Democratic Republic of the Congo: Conflict - Question

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 11:18 am on 8th December 2022.

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Photo of Lord Alton of Liverpool Lord Alton of Liverpool Crossbench 11:18 am, 8th December 2022

My Lords, in addition to conflict, corruption, environmental degradation and human rights violations, has the Minister seen the report from the United Nations earlier this year about the use of child labour in the DRC, saying that 40,000 children in the southern Katanga province alone are mining cobalt there for the lithium that we use in our batteries? Surely the Minister could take this to the big tech companies—Microsoft, Google and the others—and also use our aid programmes as leverage to stop the exploitation of children in this way.