Barry Gardiner MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Dec 2025 · Government Procurement · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend gives an apposite example of some of the problems that can arise. I will not be so bold as to say I have the solution, but I will at least try to set out the problem with clarity, so that the Minister can ensure that his officers are able to provide a proper solution. The model details eight types of social value, each with several areas of activity. Those cover fair work, training to address skills gaps, support for small business and community business, action for sustainability, crime reduction, overcoming barriers to work, and support for health and wellbeing. Contracting authorities can choose which of those are relevant to a particular procurement, but one element is mandatory: where a type of social value is selected, the standard reporting metric set out in the model must then be used for monitoring and reporting. Herein lies the problem. These monitoring requirements will influence how social value requirements are described in tenders and contracts. A contracting authority using a targeted recruitment and training toolkit would struggle to comply with the standard reporting metrics, as they would not relate to the tried and tested specifications that are used. Many of the options in the social value model are related to the jobs, skills and SME opportunities that are contemplated in the national procurement policy statement. However, the model appears to be expecting procurement officials to create tender requirements whereby potential contractors will identify labour shortages and community needs and then propose ways to fill these gaps in the delivery of the contract. That may be possible with a services contract, but it is really not workable in a large, complex building and infrastructure development. What are my concerns? First, apart from the way outputs are recorded, no specific elements of the social value model are mandatory for contracting authorities, so the provision of opportunities for people who are currently disadvantaged in the labour market is not mandatory. Contracting authorities can choose to focus on other activities contained in the social value model. Secondly, the approach for every social value option is to require bidders for the contract to provide a comprehensive method statement at tender stage. That puts a heavy burden on potential contractors and is a huge barrier to small businesses bidding for contracts, which is perverse when breaking down barriers to SME engagement is one of the Procurement Act principles and a core mission of the Government.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Government Procurement · Hansard source

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  I am heartened. When some hon. Members approached me about this Adjournment debate, I said, “Look, it’s extremely boring—you won’t want to be in it,” but to have had three interventions that have been so apposite is really gratifying. An alternative approach would be for most social value requirements to be included in the tender and contract documents as conditions relating to the delivery of the contract, rather than an item that is scored at the tender stage. Here, a method statement would be required shortly after the award of the contract, but only the winning contractor would have to prepare it. I hope that that goes some way to answering the questions from my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) and for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards). My third concern is that the social value requirements may not be deliverable in large construction contracts. These have many layers of employer involved in delivering the contract and a significant turnover of employers and workforces at different stages of the contract. That is very different from the majority of service contracts. Key issues arising from this could include: ensuring that the subcontractors who employ most of the workforce deliver the social value requirements and provide the necessary monitoring information; getting highly mobile subcontractors to recruit and train locally based people; and ensuring continuity of employment and training for new entrants when subcontractors have limited engagement with the project and the training requires one or two years of on-site support. The current social value model demonstrates no awareness of those issues. If it feels impractical to achieve jobs and training on a particular project, procurement teams may opt for alternative social value outputs or opt out altogether. That could undermine the high priority given to providing opportunities for disadvantaged groups in the delivery of major projects. Fourthly, the social value model uses terms such as “people under-represented in the labour market” and “disabled people”. Most applicants from these groups will not be identified on any register or easily categorised for recruitment and monitoring purposes. Indeed, they may not want to be labelled in this way, whatever the standard metrics require. In the toolkits to which I have referred, the focus of attention is on local people’s need for employment and for in-work training and support. Often months or years of employment is needed if new entrants are to become fully productive and embedded in their trade. Targeting comes by recruiting from training and support organisations that work with the target communities, especially local organisations. Fifthly, the term “community” may have widely different meanings. Where there is a locality element in the model’s mandatory standard reporting metrics, “community” is defined as a UK region, but people living close to a major infrastructure development probably see their community as having much narrower boundaries. These more targeted benefits seem closer to the Government’s missions as described. There is an additional question. The annex to procurement policy note 2, from February this year, states that employment opportunities arising from a contract must be advertised via the Department for Work and Pensions’ “Find a job” website, as well as local jobcentres. In the past, the website has offered the employer suitable candidates from anywhere in the UK, often within hours. That creates additional barriers for local new entrants, as they are competing with candidates from a very wide area. If the requirement is still applicable, this issue needs to be addressed by the Department for Work and Pensions.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Government Procurement · Hansard source

