A Commons committee has reported that it cannot confidently tick off a single one of the government's ten tests for critical mineral supply security.
The Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee concluded that Britain's technology ambitions rest on minerals it does not control, and that the plan intended to fix this cannot yet be shown to be working.
The ten tests cover identifying the industries and technologies that need protecting, the minerals those industries need, the points at which supply could be disrupted, and how domestic production, overseas partnerships, skills and financing will close the gaps. On the committee's reading, none of them could be confidently ticked off.
The dependence is concentrated. Citing International Energy Agency figures, the report says China is the leading refiner for 19 of the 20 strategic minerals, with an average market share of 70%.
For two of them the share is close to total. China produces 95% of the world's gallium and 93% of its germanium, both of which matter for semiconductors and optics.
Liam Byrne, the committee's chair, said: "Critical minerals are the alpha of the new economy." He was equally clear about the limits of any fix: "We're never going to eliminate Chinese minerals from our supply chains."
On timing he was blunter still. "De-risking even a prudent proportion of our supplies will take over a decade," he said. The report puts diversification at 10 to 15 years.
Byrne's summary was that "Britain cannot afford to drift", He added: "We must act now before dangerous dependencies become strategic liabilities."
The committee's recommendations include a Critical Minerals Finance Facility and an initial stockpile of roughly 60 days of the minerals needed for defence capabilities.
One further figure appears in the report. Eighty per cent of UK metal products classified as waste are exported.
That last number rewards a second reading. Britain has no secure supply of refined metal, and is sending four-fifths of its refined metal abroad, having first reclassified it as rubbish.
This newspaper regards the deposit as exceptional by any standard of resource geology. It sits at the surface. It has no overburden. It has already been mined once, smelted once and refined once, and it arrives pre-sorted, by lorry, on a weekly schedule.
Our analysts note that no exploration licence is required, because the deposit is already owned, and no drilling programme is needed, because the grade is known. The ore body is whatever the country put out on Tuesday.
Measured against the committee's own test, the question of whether domestic production can close the gap appears to have been answered some time ago. Domestic production closed it, and the output was then exported under a different name.
The Department of Unnecessary Research supports the proposed 60-day defence stockpile and has identified the cheapest available method of building one. For sixty days, Britain should not take the bins out.