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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what the criteria are for the provision of grants under the Faraday Battery Challenge, established under the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, for the development and production of battery technology; and, in particular, what emphasis is given, if any, in those criteria, to the improvement of environmental and working conditions in those regions involved in the mining and production of lithium and other battery components, both now and in the future.

The Faraday Battery Challenge is a competitive fund delivered coherently by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Innovate UK and the Advanced Propulsion Centre, joining up the stages of technology development from fundamental research, through innovation to industrial scale-up. Its focus is on the development of new and improved battery technology to address the challenges of future electric vehicles and other applications. The scope of the programme includes the environmental challenges of longer first life, recyclability and reuse of batteries. Upstream issues such as mining are out of scope of the programme.