thank my noble friend very much for the question he raises. It is an important point and I am sure the rest of your Lordships’ House will want to pay tribute to my noble friend for the work that he did when standing where I am now, as well as for his long service as a magistrate. He speaks from great experience.
There are two reasons why the Crown Court Bench Division will not include lay justices. The first, as my noble friend will know, is that we do not have enough to staff that at the moment. We have enough justices to run the magistrates’ court and make sure that we do not then end up with a lot of backlogs there. We are running a recruitment programme and hope to recruit 2,000 more, but, at present, we do not have sufficient numbers. The second reason is about speeding up the process. Any judge who has sat on an appeal from the magistrates’ court always sits with two lay justices. It takes a lot longer because of the fact that consultation is required, whereas the point here is to make things faster and quicker. For those reasons, we are not going to adopt that recommendation of Sir Brian—and they are principled reasons.
As for the perfectly proper point about diversity, the judiciary is becoming more diverse. It is not where we want it to be but it is getting there. What it does have is extensive training in matters to do with issues of diversity, fairness and disproportionate impacts on particular sectors of the population. We do not really know what juries think about this because they do not have that kind of training, but we are satisfied that those issues can be dealt with within what is proposed.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, as a former criminal barrister, albeit nothing like as successful as the noble Baroness was, I put on record my support for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and for the noble Lord, Lord Boateng. The Minister talked about the Government going ahead with “heavy investment” in courts and legal aid, and I certainly support both those initiatives. The Minister in the Commons said that to bring down court case backlogs:
“We need investment, structural reform and modernisation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/11/25; col. 20.]
However, has the noble Baroness seen the OBR report which states that after last week’s Budget, the MoJ’s capital budget is going to be cut by 3% per annum in real terms? Was she aware of that, and, in spite of that cut, can she confirm that this investment will still go ahead?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
The answer to the noble Lord is yes. These are the matters of expenditure to which my right honourable friend committed himself in the other place, and they will go ahead.
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I should declare that my daughter is a recorder. Very many people have put to me a lot of points, and there is just one that makes me want to ask my noble friend a question. I should say that all absolutely recognise the primacy of dealing with the backlog and that there is a clear case for complex, time-consuming fraud cases to go to the judge alone, and for low-level offences to go to magistrates alone. Indeed, I remember from my time as a magistrate that it was in that area where a certain amount—not a huge amount, but some—of gaming of the system went on. My noble friend has outlined a lot of measures which will improve courts, which is one of the problems; I would have hoped that that would solve the problem of the backlog, but clearly the Government think not. Because of the representations I have had, could my noble friend say what consultation there has been on these proposals with judges and with the criminal Bar?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I can reassure my noble friend that the consultation has been extensive. That does not necessarily mean that they agree with us or that all of them agree with us, although I observe—I say this as a practising criminal barrister myself—that it is a profession known for its caution; it is not always, shall we say, ready to adopt new ideas in particular ways. I am confident that once this system has had an opportunity to bed in, everyone will see the advantages.
Lord Young of Acton (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. If the Government are serious about wanting to reduce delays and backlogs in the Crown Courts, they should stop creating so many new criminal offences. In the Crime and Policing Bill alone, there are 65 new criminal offences. At the Free Speech Union, we have analysed Ministry of Justice data from 2017 to 2025, comparing the acquittal rates for those charged with speech crimes in jury trials with those for non-jury trials. The results are quite startling. For all offences, Crown Courts have acquitted 21.6% of defendants in the last eight years, compared with just 11.4% in magistrates’ courts. However, for speech-related offences, the acquittal rate in jury trials rises to 27.6%, compared with 15.9% in the magistrates’ courts. In the last three years, juries have been even more likely to find defendants not guilty of speech crimes—32.1%, compared with 14.1%. To protect free speech, will the Minister urge the Justice Secretary to retain the right to trial by jury for those accused of speech offences?
