Oral Answers to Questions
Greg Smith Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)
This Government have given significant support to organisations up and down the country to help with cost of living issues. That is on top of the programmes that we are providing, including the ones that I was talking about a moment ago, for grassroots sport. We are putting more money into grassroots sport now than has been put in for probably decades.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
British motorsport, in order to stay at the cutting edge, wishes to transform itself to use synthetic and sustainable fuels, but the taxation regime disincentivises that. Will the Minister work with me and colleagues in the Treasury to ensure that the use of sustainable fuels is incentivised?
Stuart Andrew
I completely agree about the importance of motorsport in this country, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his commitment and hard work in this area. We already support sustainable and synthetic fuels under the renewable transport fuel obligation scheme. Tax policy, as he knows, is a matter for the Treasury, but I will of course work with him and ensure that his ideas are shared across Government.
Oral Answers to Questions
Greg Smith Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
George Freeman
That is an excellent question because skills are key. All around the country we are growing space clusters. Just yesterday we launched Leicester Space East, which is part of the national network. We prioritised skills in the science and technology framework, published last Monday. The UK Space Agency has an active skills programme and we are working with UKspace to set out a map of the jobs that are being created—380,000 in this economy over the next 10 years. We intend to ensure that our higher education and further education sector is supplying them.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
The Westcott Space Cluster in my constituency is a tour de force of innovative excellence, with a particular focus on ensuring small and medium-sized enterprises can use open access testing facilities, such as through the satellite applications catapult DISC. Does my hon. Friend agree that that open access support is essential? Will he visit Westcott to see it for himself?