Speeches by McDonald.

“I am not familiar with the situation with Dynamic Metals. I was just having a discussion on the Front Bench with the Minister for Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), and if the hon. Lady writes to him, he will look carefully at the matter she has raised.”

“The hon. Gentleman is right to point out the importance of construction skills. In fact, on a recent visit to a construction skills academy in east London, I had the opportunity to do a bit of tiling myself—that has come in quite handy at home, actually—and to talk to some of the young people, who realise that they are…”

“(2) Proceedings in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall be completed in two days.”

“Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 62(2)), That the Bill be now read a Second time.”

“ProceedingsTime for conclusion of proceedingsFirst dayClauses 1 to 51; new Clauses relating to Part 1; new Schedules relating to Part 1.The moment of interruption on the first day.Second dayClauses 52 to 57; new Clauses relating to Part 2; new Schedules relating to Part 2; Clauses 58 to 60; new Clauses relating to Part…”

“(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Committee of the whole House.”

“(6) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Gen Kitchen.)”

“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“You were surprised that we have a geological survey that is 50 years out of date.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…”

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

“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…”

“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.”

“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…”

“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…”

“Yes, exactly.”

“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…”

“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…”

“There are quite a lot of questions in there.”

“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…”