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  Goodness me! It is very rare that I stand in this Chamber and get such immediate results from the Government. If this is a precedent, it is one that I wholeheartedly welcome. I am delighted to hear what my hon. Friend has just reported is the new Government policy. As I was saying about the Department for Work and Pensions, defining some job vacancies as “new entrant trainee opportunities” and naming local organisations as potential recruitment partners can increase opportunities for local people without damaging competition, and he has just mentioned a very good example. This is especially important in the context of the youth guarantee announced by the Government in September. Likewise, local business support organisations can help increase opportunities for local SMEs. Many combined authorities have a role to play in promoting good practice, on a shared basis, in their regions. Finally, I am concerned that the current model provides a complex shopping list of what social value might be sought. It leaves procurement teams to unpack what each will involve and then turn that into a tender requirement. This is in a context in which many of the procurement staff involved, especially in works contracts, will be new to social value. I am struck by the critique of the social value approach that was made in the 2024 report published by the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, one of the leading organisations in the field. It says that “an entire industry has grown up around the demand for methods, measures and consultancy time to help understand and measure social value. As a result, there are concerns that the original purpose of social value and the nuanced social dynamics involved in measuring its impact may be lost to bureaucracy and rigid frameworks.” I think that sums it up perfectly. In my view, the current social value model will bring a bonanza for consultants. Both contracting authorities and contractors will feel that they need to seek help to engage with these relatively new requirements. It would be far more efficient to simplify the requirements and equip procurement teams with the tools, systems and training to put these into contracts and monitor delivery. I have three urgent questions for the Minister to consider. First, will the Government review the social value model to reduce the negative impact on small businesses seeking services contracts? Secondly, will the Government, perhaps working with the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, commission urgent work to develop a targeted recruitment and training approach for large works contracts, using the experiences gained through the toolkits elsewhere in the UK? Thirdly, will the Government clarify whether all vacancies on works contracts have to be listed on the DWP “Find a job” website, and if so whether employers are able to exercise a local preference when delivering a social value obligation?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts · Hansard source

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  The Chief Secretary quoted the OBR review, which said: “The ultimate responsibility for the circumstances in which this vulnerability occurred” was “with the leadership of the OBR.” Has anyone in the OBR leadership offered their resignation, or has that gone out of fashion?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. He is absolutely right, and that money gets recycled throughout our economy. I think it is a scandal that more than 60% of people in receipt of universal credit are actually in work—often working two jobs to make ends meet. That is a scandal because it means that those employers are not paying their workforce at a level that we, the rest of society, consider to be enough to live on. We, the taxpayer, are subsidising those companies’ wage bills so that they can pay their shareholders higher profits. The Budget does not reverse structural inequality or shift the dial on growth. It is also a Budget that whispers when it should be screaming about the catastrophe that will collapse our economy within the next 25 years. Let me talk about the figures that matter and about the budgets that are actually going to change our lives. Over the past 800,000 years, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has varied between 180 and 300 parts per million. During the last 10,000 years—the period of human civilisation—it has varied between 260 and 280 parts per million, which has given us humans a relatively stable temperature and climate. When we started the significant use of fossil fuels in the 19th century, the concentration of CO 2 was at 280 parts per million; today, it is at 424 parts per million. As a result of those emissions, global mean temperatures have risen by nearly 1.5°C. That is the level that we know gives us only a 50% chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. What does dangerous climate change actually mean? It means the systematic collapse of our economy. It means refugees fleeing parts of the world where life has become impossible because of temperatures persistently above 40°C, drought and failing crops. It means unprecedented societal chaos as supply chains fail and competition for food turns to violence. It means war. What the Government have failed to understand is that they cannot weigh up the cost of addressing climate change against the cost to the economy, when the whole economy depends on keeping climate change under control, so the first budget we need is a global carbon budget that sets the quantity of CO 2 that we can emit if we are to meet our Paris temperature agreements. If we are to stay below the 2°C threshold, we have only 530 billion metric tonnes of CO 2 that we can release into the atmosphere. That may sound a lot; in fact, it is only 13 years of emissions at their current rate. The budget to stay within 1.5°C is a lot worse: just 130 billion metric tonnes, which is just three years of emissions at today’s level.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I will not. Parliament is supposed to be a gathering of the leaders of our community: rational and intelligent human beings capable of horizon scanning and guiding our country to a safe and sustainable future. Instead, it acts like the frog in the pan of gradually boiling water, delaying its escape until too late. The Budget should have been bold. It should have put our country on a wartime footing with a national programme of retrofit, no new build that is not net zero in its embodied and operational carbon, a huge roll-out of public transport and a major programme of electrification. We have a huge majority, yet we act as though we are afraid of the power that we spent 14 years seeking. Today, the green economy is growing three times faster than the rest of the UK economy. If growth truly is our ambition, it is in that clean, affordable and secure future that we should be investing. People often talk of a just transition. I prefer to talk of a bloody marvellous one. What’s not to like about warm homes with affordable energy; comfortable, efficient, speedy and reliable public transport; the creation of thousands of new jobs; decent air quality; a secure food system with reliable supply chains; and a stable geopolitical world? We live in an age of public sufficiency and private luxury, as Professor Kevin Anderson said last week at the national emergency briefing. A Budget that was adequate to the challenge we face would have turned that on its head, creating a society where every private home had what was sufficient and every public domain was one of luxury. That would be the just and equal society I came into the Labour party to create.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I joined the Labour party because I believe in equality and justice, and those are two of the values that I use to judge any Budget. Does it create a more equal society, and is the society that it creates more just? Therefore, there are aspects of the Budget that I welcome, such as the removal of policy costs from household energy bills, saving families £150. It is welcome that the parents of 3,730 children in my constituency will be helped by the abolition of the two-child benefit cap and the expansion of free school meals. I welcome the rise in the minimum wage and the living wage.

