China and the UK Economy

Perran Moon Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2026 Westminster Hall

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

In my eagerness to hear from Mr Byrne, I forgot to give him his full title and to read out the title of what we are debating. He is Chair of the Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee, and we are discussing the Committee’s 10th report, “China and the UK economy: the case for risk-managed growth”, HC 124.

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)]

Meur ras, Mr Efford. It is an honour to serve under your chairship. I thank the Committee and its chair for this report, which makes for illuminating—if concerning—reading alongside last week’s critical minerals report.

As a Cornish MP and chair of the electric vehicle all-party parliamentary group, I have two separate but related questions. First, the report recommends “targeted interventions” to secure sovereign capabilities and hedge against growing dependence on China. Are Cornwall’s tin, lithium and tungsten projects the sort of sovereign capability the Committee has in mind? Secondly, given the warnings in the report about China shock 2.0, does the Chair of the Committee agree that heavily subsidised Chinese electric vehicles are a far greater threat to UK automotive manufacturers than the UK’s zero emission vehicle mandate?

[Liam Byrne]

Let me take the hon. Member’s questions in order. We believe that the right approach to derisking trade with China is not a wholesale decoupling. Instead, precision derisking is needed, where we take aim at specific things where we need to diversify supplies and ensure that we are not reliant on supplies from China. The best way to do that, given that we must make choices, is to look at which capabilities we as a country want to be sovereign and which we want to develop with close allies such as the Europeans, Canadians, Japanese, Australians or Koreans. This debate has rumbled on over the last couple of years, and the Government have set out different lists in different strategies. But clarity is really needed for the private sector because private sector investment needs to come over decades if we are to ensure we have resilient economic security in this country.

Inevitably, those sovereign capabilities will draw on the natural resources of Cornwall, and particularly the minerals the hon. Member set out. If we do not have up-to-date information about the geology in the geological surveys of this country, we are approaching this issue without the right information on the table. It is not free to update those geological surveys, but is it a wise investment? Yes, it is. Crucially, we then need to put together a finance stack that allows us to invest in the whole life journey of bringing online new mines and processing and recycling facilities, in a way that would be tremendous for his economy. He has been a doughty champion for the critical minerals industry in Cornwall, and Ministers would be wise to listen to his advice. The recommendations we laid out in our report on critical minerals last Friday were greatly informed by his contributions in this House over the last couple of years.

On EVs, the Secretary of State and Ministers have had to strike a delicate balance. They have been supremely conscious that if we introduce tariffs on Chinese imports, that raises the cost for British consumers and risks reciprocal action by China against British exports. My soundings with the British automotive industry today indicate that there is now far more support for introducing tariffs on over-subsidised Chinese EVs. Crucially, if we want to draw closer to the European Union over the years to come, it will insist that the UK is not a back door to over-subsidised Chinese products of any kind. It will also ask us to align more closely with it in protecting the European manufacturing industry from China shock 2.0. We are going to have to make a choice, and I think that the right choice is aligning with Europe and protecting European manufacturing and supply chains. That is in our national interest and it is what we will need in a more uncertain and risky world in the years to come.