Speeches by Edwards.

“I want to pick up on an element of that, but before I do, James, at the beginning of the session, you started talking about supply chain weaponisation. You covered some of what I would have asked, but what is the likelihood of that being used? Could it—there are different schools of thought here—be sustained? Would the…”

“I wanted to ask about items, such as batteries, that are hugely dependent on China, which potentially has a big stronghold on their cost and on the variation or fluctuation of that. It is actively looking at vertical integration, so it has stakes in the critical minerals and the refining, then it has the lithium, the b…”

“I want to come back to what you were saying earlier. You said we are not doing the processing and, as a result, we end up with a net loss. Could you give us some insight into why we are not doing it? What would it mean if we could do it? What are those barriers? Just briefly, it might be similar to what we have heard, …”

“We have some domestic production, although it is very small, and we have an issue around the refining. We have a very tiny amount of capability, so we need to build that out. Some of the information that we have received is that other countries are ahead of us. You gave one example there. We have things such as Cornish…”

“I wanted to follow up on the point that you made there about how the company was hoping to bring it back to the UK for refining. We know that one of the UK Government reports last year, in 2025, said that energy costs are too high for the production of UK critical minerals to be competitive. I wondered whether, especia…”

“Building on some of the conversation about the risks of having to go to so many different places for our minerals, we have a very handy table here that is illustrating the point you mentioned around the DRC and cobalt. It has 62% of global concentration there, while 24% of copper is in Chile and 63% of nickel is in Ind…”

“We heard a bit in the last panel about where these minerals are coming from. I wanted to probe a bit more about where these gaps and vulnerabilities are going to impact the supply chains of some of the new technologies that we are looking for, so batteries as one example. I wanted to get your views on that and what the…”

“I wanted to ask Sabina about the tech situation in China and the opportunities for our firms and how well they are positioned. We know that we are the third most valuable in the world, according to one of the reports that techUK has published. How do you see some of these opportunities? Which might be the companies tha…”

“Yes. We are quite interested in the potential opportunities that education has, but, as you have alluded to, there are a great number of universities whose entire business model is stacked upon Chinese students. What do we do? Do we encourage more of that? Do we have a problem whereby—we see some of these stories comin…”

“Picking up on the data point, for example, that has come up before and we have discussed it. Our Sub-Committee on Economic Security is very interested in all these different elements right through society. Do you see data as being the No. 1 challenge? Does it mean that we are more likely to receive Chinese products and…”

“Are we confident that we can manage the risk of where that investment might come from? Are we going to accept it at any cost?”

“Building on that point around supply chain resilience and whether enough is being done, I had a conversation with a company called Toray Textiles, which explained that it would like to supply the armed forces and the MOD with its quality product. It is struggling and competing because, at the moment, the British Govern…”

“The point I was trying to make was more that, comparatively, it is a tiny amount of money. It is not about excluding them. It is more about whether it is really worth it. What are we gaining when we are talking about these national security risks?”

“I am interested in what you have been saying around the balancing act of how we manage those relationships. In particular, the recent visit that you were speaking about, where the Prime Minister went and took a delegation, was widely reported to be a positive step in those discussions. It is resulting in £600 million o…”

“My constituents in Tamworth are already paying the price for the blockade of the strait of Hormuz, with fuel costs soaring. My logistics sector is also facing the brunt of those fuel costs, which ultimately will be passed on to consumers. While I welcome the Prime Minister’s refusal to drag Britain into the United Stat…”

“7. What steps her Department is taking with international counterparts to restore freedom of navigation through the strait of Hormuz.”

“Q12. On 16 July 2005, Private Leon Spicer and Private Phillip Hewett, both from Tamworth, and Second Lieutenant Richard Shearer from Nuneaton, were tragically killed in Iraq. More than 20 years on, our communities continue to remember their service and reflect on the ultimate sacrifice they made. The Staffordshire 3 Gr…”

“I do not necessarily think we want a race to the bottom, though; we want a good service for the entirety of the country. There is also an additional reliability target that effectively says that mail—if it is first class or second class—cannot be delivered two days later than the allotted time it is supposed to arrive …”

“How is that going to translate into the way in which you decide whether to issue a fine? Obviously, this is adding to a structure that you currently have, so you are broadening the KPIs, as such, that you use to measure its performance. How do you think you are going to use these reliability targets? How are you factor…”

“I want to pick up on your point, Ms Black, about USO reform, particularly because I think it is an interesting term to use, given that we are seeing it move in the wrong direction—the Committee would probably agree. At the moment, from 1 April this year, we are going to see first-class delivery targets dropping from 93…”