Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill

Debate between Lord Teverson and Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer

Committee stage
Tuesday 16th December 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I was feeling quite confident that we would wholly outnumber the government Benches, but then I saw all the people at the back and thought maybe not. We will get good answers to our questions anyway, that is for sure.

As we all said at Second Reading, this is an important, good treaty, around which we need an implementing Bill. I will move Amendment 1 but will also speak to Amendments 11 and 20, to make matters easy for the Grand Committee.

Amendment 1 is very much a probing amendment. From our Benches, we very much welcome the information- sharing and benefit-sharing aspects of the treaty, particularly around marine genetic resources and digital sequence information. This principle covers the sharing of those physical, biological and information resources to all nations. That is important and something we would very much agree with.

However, a number of nations will not ratify this treaty. At the moment the non-ratifiers include the United Kingdom—I am pleased to say the Government are soon to put that right—China, India, Turkey, Malaysia, Brazil, just to mention a few, and not least the USA. All those nations have signed the treaty, but the United States Administration have made it pretty clear that it they not going to ratify it, perhaps not surprisingly given that they have not even ratified UNCLOS. My concern is that there are ways of bypassing these provisions on information-sharing and benefit-sharing by offshoring, if I could use that phrase, to non-ratifying states, particularly the United States, which has a huge history and a good reputation on innovation, venture capital and all the other areas making sure that human progress moves forward.

My concern is that organisations or persons—whether companies or individuals—that would otherwise be British based will perhaps find a way to capture intellectual property and knowledge within other jurisdictions. My question is: have the Government thought about this and is there a way of approaching it? I am not saying that it is necessarily easy, but I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on how that might move forward.

My Amendments 11 and 20 are about flags of convenience. Let us look at some of the issues. I am concerned about enforceability. As noble Lords will be aware, 45% of total marine tonnage—vessels above 100 gross tonnes in weight—are registered to just three nations: Panama, the Marshall Islands and Liberia. All of them have already ratified the BBNJ treaty, so that gives me some consolation. However, as to enforceability, the irony of this treaty, in some ways, is that it relies on UNCLOS, one of the core values of which, throughout the history of marine commerce on the high seas, is that you cannot intervene on vessels with flags other than your own unless you have the permission of those flagged authorities. That is almost impossible to do, so enforcement on the high seas is extremely difficult. We may not be talking about supertankers or the big freighters in terms of biodiversity, but we are talking about research vessels, which are still subject to the same restrictions for intervention on the high seas. Those remain despite the treaty, unless there is a broader agreement, but I cannot see that the treaty allows for the boarding of vessels of other nations on the high seas.

One of the areas that came out a couple of years ago from the International Relations and Defence Committee was that the UK had not signed or ratified the UN Convention on Conditions for Registration of Ships. I am not saying that that is an answer to everything, but it would be a great service if the United Kingdom, with its influence through the IMO and other organisations, were able to revive that treaty, which only has some 15 ratifications but needs 40 to come into effect. What I am looking at here is for the United Kingdom to take this forward. We are 27th in terms of internationally registered tonnage, so we are a small fleet despite being an international, global and maritime nation. Can the Minister say whether there is a way that we can start to repair this situation, because enforceability, under the current rules of UNCLOS and even under the BBNJ treaty, is going to be extremely difficult? I beg to move.

[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.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Teverson and Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 5th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I add my support to this important amendment, which has received widespread support from around the House. Noble Lords have rightly concentrated on farm animals because of the implications of the trade Bill—I associate myself with the wise remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Deben. However, let us remember that the animal sentience directive applies not only to farm animals but to all animals: wild animals, companion animals, working animals and lab animals. If we did not accept it, it would be a major step backwards. This House will remember that the Animal Welfare Act 2006 was a major step forward, but it was quite controversial and took a lot of time to go through both Houses. That is one reason why I am particularly surprised at the Government wanting to spend lots more time on animal sentience—time which we know Governments rarely have. As other noble Lords have said, they could simply include it in this Bill and avoid all that time being taken up.

So the question I ask myself is: what loopholes are the Government hoping to create for themselves in their Bill? There must be some reason why they do not want to put provision firmly into this Bill. Those suspicions fuel public anger when people realise that the Government are resisting an amendment of this sort.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Bakewell was absolutely right to talk about Britain as a country of nature and animal lovers. I remember that one of the first things to happen when I became an MEP in the mid-1990s was that I received a sackful of mail about live animal transport. The Rwandan genocide was taking place at the same time but I received no letters whatever about that, despite the EU’s role. I relate that story only to show that I am in no way sentimental about this issue, but I completely support Amendment 30 in particular because I can see no reason why we should not include it in the Bill.

I chair the House’s EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, which covers agriculture. During an inquiry into Brexit and animal welfare, one thing that clearly came out was the trade issue, which a number of noble Lords have referred to. At that time—and I really do not see things as being very different now—it seemed to everyone on the committee that there was a schizophrenia within government. On the one hand, Defra was saying that high animal welfare standards would continue after Brexit. One obvious point to make about this amendment is that it does not in any way constrain our Government from increasing welfare standards after Brexit. It would not get in the way of that, so that is no reason to resist it. On the other hand, the Department for International Trade was very gung-ho in fulfilling its mission of getting free trade agreements throughout the world more or less as part of the Brexit dividend—agricultural trade being an important part of that.

Two other things came across during our inquiry. One was that no one in the industry resisted retaining the current EU and UK animal welfare standards and legislation—no one wanted to reduce them. The other was that WTO rules are very unclear in this area. There is no guarantee in trade agreements that you can prevent trade happening. Whether under WTO rules or under FTAs, there is no guarantee of enforceable animal welfare clauses. The example given was the EU’s resistance to accepting North American hormone beef. The EU effectively lost the case on animal welfare and has to provide compensation to the United States for that restriction. Therefore, this is an area where I still see a fundamental difference within government—between Secretary of State Liam Fox and Secretary of State Michael Gove. I do not see that as resolved, and that is why this proposed new clause has to be included in the Bill.

I have a question for the Minister. In her speech last week, the Prime Minister mentioned remaining a member, or an associate member, of the European Aviation Safety Agency, the European Medicines Agency and the European Chemicals Agency. I did not see this mentioned in her speech but is it the Government’s intention to try to remain an associate member of the European Food Safety Authority and, as part of that, the Panel on Animal Health and Welfare? This is viewed as one of the most authoritative and excellent organisations in that area but, by not being an associate member of the European Food Safety Authority, we will no longer be a member of or an influence on that panel.

This amendment is fundamental. The Government can gain only praise by accepting it, and I hope that they will do so.