UK ‘vulnerable’ over its dependency on China for rare minerals
- The UK is almost entirely dependent on China imports of critical minerals of ‘strategic significance’, report says
- UK Foreign Affairs Committee chair Alicia Kearns warns: ‘if China pulls the plug, we will all pay the price’
The UK has been left “vulnerable” over its dependency on China for critical minerals needed to make key everyday items such as smartphones, British lawmakers said in a report on Friday.
The Foreign Affairs Committee, a cross-party panel of parliamentarians, highlighted the fallout from the UK’s dependence on the world’s second biggest economy for rare metals such as lithium and cobalt.
“The UK’s critical minerals supply chains are vulnerable due to our continuing dependence on autocracies - in particular China - and the inaction of successive UK governments,” the report concluded.
Entitled “A rock and a hard place: building critical mineral resilience”, the study described critical minerals as possessing “strategic significance to the UK”.
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It added they were “essential” to the nation’s “economic security and to meeting... climate change targets”.
The report follows the government’s launch last year of the UK’s first critical minerals strategy aimed at improving security of the key commodities.