Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if she will make a comparative assessment of the (a) availability and (b) extraction cost for (i) land-based and (ii) sea bed critical minerals.

There is no deep-sea mining currently happening in areas beyond national jurisdictions.

The Government commissioned an independent review from the British Geological Survey, the National Oceanography Centre and Heriot-Watt University, to support informed decision making regarding potential future development of mineral resources in the deep sea.

Chapter Four of that review addresses Economics, and the full document (published in October 2022) is available here:

https://www.bgs.ac.uk/news/deep-sea-mining-evidence-review-published/