MPA supports BIS Committee Report

Trade association welcomes recommendations for a domestic extractives plan and BIS Extractives Minister

THE Mineral Products Association (MPA) has welcomed The Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) Committee’s Report ‘The Extractive Industries’, published this week, which takes direct account of key evidence highlighted by the MPA and the CBI Minerals Group (CBIMG) in a number of its recommendations to Government, namely:

• That the Department publishes a domestic extractives plan setting out the extent and range of its support — both structural and financial — and how it intends to realize that ambition.
• That the existing Industrial Strategies be amended to take into account energy policy in the UK, upon which a large section of the domestic extractives sector is reliant.
• That, in addition to co-ordinating and taking responsibility for the delivery of the domestic extractives plan, the Minister in BIS be given clear responsibility for leading policy in this area.

Nigel Jackson, chief executive MPA and chair of the CBI Minerals Group, said: ‘We strongly support the Committee’s recommendations that BIS should publish a domestic extractives plan, that the existing Industrial Strategies be amended to take into account UK energy policy and our domestic extractive sector, and that a BIS Minister should be given responsibility for the delivery of the domestic extractives plan.

‘All of these proposals were put forward to the Committee in evidence provided by the MPA and CBIMG. The MPA and CBIMG are already working on a UK Minerals Strategy which could have a significant influence upon a domestic extractives plan.

‘We very much hope that these important recommendations are now urgently adopted by government,’ said Mr Jackson. ‘We believe that these would be the most significant developments in mineral and extractive industry policy since the Royal Commission on Aggregates chaired by Sir Ralph Verney in the mid-70s.

‘Such policies should enable the UK economy to become more resilient as it relies upon essential, steady and adequate mineral supply, both energy and non-energy.’

The publication of the BIS Committee report ties in with the CBI ‘Living with Minerals 5’ (LWM5) Conference taking place on 17 November 2014 at the QEII Conference Centre, London, which has the theme ‘Towards a UK Mineral Strategy’.

At the event, Adrian Bailey MP, chair of BIS select committee, will provide an update on the recent inquiry into the extractive industries, and other stakeholders and leading speakers from government and industry will also speak.