Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential implications of the reduction in cadmium within phosphate fertilisers in the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and the Council COM(2016)157/F1 for (a) the UK's dependence on Russia and (b) the stability of North African economies.

​The Government has made no such assessment. Due to uncertainty around the cost and the industrial processes to reduce cadmium content, it would be difficult to assess how the proposed limits on the concentration of cadmium in fertiliser will affect North and West African phosphate rock miners, and therefore also unclear to what extent UK and wider European industry will switch to Russian or other sources.