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord and pay tribute to his work in relation to freedom of speech, which is important to all of us. However, as I said in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, we are not having carve-outs for particular kinds of offences or defendants. It would create a raft of unfairness and make the system so complicated that it would not be possible to run it.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, a question was asked about three months ago, and my suggestion was that, to meet the delays, the Government might encourage recently retired judges to help out. The Church of England could not do its ministry, particularly in rural areas, if retired clergy were not doing the work. It is quite possible to persuade some judges; whether or not they could come back immediately, it would ease the work. I tried a lot of cases alone and found it a very lonesome experience. I came to this country and thought that trial by jury was one of its greatest gifts to fairness and justice. Reduce it with great sensitivity so that it does not look as though it does not work.
Topol in “Fiddler on the Roof” has been shouting in my ears: “Tradition! Tradition!” Do not change tradition too quickly, because we may live to regret it.
Baroness Levitt (Lab)
That is why we are adapting it and have done so after great thought, and it is why it is not a wholesale attack on the jury system. I can see entirely why the noble and right reverend Lord makes the point about asking judges to come out of retirement, but the point that Sir Brian has made is that investing in things such as the number of sitting days, which we already have done—we are sitting a record number of days—is not going to solve the problem alone. Structural reform is needed to make the system fit for the 21st century.
Enterprise Act 2002 (Mergers Involving Newspaper Enterprises and Foreign Powers) (No. 2) Regulations 2025
(1 day, 5 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Twycross
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 30 October be approved.
Relevant document: 41st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, the foreign state influence regime is designed to prevent foreign states controlling, influencing or owning our newspapers and news magazines. It is essential that we safeguard our free press and a pluralistic media landscape for the sake of our democracy. Newspapers remain a vital trusted news source. The Ofcom survey News Consumption in the UK: 2025 reported that 73% of regular news users consider newspapers trustworthy, which is more than any other media.
However, noble Lords are aware of the considerable challenges faced by the news media industry. Newspapers require investment to grow and thrive. Balancing this need for investment with protecting news from the influence of a foreign state is at the heart of the foreign state influence regime. This is what underpinned the three statutory instruments that we made in July. We made regulations to amend the foreign state influence regime to allow 15% of shares or voting rights in a newspaper or news magazine to be held by a state-owned investor provided that they are investors with no right or ability to control, direct or influence the newspaper’s policies. The 15% threshold is below the level where the Competition and Markets Authority typically considers that material influence may arise.
The foreign state influence regime, rightly, has a low bar for intervention. The Secretary of State is given no discretion. She must intervene if she has reasonable grounds for suspecting that a foreign power may hold the ability to influence or control the policy of a UK newspaper enterprise as a result of a merger. This is regardless of whether there is an intention to influence. When we introduced the previous regulations earlier in the year, colleagues in your Lordships’ House and the other place challenged us on whether they had the unintended consequence of permitting multiple foreign powers, investing through state-owned investment vehicles, to each invest 15%. The argument was made that it would be possible for the majority of a newspaper enterprise to be owned by state-owned investors, albeit passively.
We were clear that this is a remote risk. However, we understood the concerns of your Lordships’ House. The Government committed to bring forward an additional statutory instrument to put the matter beyond doubt. That is why we are here today, following our consultation in the summer and the response published on 30 October. I take this opportunity to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, for her invaluable engagement on this matter. I recognise the excellent role that your Lordships’ House so regularly plays in scrutinising and improving legislation.
Noble Lords may find it helpful for me to set out the detailed effect of these regulations. First, the regulations ensure that a 15% cap applies to the percentage of shares or voting rights that may be held in a newspaper by state-owned investors acting on behalf of foreign powers. This means that we are now putting it in statute that multiple state-owned investors, acting on behalf of different states, will not be able each to hold up to 15% in one newspaper. The 15% cap will apply to the combined total of direct and indirect holdings of shares or voting rights. We are introducing a specific and narrow exception for stakes of 5% or below in quoted companies. The exception affects the calculation of whether the 15% cap has been reached in cases where multiple state-owned investors from different countries or territories all have investments in the same newspaper. The exception catches only small shareholdings, and its purpose is to avoid a chilling effect on investment.
