LONDON - Britain 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 Dec 15.
The Foreign Affairs Committee, a cross-party panel of parliamentarians, highlighted the fallout from Britain’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”.
It added that they were “essential” to the nation’s “economic security and to meeting... climate change targets”.
The report follows the government’s launch in 2022 of Britain’s first critical minerals strategy aimed at improving security of the key commodities.
The committee criticised “the government’s decision not to assess the vulnerabilities and dependencies in the UK’s industrial supply chains before producing” the strategy.
It called on the Conservative government, led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, “to publish specific targets for priority sectors and to provide a more detailed implementation plan”.
Committee chairwoman Alicia Kearns, a lawmaker within Mr Sunak’s party, noted that “from F-35 fighter jets to the batteries in our phones, critical minerals are the building blocks of many modern technologies”.
“They are integral to everyday living, the green transition and our nation’s defence.”
But she added that Britain needed “to confront the weakness created by our dependency on a single state: China. These minerals power modern life and if China pulls the plug, we will all pay the price”.
Outside Britain, the European Union in November agreed on a plan to secure its own supply of critical raw materials, as Brussels seeks to reduce its dependence on other countries, notably China.
Brussels is particularly concerned about falling behind during the transition to cleaner technologies that rely on the critical minerals.
China is widely seen as having already made great strides because of its access to raw materials, while the United States has poured billions into subsidies for green tech.
Critical raw materials, including the rare metal tungsten, are needed to make most of the electrical products consumers use today. AFP