• 25 Nov 2025 · COP30 · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend for the leadership he has shown internationally and nationally over the past 20 years—it has been quite remarkable. I thank him for his statement today. He will have seen over the time that has elapsed since COP26 in Glasgow the change in the language that is used. In Glasgow, when discussing the Glasgow climate pact, we talked about “phasing out” coal and fossil fuel subsidies. We then moved to “phasing down” and then to “transitioning away”. Now we have a “plan” or “pathway” to transitioning away. That, I am sure, causes alarm bells to ring in his head, as it does in mine. Can he tell us what he sees as the role of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance? He spoke about the need to work with other countries for a really ambitious future. How does he propose to do that?

• 20 Nov 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The speedy passage of environmental legislation through this House is not often a feature, so I thank the Leader of the House for the speedy way in which the biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction treaty was dealt with by the Government. In contrast, I remind him that in 2023 our party said that we would bring forward legislation for a new clean air Act. I have no doubt that the Leader of the House is thinking about what may be going into the King’s Speech next year. Given that it will be the 70th anniversary of the original Clean Air Act 1956, could he put this forward as something to be looked at to ensure that we meet World Health Organisation standards?

• 20 Nov 2025 · Migration: Settlement Pathway · Hansard source

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  I welcome the assurance the Home Secretary has given to those who have achieved indefinite leave to remain and have settled status in this country. That certainty is really important. She will know that in my constituency I have many families from Syria and Afghanistan, who came under the Syrian programme and Operation Pitting. They have limited leave to remain and are deeply worried, from what the Home Secretary has said, as to whether they will ultimately be deported from this country. Can she give an assurance to those who are currently seeking ILR and who came on those programmes that they will be able to follow the path that was set out for them when they arrived? Will she give that assurance and ensure that this country will never do a deal with the Taliban to deport women and children from this country?

