Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill: Committee: Amendment 4

Parliament voted on 17 November 2025 on Amendment 4 to the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill at committee stage. The amendment, tabled by the Conservatives, would have inserted a provision explicitly allowing organisations to submit a single combined report to the Secretary of State to satisfy two separate reporting obligations under the Bill: one covering marine genetic resource repositories and one covering digital sequence information databases. The amendment was defeated by 318 votes to 143. The practical effect of the amendment would have been to reduce administrative effort for organisations that control both a marine genetic resource repository and a digital sequence information database, by making explicit in the Bill's text that one report could cover both obligations. The government argued the change was unnecessary because, in its view, nothing in the existing Bill already prevents a person who controls both a repository and a database from submitting a single combined report. The Bill itself is a prerequisite for UK ratification of the 2023 Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, known as the BBNJ Agreement, and establishes the domestic framework for implementing it. The vote divided sharply along party lines. All 276 Labour MPs and 31 Labour and Co-operative MPs who voted opposed the amendment, while all 82 voting Conservatives and all 55 Liberal Democrats supported it. The Liberal Democrats joining the Conservatives in the Aye lobby is notable, though it did not alter the outcome given Labour's commanding majority. Two DUP MPs and one Reform UK MP also voted Aye. Two independents voted Aye and five voted No. The result mirrors the pattern seen on Amendment 5 to the same Bill, also voted on the same day, which was defeated by an identical margin of 318 to 147.