Space Industry Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2018-01-15
Topic: Technology
Edward Vaizey (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the chance to speak in this important debate, and indeed to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford). He started his speech by saying that he knew very little about the subject, but I must say that I would hate to hear a speech of his when he knows a lot about the subject. I thought his speech was very thoughtful and insightful, particularly in raising the two topics of space debris and insurance. His speech indicated that the space industry is very sophisticated. When we think about space, all of us—well, me; I would not presume to extend my failings to my hon. Friends and other hon. Members—think about men landing on the moon, but the space industry, like any other, is now on earth. It is very sophisticated, and may be very lucrative and beneficial to countries specialising in it I pay tribute to the Minister for introducing this important Bill. Of course, we have to thank George Osborne, who focused on the space industry and many other pioneering industries in his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer. How we miss his forward thinking and sophisticated approach to our economy. Luckily, we have part of his legacy before the House tonight. The Bill builds on previous legislation. It was a Conservative Government who passed the Outer Space Act 1986, and it is a Conservative Government who have brought forward this forward-thinking Bill on the future. That is why the Government Benches are full of people wanting to speak and the Opposition Benches are completely empty At first, I wondered why we needed legislation, but anyone who looks at the Bill will see that, through it, we are creating the regulatory framework that will allow the space industry to flourish in the UK, in particular by allowing us to build spaceports and have our own launch sites for satellites. At present, too many UK companies that build satellites rely on finding slots in other jurisdictions, so this will be a big change that helps the micro-satellite industry, as well as emerging industries such as commercial spaceflight and microgravity science. The Bill will create the framework that will help to realise the Government’s ambition for the UK to be one of the world’s leading space economy countries, and help the value of the space economy to quadruple in the next couple of decades I remember when many years ago, as a young man, I said I thought I should become a lawyer, and my godfather advised me to become a space lawyer. He was ahead of his time, but the Bill will give opportunities in the growing discipline of space law. I was interested to see in the Bill, for example, the application of criminal law to spacecraft. If that does not herald spaceflight soon becoming mainstream, nothing will I wanted to speak in the debate because I represent the wonderful constituency of Wantage, which is 20 minutes closer to London than Swindon—an important point to make to my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson). Although Swindon is, rightly, a centre for space industry, it is still 20 minutes too far away for the Minister, so I know that when he decides to head west, he will come to Harwell, where he has visited previously to see the extraordinary space industries that are burgeoning there It is hard to believe, but none the less true, that 80 space organisations are based in the Harwell space cluster. They include start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises, public sector organisations and major companies such as Airbus, Lockheed Martin and Thales. Some 800 people work on the Harwell campus, their number having grown by approximately 13% every year. The Harwell campus as a whole has benefited from extensive Government investment over many years, with more than £2 billion-worth of scientific facilities employing 5,500 highly skilled people in places such as the diamond synchrotron and neutron spallation source, which is managed by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. I will focus on a few of the organisations found on the campus RAL Space—Rutherford Appleton Laboratory’s space arm—has built more than 220 space instruments and ground-based telescopes. In 2015, it opened its national assembly, integration and test facility, which enables satellites ranging in size from CubeSats, which are the size of a whiskey bottle, up to 3 metres in length to be tested and calibrated; they can then be used to observe the Earth, carry satellite communications or help with navigation. I was delighted when the Government announced recently that the £99 million national satellite test facility, which will open in 2020, would be based at Harwell. I thank the Minister for that We also have the Satellite Applications Catapult, opened under the last Government as part of the Catapult programme, with more than 120 personnel. A useful organisation, it brings home to a range of companies that might not have thought that satellites were relevant to them ways in which satellite technology can help them. One of the most mundane examples I heard of—but fascinating because it is so random—was that supermarkets can use satellites to monitor their car parks to make more efficient use of the space. My point is that companies large and small that may think space has nothing to do with them beyond powering the satnav in their company cars can use satellite imagery in innovative ways, particularly firms working in agriculture and shipping navigation I am also delighted to have the European Space Agency’s European centre for space applications and telecommunications at Harwell. You will be delighted to learn, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the ESA is not part of the European Union, so the Brexiteers cannot mess up the European Space Agency. It will survive the carnage of Brexit. It employs more than 100 people drawn from 17 countries; I hope they will be able to remain here. It also provides support for the development of new products and services: for example, the Pioneer programme supports the setting up of space mission providers, which will facilitate access to space by other developers. The first SMP is the Harwell-based UK company Open Cosmos. The ESA also has a highly successful business incubation centre The Space Industry Bill is vital to my constituency. It is an important step to enable spaceflight from the UK. No doubt spaceports will be self-selecting, and I have heard various people make a pitch for one. It would be political suicide for me to pitch my own constituency, where there is large piece of open land that is always the subject of great conflict. People have proposed building a garden town there; others proposed a reservoir, and some residents, in an attempt to stop the reservoir, proposed an airport. However, were their MP to propose a spaceport, I think he would be out on his ear, so I will not nominate my constituency to be the home of a spaceport. None the less, my constituency will benefit from the growth of the space industry enabled by the Bill I will make one final point—I see some of my hon. Friends yawning as I reach my peroration. At the end of last year, my good friend Rajeev Chand from Rutberg sent me a fascinating report produced by Morgan Stanley on space disruption. Space is now a thing—we talk about tech disruption and banking disruption, but now space is so well developed that we are getting space disruption. We talk about the UK economy and Government intervention, but it is interesting to see that there is a big private economy in space now, with $2.5 billion invested in companies wholly devoted to space last year alone. Those companies include names we are all familiar with, such as Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, OneWeb, and SpaceX, which is Elon Musk’s company The report points out the different industries operating in space. Landing on the moon is just the sexy part—the tip of the iceberg. Space industries include satellite launches, satellite communications, deep space exploration and lunar landing as well as Earth observation, asteroid mining, space debris—mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley—space tourism, space research, manufacturing in space, and so on. Countries all round the world have an interest. Morgan Stanley identifies 90 companies, mainly from the US but also from Israel, India, Korea, Finland and many other countries. There is only one British company on the list of 90 space companies to watch, but—happily confirming my thesis that Harwell is the home of UK space—it is Oxford Space Systems, which is based in Harwell and builds small satellites. It is run by an extraordinary man called Mike Lawton. The first time I met him, he was powering buses with vegetable oil; now, he is building small cube satellites to be launched as a light payload delivering extraordinary benefits It is exciting to be debating the Space Industry Bill in the Chamber tonight. I am glad to see that it will not be opposed—nor should it be. It is a pioneering Bill, which builds on work done by this Government over many years to put the UK at the heart of a growing and vital global industry, namely space.