• 17 Nov 2025 · Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one of the most important things the Government can do at COP1 when it meets next year is to establish a regime with the other members of the conference of the parties on how enforcement of the new treaty will take place?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Carbon Budget Delivery Plan · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing the debate and introducing it in the way she did. To misquote Bill Clinton, “It’s a limit, not a target, stupid!” The carbon budgets we set represent a threshold we should not breach, not a target we should aim for or just dip under. We are having this debate now because our courts ruled that the original carbon budget delivery plan was unlawful; it lacked credible plans to meet our obligations. Published just two days before the legal deadline, the Government’s new plan states that they have sufficient policies to achieve their sixth carbon budget, which required a 77% reduction in emissions from the 1990 baseline. So, do they? Remember that carbon budget 6 is the first to include international aviation and shipping. The plan highlights where decarbonisation will be the hardest, and shows us those sectors that need to be prioritised if we are to achieve a totally clean, secure and affordable energy system by 2050. Our homes and buildings’ operational and embodied carbon need to be addressed, and our heavy industries, such as steel, glass and ceramics, need to find high-energy, low-cost solutions. The aviation sector must show how it can meet the Government’s expansion expectations without an over-optimistic reliance on the production of sustainable aviation fuel or a dependence on greenhouse gas removal technologies that are still not proven at commercial scale. First, let us examine the energy and emissions projections that undergird the plan. The emissions projections include all planned, adopted, implemented and expired climate change policies. They are expected to deliver more than 100% of the emissions reductions to meet carbon budgets 4 and 5, but are projected to contribute only 76% of the savings needed for carbon budget 6. Over the summer, the Climate Change Committee examined 163 of those plans for reducing emissions. Fewer than half were considered to be fully credible, and more than a third were considered to be insufficient or to have significant risk of failure. On its top recommendation—to make electricity cheaper—the committee said that it had “not…seen any progress” in the past year. It is good that the plans are improving and becoming more credible year on year, but the delivery plan states only that the Government “expect” the energy and emissions projections to deliver the requisite emissions reductions. It does not say that they are confident or give a percentage of probability, as we find in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The excellent people at Carbon Brief note that by counting all the various policies—past, present and future—alongside other modelling adjustments, the baseline for carbon budget 6 is already reduced by 46.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. The policies assume the success of the zero emission vehicle mandate and the SAF mandate—policies that are still very much in the pipeline. The SAF mandate Bill is still only on Second Reading in the House of Lords. The first warning I give, then, is that the first tranche of policies—at table 3 in the plan—cannot be taken as a given, even though they have been incorporated into the lowering of the baseline for how we measure CB6. Warning No. 2 concerns what the plan terms “wider factors”. That principally means the adoption of technologies, such as artificial intelligence, that are likely to improve energy efficiency, help integrate renewable energy generation and support sustainable practices, according to the technical annexe. The Government’s analysis finds that those wider factors, which also include consumer behaviour, could reduce emissions by an average of 20 megatonnes of CO 2 equivalent a year over the period of CB6, from 2033 to 2037. The annexe admits that there is “the potential for not all of these reductions to be realised”, before saying that it “reflects a cautious approach”. I will await the CCC’s full assessment of whether these wider savings are realistic in its 2026 progress report. The Environmental Audit Committee has recently published its report on warning No. 3, aviation. The final hearing of our inquiry was told that demand management would not be one of the measures to reduce emissions in the sector. Shockingly, that was despite the fact that in its advice on carbon budget 7, the Climate Change Committee said that demand management should account for 54% of emissions reductions in the sector by 2040. SAF only accounted for 33%, and efficiency improvements of technology were a paltry 13%. The Department for Transport says that aviation can be