Deep Seabed Mining

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Of course, safeguarding the marine environment is extremely important. We would engage in extensive public consultation ahead of making any decision to issue or sponsor any deep-sea mining exploitation licences. That of course would include engaging fully with the fishing industry.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, BMW, Volvo, Google and Samsung are saying publicly that there should be a moratorium on the proposals to dig up metals from the deep sea and that other ways should be found to extract cobalt to make batteries to fuel the future switch to electric vehicles and increased mobile phone use. Can the Minister advise the House of the Government’s position on the views expressed by these major car and technology companies?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Well, of course they are entitled to their position; I would just advise the noble Baroness to read carefully exactly what they said in their declarations. The World Bank has estimated that something like 3 billion tonnes of metals and minerals will be needed to fully decarbonise the global energy system by 2050, so we must be careful, proceed with caution and do all the appropriate scientific analysis. But there is widespread support in this House for the net-zero challenge and we must provide the means to do it.