Space Policy — House of Lords, 2018-07-18
Topic: Technology
Oliver Michael Robert Eden (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for his generally positive response to the Statement. I hope I can answer most of his points, but I hope he will understand if I offer to write to him in greater detail on further points. I have to say that this is not exactly my specialist subject or one with which I am totally familiar, but I will do the best I can Starting with the Space Industry Act 2018, work is ongoing on the secondary legislation that comes out of that. We hope to be in a position to consult in 2019 and get it in force by 2020, so work is taking place On the sector deal, obviously there was a little about that in the Statement itself. I hope we can continue to work with the industry on developing it. As the noble Lord knows, sector deals should be a matter for the industry and others and the Government to work together on to see how they can co-operate in doing things. As I made clear in the Statement, we have already had the Prosperity from Space proposal from the sector; we want to build on that and on the areas where we have leadership. As I mentioned in the Statement, we are already pretty good at small satellites. I recently gave the example of a small satellite factory that I visited belonging to an American company, which decided that the place where it wanted to build its small satellites was Glasgow because that area had the right people, the right expertise and all the other things. It is a testament to Scotland and Glasgow that that is why the company wanted to go there. A sector deal should look at our strengths and what we can do The noble Lord also asked about the site of the spaceport. In answering him, I hope I can address the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. There was interest from a number of areas for vertical sites, just as there was for horizontal sites, and obviously a number of areas will be disappointed because we picked the site in Sutherland. As the noble Lord implied, equatorial sites further south are used for the very heavy lift that is needed for geostationary sites, but the growth in this area seems to be in small satellites. Small satellites at lower orbits typically require polar orbits and I understand that the further north you go the better it is, but scientists will no doubt be able to explain that in terms that the noble Lord will find easier to understand than my brief explanation. As he knows, Sutherland is further north than Wales, and that is one reason why we took that view The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, addressed the issue of Galileo. That has come up in this House on several occasions, and I can only repeat how disappointed we are by the attitude of the European Commission, whose policy on this can only be described—I think by a Member of this House—as "shooting itself in the foot". It is losing UK money and expertise in an area where we are doing very well indeed; attempting to exclude us from that is a mistake. We have made it clear that we still wish to be part of it. We wish to continue to engage on that basis but unfortunately the Commission’s proposals do not appear to meet our objectives. We have set out our red lines for participation in Galileo; they include full industrial access to all other parts of the programme If we are excluded, it is open to the United Kingdom to develop options for a domestic alternative to Galileo. We have a new satellite launch programme to bring launch capabilities into the UK and we have announced the first grants from this programme. The noble Baroness, in what I have to say was not the most positive of responses to the Statement, also queried whether sufficient money was being put into this area. I make it clear to the noble Baroness that there is some £50 million for the spaceflight programme, another £100 million or so invested in the satellite testing facility at Harwell, and £300 million a year through the European Space Agency. There is also the sector deal, which we will be announcing in due course; I hope there will be more positive news in that. As I said, I shall write if there are other points I need to pick up on in response to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness, but I hope I have answered most of their questions.