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UK Space Policy

: The hon. Gentleman takes the words out of my mouth. I am certainly not laying the blame at the door of Lord Sainsbury, who is a space enthusiast, as far as I know. Indeed, I say that while sitting next to my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor), a well known expert who was a first-class Minister on the subject. I am trying to focus the Minister's mind on joined-up government. The hon. Member for Nuneaton makes my point exactly, and I think that he probably agrees with me. Although the BNSC, through the DTI, can fund industrial research via the European Space Agency, my concern is that funding applications in the public sector become the responsibility of the relevant Department, whose main interest is not space. A current example is the European space navigation project, Galileo. That is an agreed European project funded mainly by the EU, but with ESA as the up-front research organisation—its responsibilities include the first four proving satellites. Funding is required from both the DTI and the Department for Transport. I hope that I am wrong, but there are signs that the Department for Transport cannot fully provide the funding required and that our industries could well lose out rather than cash in on all their work. I seek reassurances on that from the Minister. There are similar potential problems with international efforts to use space technology to help on climate change. I refer to global monitoring for environment and security—GMES—which we talked about earlier. It seems that DEFRA will find that funding is wanting, with disastrous consequences in my view and that of many people in this House and beyond. The Government, in common with previous ones, have long insisted that our space industries should share in funding research and that we should not just look to taxpayers' money for funding. Our industries have responded to that challenge better than industries in other European countries where Government funding is more forthcoming, and I admit that there have been notable successes. For example, the privately funded consortium launching Paradigm's Skynet has proved a great success at providing communications satellites for our military. However, Galileo is a European, publicly funded project. Our industries have won an impressive share of the work, but that will be realised only if the Government are prepared to fund their share alongside other European countries. This and similar cases raise the ““machinery of government”” issue. Unless we can find some way of ensuring that Government-funded research is followed up with Government-funded support for public sector projects, our space industries will not benefit fully from the research that they and the Government initially funded. After all, we are talking about front-edge technology that is recognised as being critical for the UK, particularly as lower-technology industries are taken over by developing countries. I hope that the Minister will take that thought away from the debate and examine whether improvements can be made to Government arrangements that will benefit our space industries and ensure that what we have already invested is not wasted for want of a ha'p'orth of tar.