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UK Space Policy

I am grateful to my co-chairman on the all-party group on space, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Olner), for securing this debate and to colleagues on both sides for contributing so knowledgeably. This important debate is about an important subject, just ahead of the upcoming European Space Agency ministerial conference. I pay tribute to my successor as space Minister. My only successor, believe it or not, is the noble Lord Sainsbury. I was the Minister for three and a half years. Most of my hon. Friends thought that that was far too long and that I was in orbit for most of the time, but Lord Sainsbury has had a remarkable record and I pay tribute to his enthusiasm. If there is one drawback of his continuity in the post, it is that the space Minister is not a Member of this House, which has sometimes held back some of our discussions. However, I believe that his enthusiasm has kept the space budget at the forefront. We should not play party politics too much. I happen to have a good memory of the period in which I was the Minister for Science and Technology, and it does not matter what the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, on whose council I serve, says. One of the good things I was able to do, when my ministerial colleagues at the Department of Trade and Industry were not watching, was to grab some year-end funds and put them into the space budget. The British National Space Centre, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and others were rather grateful for that.