Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to help encourage (a) domestic critical minerals exploration and (b) mining finance in the UK.
The Government will publish a UK Critical Minerals Strategy in 2022, setting out our approach to securing technology-critical minerals and metals. This will take into account the types of support offered by other nations and input from the Critical Minerals Expert Committee.
Funds such as the Automotive Transformation Fund, National Security Strategic Investment Fund, UK Infrastructure Bank, UK Export Finance, and R&D via the National Interdisciplinary Circular Economy Research are available to support investments at various points along the critical minerals value chain in specific sectors. For example, Cornish Lithium has received support via the Getting Building Fund (2020) and Automotive Transformation Fund (2021) and British Lithium has received grant funding from Innovate UK (2020) and the Sustainable Innovation Fund (2021).