The United Kingdom must take a more proactive approach to protect critical maritime infrastructure from hostile action, an expert has said.
Giving evidence to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, Professor Aurel Sari, from the University of Exeter Law School, warned that there are significant gaps in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. These gaps leave certain categories of maritime infrastructure, in particular submarine communication cables, without adequate legal protection against malign interference.
As an island nation, the United Kingdom is critically dependent on submarine fibre-optic cables for communication with the outside world. These cables carry close to 99 per cent of Britain's international data traffic. Protecting this network from disruption by hostile actors is vital for the country's security and prosperity.
However, the law of the sea provides coastal states like the United Kingdom with only limited means to protect their submarine communication cables. This is a significant shortcoming of the legal regime of the oceans, as underlined by recent incidents in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea.
Several innovative interpretations of the existing rules have been proposed to address this situation, for example relying on the right to repress acts of piracy. However, such dynamic interpretations push the existing legal boundaries and come with significant legal and strategic risks, as Professor Sari explained in his evidence to the Joint Committee.
There are other options that the United Kingdom could consider. One of them is the creation of cable protection zones in territorial waters, as some other states have done. Another task is to implement the relevant international legal authorities into domestic law to their full extent. Professor Sari pointed out that there are gaps in the maritime enforcement powers conferred on United Kingdom law enforcement officers by the Policing and Crime Act 2017. "These shortcomings should be addressed as a matter of priority", he said.
