Today’s Select Committee Report on critical minerals does not mince its words. It starts “Secure access to critical minerals is now essential for the UK’s national and economic security. The UK cannot re-arm, deliver the transition to net zero, or build the AI infrastructure on which future prosperity depends unless it can secure the critical minerals that underpin those technologies.” And concludes “The UK cannot afford to drift. Critical minerals are the alpha of economic growth, defence capability and technological leadership. The question ….is whether dangerous dependencies can be reduced quickly enough before they become strategic liabilities.”

Headlines warn of the threat of Chinese coercion but today’s cross-party report should also be an opportunity for domestic producers, refiners and recyclers.

For years, the recognition has been dawning on Western countries that global supply chains cannot always be relied on. Recent events from Trump’s tariffs to China’s rare earths bans, to war in the Middle East, have hardened the appreciation of that.

A report that recommends sensible steps to de-risk supply chains and improve industrial resilience should not be controversial and, in fact, there has been cross-party and cross-government support for doing more about this for some time. The UK’s first Critical Minerals Strategy was published under Boris Johnson, updated and refreshed under Keir Starmer and the importance of supply chains should not be lost on Prime Minister Andy Burnham who puts such emphasis on the benefits of ‘reindustrialisation’.

Yet today’s report also points to some of the failings of that approach – a sense of drift, a lack of joined-up thinking, a paucity of ambition on financing, a sense that things get 'stuck' between Government departments and the underlying challenge of high energy costs. It also reinforces the urgency of taking action in an increasingly competitive international environment.  The report sets ten targets for Government to de-risk supply chains and concludes none of them are currently being met.

For potential UK domestic players this should be a welcome clarion call to accelerate the work on making processing and recycling a bigger part of the solution and to raise the profile of the whole critical minerals supply chain. Domestic miners will also welcome the call for greater ambition and a wider armoury of financing support. Global mining companies too should recognise the benefits of the call-to-work with partners and build up allied capacity and intelligence on minerals and materials availability.

This report confronts some hard truths about the way the world has changed and some very real threats remain in the international order. The question now is whether industry and government take heed and whether reindustrialisation is going to be sufficiently ambitious an agenda for this to make a difference.

Robin Walker has been involved in the critical minerals sector for decades, having advised mining companies such as Rio Tinto, Vedanta Resources and Kazakhmys. He was a member of the BIS select committee when it launched an inquiry into extractive industries and worked with Ministers to encourage the creation of the first UK Critical Minerals Strategy. If you would like to engage on the latest developments in critical minerals contact: robin.walker@cardewgroup.com