To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to (a) protect and (b) restore marine (i) habitats and (ii) wildlife.

• The recently published EIP sets out our focus on enhancing nature in marine and coastal environments, including the steps we are taking to restore and protect marine habitats and marine wildlife.
• These include delivering the UK Marine Strategy, which sets our ambition for Good Environmental Status (GES) across our seas.
• To help achieve GES we have created a series of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to protect and restore our marine biodiversity. We are focused on strengthening the protection of this extensive network of 178 sites covering 40% of English waters, which represents the range of species and habitats found in our seas.
• To complement the MPA network, the first three Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) in English waters came into force on 5 July 2023. HPMAs will provide the highest levels of protection in our seas, allowing nature to fully recover to a more natural state and helping the ecosystem to thrive.
• A number of estuarine and coastal habitat restoration initiatives are also underway including the Environment Agency’s Restoring Meadow, Marsh and Reef (ReMeMaRe) initiative which aims to reverse centuries of coastal habitat decline by restoring seagrass meadows, saltmarsh and native oyster reefs to bring benefits to people and nature.
• In addition, the government’s £80m Green Recovery Challenge Fund has supported a range of nature recovery projects across England, some which have included saltmarsh and seagrass restoration.
• We also protect marine wildlife in a number of other ways in our domestic waters. This includes being fully committed to tackling accidental bycatch in fisheries, which is one of the greatest threats faced by sensitive marine species such as cetaceans.
• In 2021, we introduced new rules making it a mandatory requirement under fishing vessel licence conditions for fishers to report any marine mammal bycatch to the Marine Management Organisation (MMO). The Marine Wildlife Bycatch Mitigation Initiative sets out how the UK will achieve its ambitions to minimise and, where possible, eliminate the bycatch (accidental capture) and entanglement of sensitive marine species in UK fisheries.
• To help reduce disturbance to marine wildlife we published the Marine and Coastal Wildlife Code on 24 May.
• We are also working to reduce the harmful impacts on marine wildlife and habitats arising from plastic pollution. We have taken measures to target some of the most commonly littered plastic items, such as our carrier bag charge and our bans on a range of single-use plastic items. Our restrictions on straws, stirrers and cotton buds have had a big impact – these items used to appear in ‘top 10 littered items’ lists, but this is no longer the case. We have also taken action on microbeads in rinse off cosmetics, plastic pellets and ghost gear.
• Internationally, we are also leading global efforts to protect the ocean and champion the GBF Target 3 to effectively conserve and manage at least 30% of the land and 30% of the ocean globally by 2030 (30by30). This includes through our role as Ocean Co-Chair of the High Ambition Coalition for Nature & People, and our leadership of the Global Ocean Alliance.
• The adoption of the Marine Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement on 19 June will also lead to much greater protection for the two-thirds of the global ocean that lies beyond national jurisdiction, playing a key role in achieving the 30by30 target. The UK will sign the Agreement early and work to ratify as soon as practicable, whilst supporting others to do the same.
• The UK’s Blue Planet Fund, a £500 million programme, supports developing countries to protect the marine environment and reduce poverty, by tackling threats to ocean health such as illegal fishing, pollution and climate change; and at the UN Ocean conference in 2022, we committed up to £100 million of Blue Planet Funding to support the implementation, management and enforcement of Marine Protected Areas.