fossil fuel-free by 2050 without demand management. Will the Minister ensure that the Government publish that unlikely analysis so that we can properly examine it? I am in no doubt that the Climate Change Committee will be keen to do so. I note that the committee clearly states that “the aviation industry adopting the cost of aviation decarbonisation will help manage demand”. Both the CCC and the recently published Whitehead review are very clear that the aviation sector must pay for the carbon that it pollutes in accordance with the polluter-pays principle. The Whitehead review recommends that the sector should be required to pay for the greenhouse gas removals it needs to reach net zero, and that Government should ensure that they do so. A fossil-free sector will drive competition between SAF technologies and the new greenhouse gas removal technologies, which is a good thing and to be welcomed, but getting those technologies up and running with far greater urgency is an imperative, given the Government’s desire to go ahead with airport expansion. I remain sceptical at best about the Government’s approach to aviation, and it surely has to be seen as one of the biggest potential pitfalls in their net zero plans, relying so heavily as they do on technology that is not currently readily available. The fourth warning is one voiced by many climate scientists, such as Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester. It is that the Climate Change Committee appears to have changed its mandate from advising Government on what they must do to meet the scientific realities, to advising the Government only what they consider the Government will find politically acceptable and be willing to accept. I have been a champion of the Climate Change Committee. I believe its independence and forthright advice have been why we managed to achieve such enormous bipartisan progress in tackling climate change. I commend the previous Conservative Government on all the progress they made on that, and I think we need to restore that bipartisanship. However, Professor Anderson rightly warns: “Major societal transformations, such as moving from private car to public transport, are largely absent from the CCC’s recommendations.” Instead, the CCC proposes that the UK should capture and store 36 megatonnes of CO 2 annually by 2050, triple the current rate of the entire planet—I will say that again: triple the current rate of the entire planet—to avoid making that recommendation to a modal shift from private vehicles to public transport. That smacks to me of the committee dodging the tough advice where it thinks the Government might find it politically unwelcome. My advice to the committee is to grow a pair. Over-optimistic reliance on future technofixes is not a solid policy basis to achieve the carbon budgets and reductions that we have set. The projection for carbon budget 6 is that we will be just 2 megatonnes within the 965-megatonne limit for that period. That takes me right back to where I started: these budgets are not targets to scrape under as narrowly as possible while trying to change as little about our way of life as we can. We did not carry on as normal during the covid pandemic, just waiting for the vaccine to come and save us. Instead, we acted urgently to fundamentally change the way we operated to protect the most vulnerable. If we carry on as normal, seeking to do just about enough, we risk overshooting our carbon budgets. In doing so, we fail future generations, and we fail those in the global majority for whom the planet has already warmed too much—whose crops are failing through drought, whose homes are already under floodwater, and whose forests are already burning. Let us all be clear; the costs of inaction on climate change are far greater than the costs of action. That is why the carbon budgets are so important. It is all our responsibility to ensure that we have adequate policies in place to deliver them.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Carbon Budget Delivery Plan · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister recognise that the policy costs mentioned by the shadow Minister are a regressive tax, and that it may be better to put those on to general taxation? Of course, the energy company obligations and other policy costs were introduced by the Conservative Government. Will the Minister give consideration to where they may best lie to ensure that what he said in response to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is realised?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member is absolutely right to talk about the opening up of the Arctic and the geo-strategic threats that we face there. In that respect, would he support my earlier call that the Government should release the Joint Intelligence Committee’s report on the link between biodiversity, sustainability and national security?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill · Hansard source

