Tristan Osborne

I beg to move, That this House has considered ocean conservation and stewardship. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. We spend a lot of time in this place talking about land, housing and farms—what grows and what gets built. We spend less time talking about the three quarters of a million square miles of ocean that fall under UK jurisdiction. That is a mistake, because our seas are the foundation of a great deal of our national life. They regulate our climate, feed our coastal towns, carry our trade and increasingly hold the key to this country’s resilience in the decades ahead. As vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the ocean, I watched David Attenborough’s documentary on the oceans alongside many colleagues in this House and the former Prime Minister. I echo Attenborough’s words that “We are living in the greatest age of ocean discovery, yet we are also witnessing its greatest peril.” I am the Member of Parliament for Chatham and Aylesford, and my constituency has a centuries-long maritime history through its association with the dockyard and global trade. That is highlighted by the outstanding work of the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust in its recent “Awesome Oceans” exhibition with Steve Backshall, which seeks to educate our younger generations. Our nation’s heritage runs through our seas and oceans. I want to use my time to cover four key elements: the state of our marine protected areas and bottom trawling within them, fisheries and sustainability, the case for parity in marine pollution fines, and the UK’s wider leadership role in the ocean, including in the recently signed biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction agreement and the plastics treaty negotiations.