Lord Vallance speech at Royal Institute of Navigation
Source: gov.uk (2025-11-19)

The Science Minister, Lord Vallance gave a speech at the Royal Institute of Navigation's PNT Leadership Seminar, on 19 November 2025.

Distinguished guests, I want to start by thanking Washington and Ramsey for inviting me to speak today at this fourth meeting of the PNT Leadership Seminar. And I’m pleased to be able to be here at what I think is a timely and important meeting, to give you an update on the progress in government’s approach to PNT.

And to set the context for that, I’d like to briefly revisit what I said last year - when I was speaking by video. I spoke about the importance of PNT for the UK economy, and that’s already been mentioned, for critical national infrastructure, and for wider society. I also highlighted how global navigation satellite systems provide PNT for most of the UK.

But that there are threats and hazards to PNT provided by these systems. The loss of P&T is itself featured in the UK’s National Risk Register. Well, much of what I spoke about last year remains true today. There are 4 areas that I want to give a progress update on, and highlight certain aspects.

The first area is funding. Following the conclusion of what was far from an easy Spending Review (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spending-review-2025-document), DSIT has been allocated, I’m pleased to say, £155 million over the next 4 years [for PNT].

That includes £68 million this financial year, allocated to the development of the National Timing Centre, building on the work of the National Physical Laboratory’s R&D programme, which concluded in March this year. This money is the next step to assisting further developments of the UK’s resilient timing infrastructure, and importantly, bringing it out of the lab and into practical operation.

On my recent visit to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), I saw first-hand how much progress is being made in the really cutting edge quantum technology, which the National Timing Centre will benefit from.

In addition to that money, £71 million has been allocated from next financial year onwards to allow work to begin on a UK national enhanced long-range navigation - eLoran - program, which will provide UK sovereign positioning and timing services across the country, maritime and aviation requirements as well, by 2030, providing seamless integration with other eLoran systems around the world.

£3 million have been allocated for the next financial year for an R&D space-based time transfer programme to develop the technological foundations required for GNSS-independent global time transfer. The funding will be used to develop a proof of concept by the end of 2027.

It’s interesting how many people, I suspect, if you ask them outside this meeting, to think about global time transfer, you wouldn’t, I think, get a very clear look as to what that meant, or why it was important. So one of the challenges, and it goes back to some of the comments that have already been made, is making sure that actually, the fundamental importance of this is understood by the public, as well as by specialists.

£13 million have been allocated to develop a terrestrial PNT interference monitoring and warning capability, and this will allow the UK to ensure that we can quickly and efficiently monitor, locate and react to threats to PNT signals, both in space and on the ground, with a fully operational world-class capability by 2029.

The second area that I want to mention is international engagement and cooperation. It’s pretty obvious that this area must require international cooperation. DSIT’s National PNT Office has continued to build strong relationships with international partners on PNT resilience.

There are 2 examples of collaboration that I want to mention. Firstly, in July, as part of the 37th UK-France Summit (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-france-leaders-declaration), the Prime Minister and President Macron agreed to work towards a resilient terrestrial alternative to global navigation satellite systems. Secondly, in September, the Prime Minister and President Trump agreed to enhance cooperation on initiatives to improve timing resilience. Those topics I’ve already indicated we have got support for.

DSIT officials will of course continue their discussions with counterparts in the USA, Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan, and other countries. This is a crucial area for us and our allies.

The third area that I want to mention is the call for evidence that we published in June, on PNT and growth. This sought views on the UK PNT market and R&D landscape, commercialization and user adoption. And I’m grateful to everyone, and many of you in this room, who responded. DSIT will be publishing a summary of responses before the end of this year, but the input we’ve received from many of you has been and will continue to be crucial to help us develop policies on PNT-enabled economic growth.

We are determined to continue work with industry and academia to kick-start the co-development of a PNT growth strategy and drive resilient PNT adoption innovation, for the PNT-based productivity that’s required for the benefit of citizens. And I’m aware of the crucial, absolutely central role of the private sector in achieving these goals.

The fourth area that I want to highlight, particularly on this occasion today, is DSIT’s work with the Royal Institute of Navigation. Much of the work on PNT, particularly resilience and around raising industry awareness about the importance of resilient PNT, would simply not be possible without this institution.

Last year, we co-funded the Institute’s work on PNT best practice principles. This year, we are part-funding the Royal Institute of Navigation to produce a series of online lectures centred around an accessible introduction to PNT, to assist with that important job of raising awareness and understanding of PNT within government and industry, and beyond.

This close collaboration between DSIT’s National PNT Office and the RIN is important. It is a key part of helping to advance national work on PNT resilience and economic growth.

Those 4 areas of progress that I’ve just highlighted are a snapshot of cross-government work and collaboration that’s needed to drive forward our PNT capabilities. And the funding that we have announced today, and I’ll reiterate, I think to get that amount of funding in what was a tight Spending Review, shows that government does understand the importance of this. That funding, I think, will cement the UK’s position as a world leader in resilient PNT.

I’d like to say a few words about the decision that we’ve taken to fund terrestrial PNT programmes like eLoran, rather than a UK space-based PNT system. There’s no doubt at all that space PNT programmes remain, and will continue to be, a key part of the government’s plan. We have funded the space-based time transfer R&D programme, and continue to resource the European Space Agency’s Navigation Innovation Support Programme.

But the benefits of terrestrial PNT programmes are what the UK also needs right now: greater resilience and availability. Take eLoran signals for example, which are harder to jam and spoof the GPS signals. eLoran can also complement and be fused with the provision of PNT from space, providing access to underground and underwater signals.

And what are other countries doing? Well, the answer is that other countries, including South Korea, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, are also developing their eLoran systems as a terrestrial system which complements space-based PNT. We will continue to align with international partners through technical discussions with South Korea and France and others around standardisation and international cooperation.

I also want to say a few words on the crucial role of industry and the private sector in ensuring that we have the right capabilities and systems. We’re fortunate in the UK to have such extensive experience and expertise in the UK’s PNT community, and we need to work together, co-developing interventions with you to support the PNT industry, and drawing on your experience to maximise opportunities for PNT-driven economic growth.

The government should do what the government needs to do, and it should support, incentivise and encourage industry to do what industry does best. This is just the beginning. We need you to continue to engage and share your views and suggestions with the PNT Office, some of whom are in attendance here today and you’ll be able to meet at the various breaks, as they develop policy interventions and implement programmes.

I’m also keen that they receive challenge to ensure that we’re making the best use of your expertise. If the problem was easy, it would have been fixed already. It’s not easy, and yet it’s crucial and we need to get it right. So don’t feel afraid to challenge, but do feel that part of your job is to help come up with solutions and to make sure that we all get this right.

The private sector, I’ve got absolutely no doubt, has a central role to play. From advising other businesses on how to assess and improve their PNT resilience, right the way through to innovators, developing technologies, inventing things, and making alternatives more accessible.

Given the level of expertise here in the room today, I’d like to encourage you to think about how you can work together as part of a wider UK PNT community. I know that’s the purpose of this meeting. And I think what comes out of today will be important in setting the tone and framework for what happens next.

Rewinding to last year, I noted that there was much to be done to make the UK PNT-resilient and exploit the benefits that PNT offers. That remains the case. But there’s no doubt you’ve made tremendous progress over the past 12 months towards that goal. All I can do is hope that next year will be equally as successful. Thank you very much.