Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment the Government has made of the potential for domestic production of lithium.

In May 2020, the British Geological Survey published “The potential for lithium in the UK” as part of its Raw Materials for Decarbonisation series. It summarises previous British Geological Survey activity in the UK, as well as more recent activity by Cornish Lithium Ltd, British Lithium Ltd and the Li4UK project, each of which has received Government support.

The report is available here:

https://www2.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/download/cmp/lithium.pdf.

As we set out in our Net Zero Strategy published earlier this year, we will publish a UK Critical Minerals strategy in 2022, and aim to establish an enabling environment for growing the sector in the UK. We are also establishing a Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre to provide robust, dynamic analysis on stocks and flows to guide our decision-making on critical minerals such as lithium.