Critical Minerals: Domestic Production

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Perran Moon]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and wholeheartedly agree, once again, with the desire for the Government to focus on critical minerals, hopefully developing the critical minerals strategy as a core part of the UK’s overall industrial strategy. I will talk more about that later.

Beneath Cornwall lies a mass of granite rock called the Cornubian batholith—that is harder to say at 9.40 am than one would think—in which lithium-bearing mica was discovered in 1825. In recent years, the extraction and processing of that resource has been developed by two enterprises: Imerys British Lithium and Cornish Lithium, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy). Significantly, the UK lithium demand is projected to be 80,000 tonnes a year by 2030, with geological reserves in Cornwall covering a significant proportion of that demand over the next few decades. I point out that even though demand is projected at 80,000 tonnes a year, we currently have no domestic supply.

Both companies have received significant investment, and just this year Cornish Lithium opened its first processing facility, refining battery-grade lithium hydroxide, locally in Cornwall. These companies constitute not potential on the horizon, but enterprises employing hundreds of people, generating wealth, developing technologies and working with communities and academics.

The potential in Cornwall is underpinned by a rich depth of mining heritage over thousands of years, with an economic peak in the 19th century, when tin was mined on an industrial scale, before the price collapsed and jobs moved to other places around the world. The last tin mine closed at South Crofty, in the heart of my area of Camborne, Redruth and Hayle, in 1998. When it did, the following words were graffitied on the closed gate:

“Cornish lads are fishermen,

And Cornish lads are miners too,

But when the fish and tin are gone

What are the Cornish boys to do?”

Today, a firm called Cornish Metals is working to reopen South Crofty tin mine; it is draining it of water as we speak, so that work can start again to meet the severe supply shortages of tin worldwide that the global economy now faces. I have been down South Crofty mine myself and, although it must be said that I am not a geologist, I am convinced that the objectives of Cornish Metals can and must be achieved. Lithium gets a lot of deserved attention because of its use in lithium-ion batteries, but tin is as crucial to modern technologies and electrical infrastructure such as solar panels. Cornwall hosts the third highest-grade tin deposits in the world, and it is the highest grade of tin deposit that is not currently mined.

South Crofty and much of Cornwall more generally represent a unique blend of ancient mining heritage, geological reserves and community support. That comes alongside a cluster of companies and expertise in and around educational institutions such as the world-leading Camborne School of Mines and the University of Exeter, based in Penryn, which has more top 100 climate scientists than any other university in the world.

The UK’s burgeoning critical minerals industry could be a game changer, helping to relieve pressures on communities such as mine and generating jobs and wealth. With those communities in mind, it is fundamental that domestic production works for local people and the natural environment, so that we do unleash the Cornish Celtic tiger.

As an officer of the all-party parliamentary group on critical minerals, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law), I am in close contact with the industry. We attended the Critical Minerals Association conference yesterday and will attend another industry conference on the future of mining later this week. Industry leaders have made it very clear to me that there is a serious gap in the midstream supply chain for batteries, including magnet development. Much focus is on the upstream, but those gaps must be plugged as well.

Industry is crying out for domestic production guaranteed by the Government, whether as a set tonnage or as a percentage of demand on a sliding scale. That would reassure mining finance, which is relatively risk-averse. In that vein, I ask the Government to consider implementing de-risking financial instruments such as price floors, as well as considering mineral-extraction projects as part of the enterprise investment scheme, which provides tax reliefs for investors supporting small and growing enterprises. The industry suffers from a long development timescale and high up-front costs, both of which need to be considered as the Government tackle this country’s industrial and planning issues.

Giving more support to this industry will increase its credibility as a possible career path in the education system. Camborne School of Mines, the UK’s only dedicated mining college, and perhaps the world’s most famous, offers sector-specific undergraduate courses, but we require greater focus on STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—at GCSE and A-level, alongside apprenticeships. To conclude—I am sure hon. Members will be relieved to hear that—

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Australia is the world’s largest lithium producer, but nearly all its lithium is exported to China for battery production there, and there is very little domestic battery production. Does my hon. Friend agree that the UK, if it follows the path that he wants it to, should not fall into the same trap? We need to have the upstream demand as well as the mining production.

[Perran Moon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I mentioned, the risk is that we have a small number of dominant players from areas of the world that are potentially geopolitically sensitive for the UK and the west. It is crucial that we focus on our own domestic critical mineral production, so that we have that security going forward. I entirely agree.

To conclude, critical minerals are the elephant in the room when it comes to energy transition. We must capitalise on UK domestic potential. How we extract the materials, how we capture supply chains and how we develop technologies to recycle critical minerals will only become more important. I have focused on the cluster of businesses in Cornwall, but Northern Lithium, Green Lithium and Weardale Lithium in the north of England represent other acorns of industrial potential that we must support. Northern Lithium is targeting production of over 10,000 tonnes of battery-grade lithium from brines, having secured mineral rights over 60,000 acres. Only last week, Watercycle Technologies from the University of Manchester developed new technology for producing battery-grade lithium from UK source brines.

We have to acknowledge the scale of the challenge at hand in order to generate a rising tide that will lift the whole industry. Critical minerals must form a core part of the Government’s industrial strategy, alongside investment in housing in deprived communities, infra- structure around and within key sites such as Falmouth port, and commercial infrastructure such as rail for freight transport and a tin smelter at South Crofty. Currently, tin produced in the UK would have to be shipped to east Asia to be smelted and then shipped back, creating extensive carbon emissions through shipping and offshoring the jobs and infrastructure in the supply chain that we need domestically.