Secondly, we are using this opportunity to impose new transparency requirements on state-owned investors that invest in UK newspapers and news magazines. If a state-owned investor acquires a direct holding of more than 5% in a newspaper, they must notify the Secretary of State within 14 days of the relevant transaction being made. State-owned investors which are required to notify the Secretary of State must also publish these details within the same timeframe. This will enable the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on a regular basis—we intend for this to be every six months—on the published details of these acquisitions. This will benefit public and parliamentary confidence by increasing transparency around state-owned investment in newspapers.
If a state-owned investor which acquires a direct holding of more than 5% of shares or voting rights fails to comply with the notification and publication requirements, the transaction will be a foreign state newspaper merger situation, and the Secretary of State will be under a duty to issue a foreign state intervention notice and refer the case to the Competition and Markets Authority.
I want to reassure noble Lords about the nature of the 5% quoted company exception. It applies only to a limited type of investment by state-owned investors, as defined in the legislation. Additionally, the intention behind it is to avoid state-owned investors having to take account of holdings by state-owned investors from other countries, which newspaper groups are unable to track. Holdings in companies with publicly traded shares are disclosable only if they cross certain thresholds. These thresholds differ in different markets, but 5% is a common benchmark. If crossed, the investor must declare the interest to the company and the wider market.
The provision prevents the regulations having a chilling effect on investment. It removes the need for state-owned investors to establish whether state-owned investors from other countries have existing undisclosed or small investments in the same newspaper, which would affect whether their intended investment would or could exceed the 15% cap. Ultimately, these regulations address what the Government believe is a remote risk that multiple state-owned investors from different states could each invest 15% in a single newspaper. This cements the measures that can be taken against foreign state influence in UK newspapers and news magazines. These regulations also further improve transparency around investment, thereby helping to protect a thriving plural press essential to our democracy. I hope your Lordships’ House will support these important steps.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, as this is the Minister’s second statutory instrument debate today, I commend her stamina, and indeed I commend my noble friend on my own Front Bench for his, too. I welcome this statutory instrument, which meets the commitment that the Minister gave in July to close what was a gaping regulatory loophole that would have allowed multiple foreign states each to own up to 15% of a British newspaper, with all the risks that flow from that. I am also grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its thorough examination and report on these No. 2 regulations. I am also pleased that the Government Chief Whip scheduled this debate on the Floor of the House and not in the Moses Room.
Of course, all of us could have been spared this additional work if the Government had done what I and others advised some months ago, once the so-called “multiples loophole” was spotted, and that was to withdraw, amend and lay a consolidated set of regulations, rather than us having to handle this piecemeal approach. I am not going to get sidetracked, but, as I have said before, the Government’s unwillingness to take the straightforward route raises questions about who or what has been prioritised when dealing with this matter. However, we are where we are, as they say, and I am pleased that these regulations now ensure that the 15% limit for investment from state-owned investment funds is a single aggregate cap.
Since it became apparent two years ago that our legal framework could not prevent foreign Governments owning, controlling or influencing British newspapers and news magazines, it has been clear that the future of our free press is not just about protecting editorial independence; it is also about ensuring financial sustainability. The pace of technological change and the economic challenges facing the news industry continue to worsen, making investment urgent and consolidation within the industry increasingly likely. So, while I respect those who maintain their position that, even as an aggregate at 15%, the cap has been set too high, my view, as I said in July, is that, restricted to passive investment only and with additional reporting safeguards, which I will come on to in a minute, an aggregate 15% cap for state-owned investors is acceptable and still supports the principle of press freedom.
That said, the Government’s decision to tackle this in a piecemeal way means that these regulations are not the easiest to follow, so I am grateful to the excellent senior DCMS officials for their patience in responding to my questions seeking clarification over the past few weeks, and I am also grateful for the Minister’s explanation of these regulations in her opening remarks. Other noble Lords may still have questions about how the cap works, with the carve-out for small holdings of 5% and below for listed media companies, but I am satisfied that what is proposed is a reasonable approach. Indeed, I am conscious that we must not make this regime even more complex and that doing so could deter legitimate investment or prevent our news industry accessing much-needed investment capital.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, where we are now is, I think, not where the Minister expected to be when the previous statutory instrument was introduced. So how did we get to this point? With great haste, and I would say possibly fuelled by intense pressure from beyond these shores, the Government tabled the secondary legislation that, as we have heard, allowed an unlimited number of 15% stakes to be taken by funds that, to all intents and purposes, have an element of control by foreign Governments—the FOCIs. Then, in late July, when I tabled a fatal Motion, the Minister agreed at least to deal with the multiple-stake issue, which is what we have here.
