Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether her Department is taking steps to help protect the supply of silicon metal from Brazil to the UK.

The Government's Critical Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals Refresh, published in March this year, set out steps to improve the supply chain resilience of critical minerals in the UK. We are collaborating with our international partners to create a resilient and diverse global critical minerals supply chain, including for silicon metal which was one of the cohort of minerals identified by the British Geological Survey last year as having high criticality for the UK.

The UK recognises Brazil as a key player in critical minerals, producing 11% of the world’s silicon metal and 84% of the world’s niobium.