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  It has been almost 19 years since I first met Professor Alex Rogers at a two-day conference at Somerville College, Oxford, convened by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment. The subject was international law on the high seas. The young postdoctoral fellow inspired us about the amazing biodiversity of our global ocean— I use the singular deliberately—but he also frustrated us by explaining that the international community lacked any legal framework to protect it. The ocean accounts for 99% of our planet by volume and nearly two thirds by surface area. Every second breath we take is supplied to us by the ocean. Some 90% of the excess heat in the climate system has been absorbed by the ocean. The ocean is our greatest nature-based solution to climate change, and it is only by restoring the health of our marine ecosystems that we can deliver on our promise to meet the 30 by 30 target in the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework. The BBNJ treaty is the missing part of the jigsaw. That is why today’s debate is so important, and why the Bill is so important. The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill is welcome and necessary, but we must recognise what the treaty is and what it is not. We must do so not in order to understate what the Bill does, but to understand clearly what action we must take following its passage. We will need secondary legislation to implement the treaty, and—dare I say this before the Budget statement?—it will require adequate funding. The treaty creates a framework for the establishment of protected areas on the high seas, but it does not, in and of itself, create those protected areas. It is therefore important that the Government start to develop proposals for high seas MPAs, especially in regions of the world where the UK is a party to the relevant regional fisheries management organisations. I commend DEFRA for the work that it has already done in its stocktake of area-based management tools in areas beyond national jurisdiction. This is a really important baseline. I ask the Minister to set out in her response to the debate what further work is planned to identify, support and deliver specific MPAs. I am particularly keen to hear how she might develop the supplementary report that has already been prepared on the Sargasso sea. Will she confirm that this internationally significant ecosystem is a priority for the development of an MPA? It has now been 13 years since the Sargasso sea was recognised as an ecologically or biologically significant area, having met all seven EBSA criteria. Our country’s history has left a legacy. That legacy is our exclusive economic zone, which is the fifth largest in the world, largely due to our remaining overseas territories, but that legacy brings responsibilities with it. I pay tribute to the work of the previous Conservative Administration, who expanded the blue belt programme to nominally protect more than 4 million sq km of ocean, from Anguilla in the Caribbean to Pitcairn in the Pacific ocean. In the last year, the programme took satellite imagery of more than 100 million sq km of UK overseas territory waters, providing crucial monitoring and surveillance to crack down on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities. It is this very tangible knowledge and expertise that the UK should be at the forefront of delivering through the first BBNJ COP, which will take place within a year of the treaty taking force, from 17 January 2026. I welcome the announcement, following the spending review, that the blue belt programme will receive increased funding for 2025-26. However, given that £2 million of this £8.6 million comes from official development assistance, which itself is being cut, I hope it will not seem churlish if I ask that the programme be ringfenced for the future. For much of human history, we did not need the BBNJ treaty. The high seas were protected from the worst impacts of human activity by the simple reality that they were so far from land and too difficult to access. The dawn of the industrial age and motorised ocean-going vessels changed all that. Even species that lived their whole life hundreds or thousands of miles from land were no longer safe from human exploitation. Nothing epitomises that sad reality more than the slaughter of the great whales. Industrialised whaling caused the deaths of nearly 3 million whales. Even the blue whale, the largest animal that has ever lived, had its numbers reduced by more than 90%. Whales’ size and the fact of spending most of their lives in inhospitable and hard-to-reach parts of the open ocean had kept them safe for millennia, but the introduction of new and more powerful technologies meant that even they became the victims of massive over-exploitation. Today, there are fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales left in our ocean. And why was it called the right whale? Ironically, it acquired its name because it was rich in blubber and baleen, it moved slowly and it floated after being killed, so it was easily towed in to be butchered—so it was deemed the “right” whale to hunt. The history of these great mammals shows just why we now need the BBNJ. Biodiversity is no longer protected by its remoteness from land. Human greed will destroy it wherever it is found on our planet, unless we act decisively to regulate our most destructive activities. Today, although the international whaling ban is still ignored by a few countries, whales are no longer threatened by hunters, on the whole, but they are killed by ship strikes and they are entangled in fishing gear. I emphasise the importance of the international ban not just because I believe that it is one of the most important conservation achievements of the 20th century, but because it was a great achievement of multilateralism —something that is not much in vogue at the moment. It shows how, by acting in concert with other nations, we can mobilise popular support around environmental objectives with both a clear ecological and a clear moral purpose, and we can achieve results. I regard it as an inspiration and a template for what we are now doing in the BBNJ. The huge factory ships that once slaughtered whales have largely gone, but in their place, equally large factory ships now plunder the ocean as if it were