With all that in mind, I ask the Minister: what is the state of the Government’s ongoing dialogue with the industry? Do the Government recognise the current geopolitical risks of a world shortfall in the supply of tin, and will the white heat of the UK’s critical mineral industry form a key part of the Government’s strategy? If we overcome these challenges, we will deliver the UK’s critical mineral security, create thousands of jobs in deprived communities and accelerate our drive towards a fossil fuel-free future.

Football Index Collapse: Lessons Learned

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Murray. I will begin by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) for securing this important debate and for all her work on this important issue.

The collapse of Football Index three years ago was devastating for many people up and down the country, as we have heard. Football fans had been told that they could put their money and confidence in players who they identified as rising stars, and were promised that they would be paid dividends if they were correct. It was advertised as the world’s first football stock market, which was misleading to users as they believed they would be using the football knowledge they had gathered over years to make money on the scheme, rather than participating in gambling.

After administrators were called in, the collapse took an estimated £90 million in customer funds. Victims have formed the Football Index action group and I pay tribute to its work. It is campaigning to ensure that the events that led to the loss of that huge amount of money never happen again, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) spoke about so well. Some users lost hundreds of thousands of pounds, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) highlighted.

Following the collapse, the Gambling Commission decided to suspend Football Index owner BetIndex’s operating licence in 2021. The Government then commissioned a review by Malcolm Sheehan KC of the events surrounding the establishment and subsequent collapse of Football Index, with the intention of learning lessons from the mistakes made. His report concluded that BetIndex failed to properly inform the Gambling Commission of the nature of the product in its licence application and did not inform the regulator of changes to the product after its launch as it was required to.

The Football Index action group includes that among its criticisms of the model, arguing that everything about the index sought to brand it as an investment product rather than a betting site, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) outlined. Indeed, one of the index’s two main features, the “go-to-market” feature, was not communicated to the Gambling Commission as part of the original application, flouting the commission’s expectation of openness and transparency during the process.

The Government report also found that there was potential to improve the Gambling Commission’s handling of the incident. In the first instance, reports that the Gambling Commission was made aware of the issues with Football Index in 2019, two years before the collapse of the product, are extremely worrying. Questions remain about why the commission failed to act sooner, thereby potentially mitigating some of the effects of the collapse. The report recommended a number of steps for the commission to take, including greater scrutiny of new gambling-related products intending to come to market, consideration of the effect of language used on consumer understanding of gambling products, and more prompt decision making and action. The report also suggested that the Financial Conduct Authority could have done much more to help, and recommended improvement of regulatory co-operation between the commission and the FCA.

It is welcome that the Government have committed to implementing the recommendation of the Sheehan review in full, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) said. People feel that they have been let down by both Football Index and the regulator, and argue that they should never have been put in this position without intervention to prevent cash losses. They remain angry and the Government must learn from the incident to ensure that others do not find their capital at risk in the same way.

In an age when advances in technology have allowed the betting and gaming industry to develop rapidly, it is right that we work with the industry to ensure that consumers are protected from potentially harmful schemes while allowing those who gamble responsibly to continue to do so.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is presenting an excellent summary of the failures of Football Index. Like others, I have constituents who lost large sums of money. I am concerned to hear that a new platform called KiX—a football cryptocurrency trading platform modelled on Football Index—has been set up with the involvement of Adam Cole, one of the founders of Football Index. Should the Government not ensure that the FCA and the Gambling Commission both look into KiX at this early stage and that the appropriate regulatory activity happens this time so we do not see a repeat of Football Index?

Section 28 Repeal: 20th Anniversary

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The period that my right hon. Friend describes is the period when I was at school, and I am quite ashamed to say that my peer groups and I had fairly homophobic attitudes because of the lack of education. It took us until we went to university in the ’90s, in the period he describes, when the abolition of section 28 was raised, to overcome them. My children, who are at school now, have wonderful attitudes and are very welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people, and in their peer groups have people who have been able to come out at school. They would not have done that when I was at school.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I completely agree, and I will come on to talk a bit more about that in a second. Our first attempt to repeal section 28 in 2000 was thwarted in the House of Lords, but we eventually got it scrapped in the autumn of 2003—happy anniversary, everyone!

Repealing section 28 was part of a bonfire of discrimination and out-of-date laws applying to LGBT people. In my view, that was among the proudest and historically significant achievements of the Blair-Brown Governments. It included an equal age of consent, civil partnerships, an end to the ban on gays in the military, gay adoption, the ban on discrimination in the provision of goods and services, the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010. What is more, those advances were not reversed by the Cameron, May or even Boris Johnson Governments, but in the past year or two there have been worrying signs of a renewed moral panic, fuelled, as in the 1980s, by powerful elements in the media and politicians who should know better, targeted particularly at transgender and non-binary people.

We are not alone. We only have to look at Republican states in America, Orbán’s Hungary or Meloni’s Italy to see LGBT people under sustained attack, but Britain’s fall from equalities leader to laggard has been dramatic. Until 2015, the UK was consistently ranked among the best countries in Europe to be LGBTQ+; this year, we have fallen to 17th.