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Solar Power: Xinjiang

Asked by Sir Iain Duncan SmithConservativeDepartment for Energy Security and Net ZeroTabled Answered 29 July 2024UIN 1457

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether it is his policy that solar arrays produced using polysilicon mined in Xinjiang province should not be used in the UK.

Answered by Michael Shanks

No company in the UK should have forced labour in its supply chain. We will be working with colleagues across Government to tackle the issue of Uyghur forced labour in supply chains.

We are also relaunching the Solar Taskforce, which will focus on identifying and taking forward the actions needed to develop supply chains that are resilient, sustainable and free from forced labour. This will support the significant increases in deployment of solar panels needed to meet our ambition of tripling the UKs solar power capacity by 2030.

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