Contribution
My Lords, I support Amendments 28 to 31A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who very sadly has been struck down by the ghastly flu. I had not intended initially to speak to these amendments, but was very happy to do so after hearing from him and reading the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, back in November, which horrified me and drew to my attention matters that I know the Chagossians themselves are also absolutely appalled by.
Without the clarity and protection sought by these amendments, this House is being asked to acquiesce not only in technical deficiencies in the Bill but in an act of stark neglect and hypocrisy that would destroy the UK’s credibility as a climate and environmental leader. At COP 29 in Baku, our Prime Minister said that
“the UK has sent a clear message … we are renewing UK climate leadership”.
He said:
“There is no national security, there is no economic security, there is no global security without climate security”—
linking climate leadership to national and global security.
We are being asked, despite that very public declaration of climate leadership, to pass a Bill that would allow ratification of a treaty to transfer control of one of the world’s most significant marine protected areas, if not the most significant. The Government admit that the terms of the future protection of that area are not yet dealt with and are to be dealt with later in a separate written agreement, not yet published, not yet scrutinised, not yet agreed and without any sanctions if none of that happens. It is an absolute abdication of responsibility, not only to the Chagossian people and to ourselves and our own principles of climate leadership but to the global concerns around climate.
Amendment 28 addresses the most basic constitutional failure in this process. Parliament is being asked to approve the transfer first and trust that the environmental safeguards will follow. No serious legislature should agree to that. If the protections matter—and the Ministers have agreed that they do—they should be visible, binding and tested before ratification, not promised to be dealt with afterwards.
Amendments 29 and 30, on allocation of funds to environmental protection and the power to withhold funds for non-compliance, should not be controversial if the Government are sincere that environmental stewardship is a priority. Why would we not be willing to hardwire that priority into the financial architecture of the agreement? Why would we resist earmarking funds explicitly for environmental protection? And why would we resist retaining leverage to withhold payments if the marine environment is degraded? Without any of these mechanisms, the UK is powerless to act in respect of the likely failures by Mauritius to protect the MPA.
Regrettably, it has to be stated that Mauritius is not a party likely to be relied on in such matters. According to the Environmental Performance Index compiled by Yale University, Mauritius ranks extremely poorly indeed at 173 out of 180 for the biodiversity and habitat category that measures countries’ actions towards retaining natural ecosystems. For maritime habitat protection, it is 83 out of 129 countries. Most crucially of all, for marine protection stringency it is 131 out of 131—absolutely last.
Amendment 31 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, confronts an uncomfortable but unavoidable reality—that of enforcement. The waters in question are vast. Enforcement is expensive and technically demanding. Constant enforcement is needed to prevent illegal fishing. Mauritius does not have the technical capacity to provide that. No serious Government should consider proceeding with any of this without a serious published assessment of enforcement capability and a proposal for its execution.
The Chagos marine protected area is not just another marine protected area; it is one of the largest, most intact, least exploited tropical marine ecosystems on this precious planet. Its value lies precisely in the fact that it has been strongly protected—something that the UK should be very proud of and extremely hesitant to throw away. This MPA functions as a global reference point—a living baseline—so that we can understand what marine ecosystems can look like when they are not relentlessly harmed. If, as many experts fear, the result of this treaty is deep-sea fishing across 99% of it, as opposed to the current situation where it is almost 100% protected, the consequences will be catastrophic and irreversible on any human timescale—sea-floor habitats flattened, food webs simplified and predator populations depleted. In the time available, I will not list all the species that will be destroyed.