a bottomless pit of profit. There are longliners setting fishing lines tens of kilometres long, each with up to 15,000 hooks, and huge purse seiners using nets that are 2 km long and 200 metres deep. Imagine a net that is twice as deep as Big Ben—the Elizabeth Tower—is tall, and which stretches out so far from this House of Commons that it takes in the whole of Buckingham Palace and most of its gardens. These fishing enterprises devastate the very populations that they are targeting. That is why we need this Bill. Earlier this year, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science—the Government’s own marine experts—found that more than half of the UK’s key fishing quotas were set above the levels recommended by scientists. Overfishing has led to a 98% collapse in Celtic sea cod populations since 2012, with an 84% collapse in haddock, an 85% collapse in whiting and an 80% collapse in herring. Just two weeks ago, the scientific assessment of mackerel showed that the species has declined by 78% in the past 10 years. Despite continued advice from scientists to reduce catch quotas, that reduction has not happened. While the UK has been a world leader with the blue belt programme, at home we continue to practise the opposite of what we preach, most notably through disastrous sustainable catch limits and quotas. Worse, we have driven out small fishing fleets, leaving our seas vulnerable to the monstrous mega-ships whose bottom-trawling scrapes away the existence of all life in their path. The inequitable quota allocation that was formalised in 1999 has resulted in more than 90% of the quota for mackerel, herring and blue whiting being held by just 20 companies, most of them not even British. Half of the English quota is held by Dutch, Icelandic and Spanish interests, more than half of Northern Ireland’s quota is held by just one trawler company, and 85% of Wales’s quota is held by Spanish companies. The system has been rigged against the UK’s inshore fleet and its independent fishers. All of this was done by UK companies selling their quota abroad, but it is the awful consequence of the privatisation of a public good—our fisheries—and the UK taxpayer has received not a penny in benefit as a result. If the UK is truly to be a leader in the implementation of the BBNJ and to demand of other nations that they curb their rapacious plundering of the high seas, we must at the very least begin to stop the over-exploitation of our stocks at home. Our ability to make our voice heard internationally will sound hollow if we continue to ignore the science and set politically led quota allocations at home. High seas fisheries often have unimaginably high levels of bycatch. This is particularly true of tuna fisheries, because tuna often school with other pelagic species, such as dolphins, manta rays and billfish. Indeed, many tuna species inhabit the same surface mixed layer of the ocean that is inhabited by vulnerable species such as silky sharks or turtles. It is estimated that 100 million sharks are caught every year—most as bycatch in high seas fisheries—so it is no wonder that the number of large open ocean sharks has declined by at least 70% in the past 50 years, almost entirely due to high seas fishing, where they are either targeted or caught as bycatch beyond the reach of national jurisdictions. The leatherback turtle, the largest turtle in the world, is threatened with extinction because it is so often caught as bycatch by purse seine fleets of fishing vessels on the high seas. In the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of endangered species, published just last week, only one of the 22 species of albatross is not threatened with extinction through being caught as bycatch on hooks on longline fishing fleets in the open ocean. Distance from land once provided protection for many species in the pre-industrial era, and the same can be said of the deep seas. Until recently, the deep ocean was out of reach for human activity. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Industrialised fishing fleets are now able to fish deeper and deeper, but many deep sea species are slow-growing. An orange roughy reaches sexual maturity only between the age of 20 and 30—much older than shallower water fish. These factors make deep sea species uniquely vulnerable to overfishing, and as many of the deepest waters are on the high seas, we need to ensure that the BBNJ agreement protects them and their habitat better. Deep sea fishing, especially on seamounts, poses an existential risk to many deep-sea ecosystems, and bottom trawling, which is devastating in coastal and shallow seas, is arguably even more so on the high seas. Bottom trawlers tend to focus on seamounts, as these underwater mountains act as biodiversity hotspots in the open ocean. I seek the Minister’s assurance that, in considering the next steps after ratification, establishing protections around seamounts on the high seas will be one of the Government’s priorities. I ask for the same assurance in relation to the issue of deep seabed mining—I trust that the Government will continue to oppose any developments of this on the high seas. The Bill before us is excellent. It will delight the now Professor Alex Rogers, who I suspect is not at his desk either in Oxford or at the National Oceanography Centre, where he is now the science director. Most probably, he is out somewhere in the Antarctic ocean in a submersible exploring the deep ocean, as he has been doing for more than 30 years. If he were to take a break from his mission to discover 100,000 new marine species in the deep ocean in this decade and send us a message, I suspect that it would emphasise the importance of getting this Bill enacted quickly. If we do not ratify the treaty at least 40 days before the first COP, the UK will not have a seat at the table; we will merely be a spectator as others set the ambition, or the lack of it, as they roll out the implementation of the treaty. I congratulate the Minister on bringing the Bill to the House for its Second Reading, and trust that we are able to see the whole ratification process completed in time for the UK to make strong proposals at COP1 next year.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Member give way?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Official Secrets Act Case: Witness Statements · Hansard source

