“Intensely frustrating”: Guests discuss slow UK action to ratify High Seas Treaty on Committee Corridor podcast

3 July 2025

In the latest episode of Committee Corridor, the podcast from Select Committees at the House of Commons, host Toby Perkins explores how the UK could help tackle the threats facing the world’s oceans.

In June, France and Costa Rica jointly hosted the third UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France. High on the conference’s agenda was the High Seas Treaty, which would allow for the establishment of marine protected areas in international waters. The agreement could prove critical as climate change forces marine life to migrate to the high seas, most of which is beyond the scope of national jurisdiction and therefore not currently covered by law.

The Treaty needs to be ratified by 60 states before it can come into force. By the end of the Nice conference, 50 states had done so. However, the UK was not one of them, despite growing pressure for the UK to ratify.

The Environmental Audit Committee, which Toby chairs, recently produced a report on ‘Governing the marine environment’, recommending that the Government push on with making parliamentary time to ratify the Treaty. Since that report was published, Government ministers have committed to introducing the legislation required to ratify by the end of the year.

The high seas have until recently been an “unregulated space”, says Fiona Thomas, Head of Public Affairs at the ocean protection NGO Marine Conservation Society. The Treaty would enable the protection of vulnerable habitats such as seamounts, underwater mountains which David Attenborough described in his recent Ocean film as “pit stops and endpoints on ocean odysseys.”

“We would like to see this done as soon as possible,” says Fiona, “ideally by the 20 September. So this will be around the time of the UN General Assembly. If we do it by that deadline, it would mean that the UK has some say into the first COP – the conference of the parties – where the Treaty will be implemented and the rules and regulations about how it will be implemented will be discussed."

Sarah Champion MP, Chair of the International Development Committee, says that the UK’s slow progress towards ratification is “intensely frustrating”.

“When two years ago we agreed to ratify it, it was seen as a real step forward to protecting our oceans and equally important to protecting the people that are dependent on our oceans. The fact that it seems to be languishing in a drawer somewhere is disappointing.”

On action closer to home, Pippa Heylings, Liberal Democrat MP and member of the Environmental Audit Committee, says the Committee found that more needed to be done.

Reflecting on the evidence the Committee heard, Pippa says: “Even though we are saying a lot, in terms of our vision and policies for having a healthy, diverse and productive marine environment, when we looked into it, what we found was that the action didn’t match up to the words,” she tells Toby.

The Committee found that the UK’s current Marine Policy Statement was outdated and no longer reflected pressures on the oceans, as well as a failure to prevent damaging practices such as bottom trawling and seabed mining occurring in Marine Protected Areas. Shortly after the report was published, the Government also pledged to press ahead with banning bottom trawling.

Guests also discussed the importance of paying attention to nations sometimes called ‘Small Island Developing States’, or SIDS. In 2024, as the International Development Committee published its report on the UK’s Small Island Developing States Strategy, Sarah Champion warned that SIDS were “the canary in the mine of global climate change: a dire warning of the potential fate of coastal regions and peoples the world over, within this century.”

That inquiry “completely changed” Sarah’s perception of the world’s ecosystem, she tells Toby, revealing just how important habitats like coral reefs are. Not only are these breeding grounds for many of the species that we all rely on and enjoy, but they protect many small islands from rising sea levels.

“Some of the islands that we’re talking about, like the Marshall Islands, are a metre above sea level,” she says. “So a metre rise, which we talk about quite casually, would wipe out entire states.”

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Image: House of Commons