I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, who managed to explain to me the convoluted nature of this SI, having herself presumably had some coaching from the department. It is clear that this is not an easy piece of statutory legislation and her suggestion regarding future changes to the Enterprise Act is something that I do think the Government should consider.
Although the Minister agreed to deal with the multiple-stake issue, she did not agree with the strong yet minority view of the House that even one 15% stake was one too many. That is because, at the time, in my view, this regulation was designed to achieve just one thing: the sale of the Telegraph Media Group to RedBird IMI, which of course included the 15% stake from Abu Dhabi. This is moving into the realms of a dangerous dogs Bill approach to legislation, but actually it is bespoke regulation for a discerning billionaire.
Just as that flawed SI had been rushed through, the RedBird bid backed out, leaving us today with handmade regulation but no obvious client. Had the Conservative Party, with obvious honourable exceptions, not backed the Government and voted through the last SI, I would have suggested that we do not need this one at all. But this at least deals with the multiple-stake issue while, in my view, leaving the substantive elephant in the room.
The other pachyderm lurking behind this statutory instrument is, as the noble Baroness broached, the future of the Telegraph Media Group. As your Lordships will be well aware, and as was outlined, the Daily Mail and General Trust group has tabled an offer of £500 million to acquire it, and this has apparently been agreed by RedBird, with detailed negotiations proceeding.
I do not expect the Minister to offer judgment as to whether this should succeed, as she will correctly cite quasi-judicial qualms in this area. What I would welcome is an overview of process going forward and some element of timescales. As I am not a quasi-judge, I am happy to offer your Lordships some thoughts and point to some key issues that I hope the Minister will be able to elaborate on.
First—and here I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—the continued involvement of Redbird IMI in the sale process is almost certainly counter to the long-term interests of the Telegraph and its readers. This situation means that the UAE, through the back door, is currently deciding who will own the Telegraph in the future. Will the Minister give assurances that there will be full transparency, if a deal is done, on the funding and structure of any deal?
Again as the noble Baroness has pointed out, the Secretary of State has given the Mail group a very short time to demonstrate that it can go through with this acquisition. Can the Minister outline what steps the Secretary of State will take to ensure the timely sale of the Telegraph in the public interest, should the deal not be ready by the deadline in the Secretary of State’s Statement of 24 November, or should the proposed deal fail the tests also contained in that Statement?
Secondly, there are not many modern precedents, but the Murdoch acquisition of the Times newspaper is perhaps a helpful example. Until the intervention of Nadine Dorries in 2022, the Times and the Sunday Times had been subject to legally required independent directors on their parent company’s board, following Rupert Murdoch’s News International acquiring them in 1981, specifically to safeguard editorial independence after the takeover. These arrangements created, and later updated, an independent board that approved key editorial appointments and was designed to prevent undue interference. I am sure this was far from a perfect solution, and I am also sure that Lord Rothermere is a different sort of owner from Mr Murdoch, but I ask the Minister to take this on board as an option going forward, should the Daily Mail group bid succeed.
Thirdly, the public interest on plurality grounds needs to be assessed, particularly given that both the Telegraph and the Daily Mail occupy similar political spaces. This almost certainly creates a concentration of ownership. Ofcom is the place to make this determination, and this bid should be referred accordingly. I would welcome the Minister’s general response on these three points.
This is secondary legislation that seeks to correct an earlier piece of misdrafted secondary legislation—regulation that we do not now need and that many of us did not want in the first place. It is a living example of how the folly of pandering to specific interests that are themselves mercurial and subject to summary change based on self-interest is the wrong way to legislate.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, who opened this, the second part of our foreign investment regulatory double bill, this evening. I thank her for the remarks she made in outlining these regulations.
