Speeches by McDonald.

“Those demand forecasts, you can see them now and they are quite extreme. In fact, in the FT today there was an article about the acceleration of lithium demand, which is well over 1,000%. Copper demand is going to double over the next few years. It is not, “Is it 3% or 5%?” It is, “Is it twice as big or five times as b…”

“You could pick those numbers up in the press.”

“It is not free but, for a start, you can be focused. BGS has started to think about the places in the UK where there is the greatest opportunity to do that enhanced research. As I mentioned, in Cornwall it is not about lifting the lid on the whole thing. It is about looking at already well‑mapped areas and refining the…”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Yes, here in the UK, in so far as possible. Another example of that is on the technology development side. Take a business such as HyProMag, which is a spin-out from Birmingham University. I opened its pilot plant in Birmingham, which was great. It is building a plant in Germany. We have the processing here and it is b…”

“Yes, I am. As I said, it is an iterative process. I would expect it will improve every time as a result of getting better data and the shift in technology, which is a really important thing. Let us say I am sat here in three years’ time—who knows? I do not know whether I will be lucky enough to be able to do that. Ther…”

“Yes. We are not particularly far away from being able to explain how that money is going to get out into the market.”

“It is an iterative process. The latest version is better than the previous one. The next one will be even better. I cannot remember exactly who it was now, but one of your previous witnesses was talking about the development of battery technology. A lot of critical minerals demand is driven by battery demand. I think i…”

“For two out of three of those, there will not be any onshore processing. It is on a case-by-case basis with the particular element. For instance, we are not going to be processing graphite here particularly, but this week I have had a conversation with an official from the high commission of Canada, where they not only…”

“It is not that we have not figured it out, but there is not such a project yet. That does not mean there could not be.”

“The question that we would need to ask first, though, is what midstream processing we would want to develop in a country in Africa and why we would want to do it. This goes back to the point that I raised with Noah. We would have to decide first where we would see that sitting and whether it would be here or there.”

“Yes, that would be really good. I would be pleased to do that.”

“Thanks, Justin, for all the work that you did on this when you were in the Department as well. I appreciate it. I do feel slightly guilty about coming in and just picking it up, but there we are—I did say that when we launched it in the House. If you look at lithium particularly, there is a combination of the miners an…”

“I am a bit averse to cross-Government ministerial working groups because I feel as though they can get tied up in bureaucracy. It is clear that the Department for Business and Trade is leading on this. I feel as though I have good relationships with both MOD and MHCLG. More importantly, Mike and the team have their ear…”

“You were surprised that we have a geological survey that is 50 years out of date. When I called in the British Geological Survey to meet with me, I pulled my geological map off my bookshelf at home from 1962 and it was pretty much the same as the data that it has now. In the meantime, foreign Governments have been payi…”

“On MOD specifically, yes. I was talking to one of the MOD Ministers yesterday about this. The MOD is developing its own plans, which will then feed into demand. That will feed into some of the bilateral arrangements you will be aware we are discussing. There is the opportunity to access stockpiles with friendly nations…”

“Clearly, it is the dependency on China, particularly on processing. As I mentioned, China has a grip on 70% to 90% of the processing capacity in a number of critical minerals. The UK has two sources of material inbound, the primary resource that we can dig out the ground and the secondary resource that is circulating i…”

“No, it is not happening incidentally. It is very much the focus of what we are doing through the strategy. As I said, there are really two ways to do that: UK processing and bilaterals. There was a point where we could have pretty much decided, “We will use the bilateral or multilateral arrangements as the primary supp…”

“Yes, I can. I am going to ask Mike to come in on the £50 million in a moment, but I just wanted to point out that the total amount of funding allocated for critical minerals is around £270 million. It is £268 million at the moment, if you take into account the National Wealth Fund, DRIVE35 and so on. We are pretty much…”

“I do not know that it necessarily has to be different. It is more about ensuring that we know what our objectives are when we go into these discussions. In the area of critical minerals—again, I have read through the evidence that people have given when they have come to the Committee—there are lots of people who see t…”