Recent events in the Middle East have highlighted how a choke point in a global supply chain can change the nature of markets and de-stabilise the global economy in days.

Most obviously in gas and oil, but also in other critical materials including sulphur, aluminium and helium, the threat to the Straits of Hormuz has transformed assumptions, pushed up prices and disrupted businesses and economies across the world.

What better backdrop for a new Inquiry into the UK Government’s little known but hugely important Critical Minerals Strategy? Launched this week by a sub-committee of the Business and Trade Committee, this inquiry will look into how the UK can secure better access to the materials that are critical to industry and energy.

The last time that the Business Committee looked at this issue was in 2013 when London was host to most of the largest mining companies in the world, a global centre of finance and expertise, but our governments showed little understanding or appreciation of their role.

The Treasury, which tends to measure business either by their contribution in domestic tax or employment, gave little attention or thought to the enormous benefits of UK listed and headquartered companies dominating the resources world or the secondary benefits to jobs in finance, law, engineering and consulting, that having them in the UK brought. Parliamentary debate on mining was dominated by those who wanted to question its environmental or human rights records, those who harked back to a lost era of UK coal mining or sought to undermine the “evil capitalists” they saw as exploiting the mineral wealth of developing nations. It was a specialist subject to an eccentric few and none of them had the interests of the industry at heart.

A decade that brought Brexit, the Covid disruption and Trump’s America has made politicians realise that where materials come from and that securing our access to them still matters. Major supply chain disruptions such as the blockage of the Suez Canal and the breakdown of Jaguar Land Rover’s systems in a cyber attack provided reminders of the chaos that can be caused by a break in the chain. New tariffs reminded businesses of vulnerabilities they had thought left behind by globalisation.

Back in 2013, when I helped to persuade the Chair of the Business Select Committee to launch an inquiry into the Extractive Industries, the debate was about transparency, development and sustainability. All are important but they have become secondary to the essential need for access.

Both the USA and the EU have launched their own drives to recapture a share of the world’s critical minerals from Chinese dominance and the UK strategy which got little fanfare when it was first launched under Boris Johnson, was revised and refreshed with more impetus last year under Keir Starmer.

Now, the world is being confronted by what happens when materials that were previously freely available get blocked and when demanding markets cannot access the critical resource they need. Whatever time it takes to get ships travelling through the Straits of Hormuz freely again, the impact on prices, supply chains and economies will be longer.

In this context, it is vital that the full range of businesses in the critical minerals supply chain have their say. From mining and extraction that provide the sourcing of basic ingredients to refining and processing to recycling. For a highly developed country such as the UK which wants to be a leader in green energy and sustainability, the latter should be a crucial element.

The UK Critical Minerals Strategy has set ambitious targets for driving up UK access to a huge range of growth and critical minerals, increasing through domestic production and recycling. The challenge will be delivering it.

If anyone in the industry wants help with providing written evidence or preparing to give evidence to the inquiry, Cardew Group has the knowledge, experience and expertise to help.