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  May I take the Minister back to the wording of the Act? It says that it is an offence to pass information that would be “directly or indirectly useful to an enemy”. It does not say that it is an offence to directly or indirectly pass to an enemy information that would be useful. The difference is that in the first, it is the usefulness of the information that constitutes the offence—it might be passed to any unauthorised person. In the second, it is the passing of it to an enemy that constitutes the offence. By using the second interpretation, it is therefore possible to argue that unless the person the information was passed to was an enemy, no offence was committed. That, it would seem to me, is how the two men had the case dropped. In fact, by passing it to a person not authorised to receive it, friend or foe, they had allowed it to circulate outside of the UK Government’s control, where it could then be obtained and used by an enemy—surely that is what the Act sought to criminalise. If the Minister agrees, is he satisfied that the wording of the Act is as it should be, or does he think that the prosecution was dropped erroneously?

• 16 Oct 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The long-awaited report by the Joint Intelligence Committee on the link between biodiversity, sustainability and national security is still not with us. Lord Dannatt and other senior military figures have increasingly expressed concerns about the threat the collapse of global biodiversity poses to our food security and the security risks arising from climate change. Can my right hon. Friend assure us that, contrary to recent press stories, the JIC report has not been blocked, and can he tell the House when it will be published?

• 14 Oct 2025 · COP30: Food System Transformation · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady will recollect that, of that £11.6 billion, £3 billion was ringfenced for conservation. Does she agree that it is important that we do not lose that element of ICF?

• 14 Oct 2025 · COP30: Food System Transformation · Hansard source

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  Systems rely on diversity. Imagine a piano with 88 keys all tuned to middle C: Mozart would not have got very far. Yet what is happening to our global food system is a destruction of the very diversity on which our survival depends. Since 1900, the world’s crops have lost 75% of their genetic diversity. Four companies—Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus—control 90% of the global grain trade. Just four plants—wheat, rice, maize and soy beans—account for almost 60% of the calories grown by farmers. Just three countries grow 86% of the world’s soy beans, which in turn supply three quarters of the world’s feed for farm animals. The convergence to a global standard diet, dependent on and controlled by a small number of companies and countries, threatens the resilience of the global food system and the food security of every nation. COP30 is the COP at which the ratcheted-up nationally determined contributions must take account of every sector of the economy. Countries have been struggling to do so: by the fall of the third extended deadline last month, only 60 of the 190 countries had submitted their revised NDCs. It is vital that food systems be integrated into NDCs submitted to COP30, focusing on sustainable agricultural practices and climate-resilient farming. We need to support countries in prioritising food security, sustainable livelihoods and environmental resilience. It is not just about the food we eat that comes from Brazil, or the Brazilian soy beans that UK imports. It is also about the financial flows facilitated through the City of London. HSBC has provided credit lines amounting to £1.9 billion to forest risk commodities such as JBS, the world’s largest meat company, which has a record of corruption and forest destruction in Brazil: JBS even admitted to paying Brazilian officials $180 million in bribes. That flies in the face of HSBC’s 2017 commitment not to provide services to customers either directly or indirectly involved in deforestation. That is why we need to implement schedule 17 to the Environment Act 2021, which still has not been implemented, in order to ensure that we are not financing deforestation.

• 14 Oct 2025 · COP30: Food System Transformation · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Member give way?

• 14 Oct 2025 · COP30: Food System Transformation · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Manchester Terrorism Attack · Hansard source

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  After the vile attack in Manchester, many of us in this House will have spent time with Jewish friends last week celebrating the festival of Sukkot. It was particularly emotional for me to do that with friends and to realise that for the sukkah—that temporary shelter where we eat that meal—you have to have sight of the sky, because the Jewish community needs to be ready always to leave. That sense of insecurity is pervading the Jewish community now, and the Home Secretary must most importantly address that. Jews’ Free School in my constituency, the largest Jewish school in Europe, had a huge police presence outside it in the Friday afternoon after that attack, but as many have said, that reassurance should not be necessary. We have to address the fundamental insecurity that the community is facing.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for what has been a lifetime of work protecting women and girls. I welcome what she has said about updating the ethnicity data, which will enable the public debate to take place on the basis of data and fact rather than the prejudice and scaremongering of which she has spoken, but does she think it might also help to engender trust in the debate if she were to take this opportunity to acknowledge that there was a completely unacceptable woke reluctance to offend certain communities, and that this culture of deference, where it persists, must be stamped out?

• 1 Sept 2025 · Borders and Asylum · Hansard source

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  It has come to my attention that in government, the job of Home Secretary does not always attract the greatest thanks, so I want to thank my right hon. Friend for the response that she and her Department have given to the letter from 100 colleagues about the Gaza students, and for what she said this afternoon about considering a permanent scheme. Will she confirm, however, that the visas, when they are issued, will be the same as any international student visa, in that the scholars will be able to bring their families and dependants with them?