Perran Moon

I thank everybody who has contributed to this debate. Perhaps next time I should actually advertise it as a Tinder debate, and we can educate people while they are here. I will thank a few people specifically. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law) is very knowledgeable, particularly in the areas of midstream and downstream work; he talked about processing supply chains. Both he and my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) mentioned the Kernow industrial growth fund. Right now, that fund is being used for exactly what it was designed to do—to support some exploratory mining opportunities, among other commercial opportunities in Cornwall. He also mentioned unblocking planning and permitting issues, which we need to take on board. My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall is a superb champion for Cornwall Resources, which is doing amazing things to maximise the opportunity in tungsten. She talked insightfully about the local benefits, including in relation to the skills agenda. We really need to tie that agenda in with our devolution deal, which I know the Prime Minister has mentioned several times in the last 48 hours. For us in Cornwall, the skills agenda will be critical—excuse the pun—to maximise the opportunities in this particular sector. I totally agree with the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mr Reynolds), about the exploration that is urgently needed on these critical minerals. I heard what the Minister said, but we are not just talking about tin, tungsten and lithium, the three we know about at the moment; we know from previous records that we also have nickel, cobalt, uranium, silver and many others, but we need the data that exploration can provide and we need support in that regard. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Grantham and Bourne (Gareth Davies), clearly grasps the importance of Cornish tin mining. He also mentioned energy costs; perhaps that is a debate for another day but, because of our Cornubian batholith, which is the granite formation on which Cornwall sits, we have vast geothermal opportunities. We are looking at whether there is a commercial case to make use locally of that geothermal energy to drive some of our industrial regeneration. I have already mentioned the importance of aligning this issue to the devolution deal. Really, this debate was more of a clarion call to Government to focus very closely, not only on lithium and tungsten, but on a huge opportunity within the tin sector across the whole of Cornwall. Finally, I warmly extend an invitation to the Minister to visit the South Crofty tin mine. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the impact of levels of global tin availability on the economy.