Speeches by McDonald.

“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…”

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

“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. It would be different if we were in a situation where there was a view that those things were mutually exclusive, but that does not really seem to be where we are. There is not a central grip on this at the moment, where these things are mutually exclusive—far from it. Certainly among the G7 nations, there…”

“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…”

“That is a really good question. It does concern me a bit. How do we make sure that we get the minerals we need and that we are strong in the areas where we have capability? I do not feel as though we are behind where we need to be. There is huge scope still. I do not want to rush in too quickly either and sign a bad de…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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, 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…”

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

“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…”

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

“That would be good. I will tell you what we could do on that, just to create a bit of work for Mike. On some of those, we could highlight what the opportunity is. Do we have a mining opportunity? Do we have a processing opportunity? It is not easy to land that. It is a cross-Government effort. If the Committee would be…”

“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…”

“The short answer is yes, essentially. I do not want to downplay the multilateral aspect, because that is really important. If there is the opportunity for multilateral trading frameworks in the EU, the G7 and so on, we are very keen to be supportive of that. It is also true that there are individual countries that are …”

“Yes, you are absolutely right. There is not really a shortage of mines. You are right. China’s key strategy has been to corner the market on processing. Over a long time, western countries have been quite relaxed about that—until we woke up to this realisation that we have lost so much of it. Once you have a very power…”

“Any partnership must be a partnership of mutual benefit. It does not matter who it is with. That is the basic way that I used to do business, and that is the basis for any strong relationship, whether it is a commercial relationship or a Government treaty. I am always looking for an opportunity for mutual benefit. I al…”