Baroness Cash (Con)

I agree 100% and could not have put it better myself. I hope that the Minister will address the points raised by my noble friend Lord Goldsmith. As raised by a number of Oxford academics, there is also the additional, profound danger of deep-sea drilling once the very issues that my noble friend raised become a reality. Once effective control is surrendered and protections are weak or unenforceable, industrial pressure follows. Deep-sea drilling is the archetype of a low-probability, high-impact risk that will destroy and decimate this precious area. Even routine drilling brings chronic pollution, noise and disturbance incompatible with meaningful protection. If the UK Government insist on proceeding without these amendments, or protections of equivalent force, the UK’s claim to climate and environmental leadership will collapse. We will be that country that lectures the world about marine protection, biodiversity and climate responsibility while quietly signing away one of the most important marine sanctuaries on earth. Treaties are not acts of faith or promises; they are instruments of law. They need to include all the terms and consequences for their breaches. If environmental protections matter, as Ministers say they do—and we support that statement—it must not be possible to be ratify this treaty without these amendments or protections of equal strength. Unusually, I will give my last words—noble Lords will not hear me say this often—to the Secretary of State for Energy, Ed Miliband, who stated last July: “We know that climate change and nature loss are fundamentally linked … but we in this country have helped make a difference”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/7/25; cols. 29-30.] That is very true regarding this marine protected area, and we do not want the future difference that we make to be a destructive one. I urge the Government to accept these amendments or similar protections.