Like other noble Lords who have spoken, I broadly welcome these regulations, to which the Government committed when we were discussing the No. 1 set of regulations before the Summer Recess. We are here today thanks to careful scrutiny, not least by my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston, who should be congratulated on helping us get to this point. As she says, we could perhaps have got here through a different route and rather more elegantly, but I am glad that she welcomes the closing of the loophole that she and others identified when we looked at the previous set of regulations earlier this year.
Unlike the guidance on football governance, which we were discussing earlier, these regulations have been drawn to the special attention of the House by your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Like others, I thank the members of that committee for their careful consideration and for the report that draws our attention to the points that they have raised.
The most serious question the committee raises concerns the 5% carve-out, as we have heard. It quotes the correspondence it has had with the noble Baroness’s department, about that carve-out and the way it will be used. DCMS said:
“Our judgement is that the possibility of the carve out being misused is remote”.
Lord Young of Acton (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a Telegraph contributor and as the director of the Free Speech Union, which defends freedom of the press among other freedoms.
First, I thank the Secretary of State for bringing forward these regulations. I was one of around 50 Peers to write to her pointing to the shortcomings of the first set of regulations, which we have already heard quite a bit about, whereby it was not clear whether the 15% ceiling on the percentage of shares in a British newspaper a foreign state could own applied to those states both individually and collectively or just individually, leaving open the possibility that a number of foreign states could each take a 15% stake and collectively end up with a controlling stake.
In our letter, we urged the Secretary of State to bring forward a second set of regulations making it clear that the ceiling applied to foreign states individually and collectively, so I am grateful that the Secretary of State has done so, although a good deal of the credit for the closure of this loophole should go to my noble friend Lady Stowell.
The Telegraph group has now been in a state of “protracted uncertainty”—those are the Secretary of State’s words—for nearly two years. In that period, senior executives and senior members of the editorial staff have been unable to make strategic decisions, which they need to do given the profound upheaval in the newspaper business caused by AI. It is vital that the group is sold to a reputable owner as quickly as possible so that it can adapt to the rapidly changing business environment and attract the investment it urgently needs to grow.
In order to end the prolonged period of uncertainty, I share my noble friend Lady Stowell’s hope that the bid by the Daily Mail and General Trust is successful. As I understand it, the Secretary of State has given DMGT until Monday week to submit a bid and she is then at liberty to approve the sale, provided no flags are raised by the Competition and Markets Authority or Ofcom. Alternatively, she can refer the bid to the CMA. Should that prove necessary, I urge her to impress upon the regulator how important it is to complete its scrutiny process as quickly as possible and make a decision about whether to approve or reject the bid.
Should DMGT’s bid be rejected and it becomes necessary to invite other bidders to submit offers, it would be highly improper if RedBird IMI is still the entity holding the gavel, as it were. The reason it is selling the Telegraph group is because the United Arab Emirates owns a controlling stake in the company. If it is a breach of the regulations for a company that is controlled by a foreign state to own a British newspaper, how can it be appropriate for a company controlled by a foreign state to decide who to sell a British newspaper to?
I am not alone in being prepared to overlook this anomaly in the current circumstances, given the need for an expedited sale. But should DMGT’s bid prove unsuccessful, or if it fails to materialise, the course of action the Secretary of State must take is clear. I share my noble friend Lady Stowell’s disappointment that the Secretary of State did not set out what she would do in the event of DMGT’s bid not materialising, or it being rejected, in her Written Ministerial Statement at the beginning of last week.
To my mind, the Secretary of State’s course of conduct is clear. She must immediately refer RedBird IMI’s ownership of the Telegraph group to the CMA. The CMA will, I imagine, quickly declare that the arrangements fall foul of the foreign state influence regulations, as it must, and it should then use its powers to order the independent directors of the Telegraph group to hold an auction with no floor price in which the bidders are transparent about the origin of the money they have raised for the acquisition.
