Place-based Business Cases
Thursday, 15 October 2026
Contributions
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)Labour
12. What discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the development of place-based business cases.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (Blair McDougall)Labour
Place is central to the industrial strategy. We have been working with Plymouth and the south-west peninsula to support the development of distinctive nationally significant clusters. I visited Plymouth and Cornwall earlier this year to meet the freeport, understand the opportunities around marine autonomy and see for myself Cornwall’s incredible critical mineral potential.
As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, in Cornwall we have a resurgent minerals industry, which can make our country and our communities wealthy once again, but we can only do that if we process what we dig out of the ground. Having strong supply chains is therefore imperative from a national security and a resilience perspective. What steps is the Minister taking, together with No. 10 North, the Treasury and other Departments, to ensure that the key investment case for our area—including the missing midstream, which is battery active material production—will prevent us from having to ship that wealth abroad and will ensure that we create Cornish jobs back home?
My hon. Friend and the other Cornish Labour MPs are incredible advocates for critical minerals and their potential in the UK. Projects in that part of the world are essential to our ambitions. We are supporting lithium projects in Cornwall, including through an offer in principle of £9.8 million through DRIVE35 for Geothermal Engineering Ltd, as well as a £31 million equity investment in Cornish lithium through the National Wealth Fund. We will continue to work to ensure that we keep more of that value in the UK.
Source: UK Parliament Hansard API. Debate ID: 5417810.