§ Viscount HANWORTHasked Her Majesty's Government:
What are the known and the probable amounts of unmined strategic minerals located in the United Kingdom, and what these represent in terms of our present annual consumption of such minerals.
§ The MINISTER of STATE, DEPARTMENT of INDUSTRY (Viscount Trenchard)There is no universally accepted definition of the term "strategic 833WA minerals". So far as metalliferous ores in general are concerned, those which are known to occur within the United Kingdom in substantial deposits of potential economic interest are copper, iron, tin and tungsten. These deposits could not be regarded as reserves until they had been investigated and shown to be workable in current economic circumstances: for copper and iron this is not the case; tin is of course being mined at present and the national reserves figure has been very speculatively estimated to be 260,000 tonnes (about 21 times the United Kingdom's 1978 consumption); a very small amount of tungsten is also being mined, but the majority of the known deposits are still under investigation by mining companies.