Child Labour and Artisanal Cobalt Mining in the DRC

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Following a public consultation, the Government committed to taking forward an ambitious package of measures to strengthen the Modern Slavery Act’s transparency legislation, including extending reporting requirements to public bodies with a budget of £36 million or more, mandating the specific reporting of topic statements and what they must cover, requiring organisations to publish a modern slavery statement on the online registry and introducing financial penalties for organisations that fail to publish annual statements. This requires primary legislation, but in time we want to see it on the statute book.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, is not one means of reducing our cobalt reliance on dangerous and thoroughly undesirable resources to work on the Washington agreement we have made on critical minerals, which has been agreed between the two Governments, whereby, if we dig out more cobalt in this country—apparently we have some—and use it in our motor cars or use American cobalt, we will get a 15% subsidy on all cars sold into the American market? Can the Minister tell us how that is getting on?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend. He will understand that my relative newness in this role means that my learning curve is steep. I will do some research and discuss it with him when we next meet.