Context

Since winning the election in July 2024, the Labour Government has been progressing its marine policy, including DESNZ commitments to end new offshore oil and gas, and Defra progress to restrict bottom trawling in Marine Protected Areas and ratify the Global Ocean Treaty. Interest has also come from the top, following a No.10 screening of David Attenborough’s Ocean with the Prime Minister where he spoke about the UK’s ambition to protect our seas. 

However, despite growing political salience, UK fish stocks are still in rapid decline, so Oceana wanted to capitalise on the Ocean momentum and use Labour Party Conference to broaden political focus and ensure ending overfishing is on the agenda for 2026. 

Our activity

Seahorse created the strategy and framing for a discussion that would showcase influential voices from marine policy in 2025 to raise ambition for overfishing. We then coordinated the event, through from the first invites to on the day support, with the aim of securing high-level speakers and building political ambition on this agenda. The final panel featured DESNZ Climate Minister Katie White, Environmental Audit Committee Chair Toby Perkins, a first-generation fisher, Clive Mills, and was chaired by Daily Express Editor Steph Spyro. 

It is crucial to set your Conference event aside from others. To do this, we involved a powerful first-hand testimony from Clive Mills on his own regrets about his actions as a former industry fisher, an exclusive film from Oceana UK’s latest campaign, Deep Decline, and speeches from Katie White and Toby Perkins on what we need to translate the successes from the past year into Government action on overfishing.  

To increase the impact for Oceana UK, we also formed a collaboration with Labour Staffers Environment Network to deliver a drinks reception immediately after attended by the panellists and audience of Labour MPs, staffers, activists and political stakeholders. Defra Oceans Minister Emma Hardy joined to speak to a full room about the Department’s progress and ambition on marine protections.

Our impact

Our strategy created an impactful moment for marine policy at Labour Party Conference that positioned Oceana UK at the heart of the Government’s conversations on the marine environment and protecting coastal communities. Despite a competitive Conference programme, we succeeded against the key aims of securing senior political leadership and a diverse audience to broaden Oceana UK’s influence and network ahead of key campaign moments to end overfishing in 2026.