Those last two points are crucial. Should RedBird IMI retain its grip on the gavel, not only would that be improper but it will be reluctant to accept bids of less than £500 million, given that is how much it paid. In the light of the tumult unleashed in the newspaper business by AI in the past two years, not to mention higher interest rates, economic tariffs and a soft ad market, few if any bidders, with the possible exception of DMGT, will be willing to meet that price. To insist on a reserve price of £500 million might very well condemn the Telegraph to remain in limbo for the foreseeable future, with disastrous consequences. Should the bidders not be transparent about the financing of the deal, there is a risk the new owners will also fall foul of the regulations and we will be back here again. Rinse, wash, repeat—meanwhile, a great British newspaper shrinks and shrinks until it becomes invisible.
In short, if the DMGT bid is viable, the Secretary of State must use her powers to ensure the deal is completed as quickly as possible. If it is not, she needs to move equally quickly to a transparent auction process overseen by the company’s independent directors. To govern is to decide, and the Secretary of State must start making some decisions.
Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)
I do not want to detain your Lordships’ House, and the speeches already made by several noble Lords are very much to the point. I should declare an interest as a long-serving employee of the Daily Telegraph. In that capacity, I draw the attention of the Minister to what it is like for a newspaper not to know who is owning it for such a very long time.
It seems to me that the greatest power of bureaucracy is delay, which increases the power of bureaucracy with every moment; that is its appalling leverage on everything else. But business, and particularly journalism, has the opposite desire. It needs to get on, and the word “journalism”, of course, comes from the French word for day. It happens every day, and every day lost is a disaster for us. In certain respects, we have been losing day after day—we have lost roughly half the length of the Second World War not knowing who is really going to own us.
I make no distinction really here between Governments of either party because both, it seems to me, were guilty of a similar failure. I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that there is a strong contrast between the quasi-judicial role that DCMS quite rightly operates, which is necessary in these cases, and all the manoeuvring and use of time and delay to try to satisfy—as the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Young, have pointed out—the needs of a foreign state that the British Government seem to be overzealously courting.
This is a very bad piece of politics—not party politics—and it puts us all in play. If we were to write the history of this, we would have to see that it fell to the journalists of the Daily Telegraph twice to start making a noise before anything could prevent very bad things happening. That seems to be nothing to do with the quasi-judicial process. I hope that the very sharp deadline of 15 December is tacit acknowledgement by the Government of the damage done by delay and that therefore something more drastic is being done now.
In another place, the Justice Secretary, when trying to do something about jury trials, has made the point that justice delayed is justice denied. We at the Telegraph have had justice delayed for a very long time and therefore denied. The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and other noble Lords have been clear that it has to be acknowledged that a process of this sort should never go on again and that there is a big lesson here. If, for whatever reason, the Daily Mail bid fails or gets called into question, there has to be an open, swift and fair process.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, this has been an important and useful debate, and I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to it. I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, for her engagement over many months with DCMS. I think we have a better position as a result of her engagement and persistence on this matter, and I know that the Secretary of State is also grateful for the time she has taken to help us refine this, frustrating as it must have been for the noble Baroness at times.
This regime is about safeguarding a specific industry that has a unique, essential role in the health of our democracy. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, made it really clear that this is important for democracy, and I think that is beyond doubt in your Lordships’ House. I need to put on the record that I do not recognise the scenario outlined by the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Moore of Etchingham, of the genesis of these SIs, but I hope all noble Lords feel that we have listened to and addressed concerns raised in your Lordships’ House and have got to a better place as a result.
I will address the points made by noble Lords during the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, raised concerns about the 5% exception’s potential for misuse. I stress that this is a narrow exception, applying in limited circumstances. It intends to remove any potential chilling effect by providing that a state-owned investor, or SOI, from one country or territory may ignore smaller holdings that are in effect too small to confer influence in their own right in quoted companies by SOIs from other countries that are not visible to them.
A hypothetical example of the limited circumstances in which the carve-out is in our view necessary to avoid a chilling effect is that if a state-owned investor wanted to invest 15% in a publicly listed newspaper owner they would have to be sure that no other state-owned investors from any other states or territories already held shares in the same newspaper owner. Without the carve-out, they could potentially not be sure that their 15% investment would comply with the limit.