Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

Debate between Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer and Lord Callanan

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

I will speak to Amendment 3 in this group on the UK’s capacity to comply with Article 5 of the BBNJ, which is about capacity building—building the international capacity to understand the problems and issues and to develop solutions.

The UK is particularly well placed to do that because we have the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton and Liverpool, which is a centre of excellence, providing all sorts of leadership and national capabilities in ocean research. We have the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, which is leading in its field of marine science research and is recognised as a centre of international excellence in marine ecosystems. In Scotland, we have the Scottish Association for Marine Science and the excellent Sea Mammal Research Unit at the University of St Andrews, which is the UK’s main centre for marine mammal science. I have not included an absolutely full list of all the centres, so it might be a bit invidious, because there are other places that do a lot of work in this area and are excellent—those are just three examples. We have a special responsibility to share our capacity with the geographical locations that will be making an effort to comply with the BBNJ treaty but do not have anything like the history and knowledge base that we have.

One example I could give would be the Sargasso Sea, which is 4 million square kilometres in area—when I read that, I thought it unlikely to be so large, but I double-checked and it is—with Bermuda at its heart. It would be hard to overstate the importance of the Sargasso Sea in biodiversity terms. It is globally significant and is threatened in lots of ways, particularly by overfishing, obviously, but also by mining. Bermuda, for which the sea is critical, has worked hard to achieve, for example, the Sargasso Sea Commission in 2014. As the treaty implementation gets under way, the UK has not only to help capacity-build the science there to start solving some of the Sargasso Sea’s issues but to set the agenda internationally, because although the treaty affects Bermuda so crucially, as an overseas territory it has no direct voice at the UN. We need to use our voice and scientific capability to help not just Bermuda but all those overseas territories that are so critical, given the fact that the ocean and its currents are global.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for leading this group. I will start by speaking to my own Amendments 2 and 17, before addressing Amendments 4 and 5 in the name of my noble friend Lord Fuller, who sadly cannot be in the House today.

Amendment 2 is a straightforward probing amendment which seeks to understand what steps the Government will be able to take to prevent genetic samples being accessed by hostile state actors. We know that much of the deep ocean has yet to be researched, and the impact of future discoveries on key sectors such as the life sciences may well be significant. In certain circumstances, we would not want discoveries shared with state actors who may use them against us and against our interests. Can the Minister set out the contingency powers that Ministers have to prevent the sharing of critical genetic samples in those circumstances?

My Amendment 17 follows on closely from the debates that were had in the House of Commons. The Bill contains a large number of regulation-making powers to allow the UK to remain compliant with the decisions made by the Conference of the Parties under the treaty. This amendment simply seeks to improve transparency and parliamentary accountability by ensuring that there is a regular update on core metrics, such as the details of regulatory changes and the impact of them on relevant sectors. When Parliament grants Ministers wide-ranging powers in legislation, it is only right that we put in place the appropriate transparency and accountability requirements. While the Minister may not be able to accept this amendment today, I hope that she will be able to set out more fully the Government’s plans to ensure that Parliament, and consequently the British public, have access to information on the way that Ministers are using the powers that the Bill has granted them.

Amendment 4, in the name of my noble friend Lord Fuller, seeks to probe the impact of the treaty, including the imposition of marine protected areas over the deep ocean, on the economy and on infrastructure. As the Minister knows, we signed this treaty when we were in office, and at the time we were satisfied that the treaty struck the right balance. However, it would be interesting to hear what further work the Government have done more recently to assess the projected impact of marine protected areas on the economy, in particular through restrictions on certain shipping activities. Can the Minister please expand on that?

Amendments 5 and 5A relate to craft that are not members of the class societies for shipping. My understanding of my noble friend’s amendments in this regard is that they are designed to facilitate a debate on the so-called dark fleet. According to a February report from the Institute for Human Rights and Business, some estimates claim that there are now 1,400 vessels in the fleet, which would be up to 10% of the world’s tanker fleet. The Kyiv School of Economics estimates that Russia alone has invested nearly $10 billion— €9.26 billion—to set up a ghost fleet of several hundred vessels, estimated at nearly 600 ships in July 2024. These, of course, are the ships that transport Russia’s oil, helping to support its illegal war in Ukraine.

Can the Minister set out the Government’s thoughts on how this treaty might help us tackle the dark fleet, as well as what steps the Government are actively taking to prevent the operations of illegal shipping? I hope that the Minister will be able to take our concerns on board across these amendments; I look forward to her reply.