---

UK Space Policy

: That intervention was pretty infantile, if I may say so. I was saying that the space budget during my period as Minister compares very favourably. There is no doubt that the overall budget for science and technology has gone up under this Government, as I have said many times in the House of Commons. One of the key things to come out of this debate is the enormous excitement and importance of space. There have been many examples of that this year: the Venus Express has just been launched and Mars Express has been mentioned. Although Beagle 2 was ultimately lost, a lot of its technology has been captured and will be reused in other missions. The Huygens probe has landed on Titan; the Inmarsat launch will be vital for global communications. Those are really big issues. No one doubts that space issues are crucial. The question for the Government is about their tactics at the ESA ministerial conference. What key issues will they raise? There are some big questions. The ARTES programme, which has been mentioned, is pretty crucial. ARTES has mixed funding, from industry and Government. Even Lord Sainsbury has said that we can get a measurable commercial return on ARTES investment of at least six or seven times. In that context, it is genuinely an investment. It represents perhaps about 80 per cent. of UK space industry activity, yet makes up only 10 per cent. of UK civil space spending. What is the Government's commitment for further work on ARTES? GMES has been mentioned. It is important and fulfils all the criteria on environmental monitoring set forward by the Government themselves, yet the participation level that the Government are committing to is, in my judgment, sub-critical. What will the Government do about GMES? On the space science side, will the Government continue to commit to Aurora? I shall mention two other programmes that will not be discussed at the ESA ministerial conference. There are still top-up funding arguments to be made on Galileo, which is vital for the UK space industry. We have already won contracts for the two preparatory satellites from EADS Astrium and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, but there are many other upstream and downstream implications. I should be grateful if the Minister had a word with his Ministry of Defence colleagues about TopSat and how we will continue that investment. When I was Minister, I found that the key thing about the space industry is that it really wants to work with the Government, the European Union, which has now taken on a space role, and the European Space Agency to turn technology into wealth, to amplify skills—they were mentioned earlier—and to improve academic excellence. We have some fantastic universities—I do not have time to mention them all—and detailed knowledge of what is happening in space and some of the work that is being done. Such work is exciting and inspirational to younger people, yet DTI funding of the national programme has been cut alarmingly. I believe that it is only some £5 million or £6 million, whereas it used to be well into the twenties. What is the future of the DTI's investment in the national programme? How will the British National Space Centre, which has been reviewed several times, not least by the National Audit Office, improve its game in respect of co-ordination across Government Departments, which was one of its original functions? It seems not to have gone much further than persuading the Department for Transport to put some money into Galileo, and, in fact, that is with the Department now. There must be drive and determination. This is not a personal comment on the individuals involved, but the centre is not seen by the outside world as a driving force across Government Departments, which it needs to be, as the space industry now affects so many aspects of our lives. The DTI certainly is not the space ministry. The Department of Health, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Transport are all vitally involved in the downstream use of space. As they are, in a sense, the consumers of space-derived material, to what extent should they also be the anchor tenants in projects and have extra funding, rather than just depending on the DTI or the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council? I want to give the Minister a full opportunity to respond, as we do not get ministerial statements on space often enough. There are challenges. For example, is he content that during our presidency we are taking a lead on space policy in the European Union, which now has a dedicated space ambition? I have not seen evidence of that. Are we on top of the marriage between space and security? A panel of experts on space on security has produced an interesting report. What are the implications for Britain in the security aspects of, for example, GMES and Galileo? It seems that the rest of the EU is thinking about those fundamental questions but we are not articulating them. Is the Minister content that the expenditure in available budgets is properly balanced between science, industry and industrial applications and enabling technologies? Is a further review intended? There has been a succession of space policy documents. I am glad to say that mine in 1996 was the first, and there have been some excellent ones since, but I am worried that we are fudging some questions, perhaps because of budgetary pressures or because we have not really decided what we want to do in the future. I recently saw a Royal Astronomical Society report on the scientific case for human space exploration. It reads extremely well, but I urge the Minister not to be seduced by the idea that Britain should start investing in manned space exploration. We have not dedicated enough money to existing space activity, which has a much higher priority. I was the Minister who decided that we should not have an active role in the international space station, simply because it would have sucked out money disproportionately from every other activity. I was not convinced that it was good science anyway, and I believe that my successor, the noble Lord Sainsbury, has been grateful to me ever since. I do not believe that the Government's expenditure on space has reached critical mass. Let us not argue about statistical analyses of the past. I am dealing with issues that confront us today and with new programmes. Indeed, I would argue that during the eight years since I was Minister, space has become more central to decision making in Government. What was only beginning to be anticipated, for example, in the use of space to evaluate fraud in the EU and in the common agricultural policy has now become a central platform of what the EU wishes to do, much to the irritation of some member states, incidentally. Most of the fraud in that area is not carried out by the Commission but by member states. Nevertheless, it is of extreme importance for the use of space for the practical delivery of policy. That is an important point, and we have not previously been able to utilise it. On disaster monitoring, the satellites launched by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. with some interesting partners—Nigeria and Algeria—cover an area of the world that is prone to problems. Someone mentioned the tsunami in the Indian ocean; that was picked up and tracked by satellites. Sir David King, the chief scientific adviser to the Government, did not sufficiently show in his report the way in which satellites can help us to monitor and anticipate such events. I would wish the Minister to have a further word with Sir David about the role that satellites can play. This is an opportunity for the Government to show leadership. I wish my party were in government; we are not. That is something for the future. I assure the Minister on a personal basis that if the Government take a lead in space policy, he will have strong support from the Conservatives because of the national importance attached to it for science, discovery, skills and its industrial base.