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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I join everybody else in congratulating the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) not just on securing the debate, but on the quality of the debate and the leadership he has shown as chair of the APPG for space. We have had an excellent debate and a lot of shared issues have been brought up. I was struck by the range of different parts of the country in which the space industry is thriving. It is important to understand and acknowledge that.
The hon. Member for Wyre Forest set out the case for the space industry. I do not think I need to repeat any of that, but he spoke about understanding the economic and productivity benefits, as well as the huge benefits to humanity, of satellite technology; how we can mitigate the challenges that the world faces through space; the opportunities for other sectors, such as finance, that are increasingly becoming part of this landscape; and the role of Government as a supporter of space but also as a customer. All those points were very well made. He also talked about the work that UKspace does—it is right that we acknowledge the importance of that organisation—and about businesses from the SMEs to the larger companies, and the ecosystem as a whole.
I will come to a number of points, but one of the most important is that, in a couple of weeks, we will have our industrial strategy, which will set out and prioritise the sectors in advanced manufacturing that are crucial and where this Government intend to turbocharge growth. I cannot reveal the contents of the strategy, but I can say that we are on the verge of having it, and I hope that everyone here will appreciate what is in it.
Later this year, we will hopefully see, for the first time, British satellites on British rockets launching from Scotland. I am putting in my bid to be there, and everyone else is welcome to do the same. I imagine it will be quite a thing to see; it is very exciting. We will also host a global space finance summit at the end of this year. I hope that the hon. Member for Wyre Forest will be able to come to that event, which I think will be an important and useful opportunity to bring in the finance element of this debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) talked about Jodrell Bank and the Lovell telescope, and made important points about STEM education— I think pretty much everyone mentioned the importance of that. We have set up Skills England and, through our industrial strategy, we are working with the Department for Education to ensure that we tilt towards the courses that we need. Of course, STEM is key to that. My hon. Friend was also right to talk about the north-west cluster.
The hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) talked about Goonhilly and the importance of that resource to the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) talked about that, too, and about the importance of Spaceport Cornwall and the skills there.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about Northern Ireland, as he always does. He was right to highlight the importance of the defence and aerospace industry there and, in that context, the continued importance of the debate on Spirit. I think we can all be grateful that we were in this place when he said, “Beam me up, Scotty!”—I enjoyed that contribution.
As the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) said, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald) hit the nail directly on the head, as he always does in relation to many different sectors. He talked about going down the Boulby mine, the cluster in the north-east and the importance of avoiding the valley of death scenario that we face in many different sectors, where we get brilliant research but do not quite manage to bring it to commercialisation, it goes offshore and we lose all that talent. Those were all very good points, well made.
I was asked by the hon. Member for Wyre Forest about the national debris mission. It is going through the next stage of approvals and is a live procurement, so I cannot comment on it, but I wanted to ensure that I responded on that.
We have all talked about the importance of our space industry here in the UK. It is the largest in Europe by revenue, by number of companies and by workforce, and, as was mentioned, it is one of the most productive parts of our economy, with almost 2.5 times the average labour productivity. As the Minister for Industry, in the past year I have had the opportunity to visit and speak to many of those fast-growing space companies. They include homegrown talents such as Space Forge, which I am sure several of us will have met, and BAE Systems, and companies from overseas that have chosen the UK as one of their homes, including ClearSpace and Lockheed Martin. I have had the opportunity to talk to them about their plans for growth and how the Government can support their ambitions, as well as engaging with the trade associations UKspace and ADS, which so keenly support our industry.
As I said, the industrial strategy will come out in a couple of weeks. It will be a 10-year long-term plan. One of the eight growth-driving sectors that we have identified is advanced manufacturing, and we will use the strategy to engage with businesses on the complex areas of policy that we need to address, including finance, planning, energy costs and grid connections, so that we can promote long-term growth.
We want to help more space companies to industrialise, and that means better access to finance and more strategic ways of working with individual space companies. It also means concentrating our efforts on a more targeted portfolio of space capabilities. In other words, we already do this well, so let us take full advantage of that and get a competitive edge. For example, we know that space technologies and services play a vital role in climate action, maritime domain monitoring, telecommunications, the gig economy and apps that rely on persistent positioning. The UK is already strong in the services and applications that space technology enables. Ensuring that space companies can overcome the complex and capital-intensive challenges to excel in these areas will be key to growing the industry now and in the future.
We also want to create a more resilient supply chain, which the hon. Member for Wyre Forest talked about, while improving regulations, which will be needed to enable more activities in our space industry. Of course, DBT does a lot of work in this policy area, but other Departments are important too—I will come to the challenges in a minute. Of course, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology takes a lead, and the MOD, which published its new strategic defence review last week, is clear that being first in NATO means accelerating and enhancing our military space capability, so it recognises that there is more to do. We need to go further and faster, especially working with commercial companies. Towards the end of this year, all Departments will publish clear delivery plans that set out their priorities for space, their capabilities and exactly how we will work to deliver those priorities.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about the challenges that he had in government navigating the many industries that are responsible for space. We inherited that challenge and have not entirely resolved it. So many Departments have an interest in space for legitimate, very good reasons. A group of Ministers has met to talk about the challenge, and we are planning what to do. I am sure that as soon as we have anything to say on that front, we will come back to the hon. Gentleman. I recognise the challenge. So many things are happening in space, so many aspects of our lives are affected by it, and so many Ministers have a huge interest in it. That will always be the way, and we need to navigate that in a way that enables us to be laser focused on our priorities. We have a clear strategy and we are very ambitious about what we want to achieve.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing a debate on this topic. We are absolutely committed to supporting our fantastic space industry, and are already investing in and supporting it. Last month, I celebrated Space Forge’s latest fundraising round, in which it secured £22.6 million. I was pleased to announce the opening of OHB’s new base in Bristol at the Farnborough international airshow—I think the hon. Gentleman was there. Earlier this week, I announced the Government’s support for a space industry partnership between BAE Systems in the UK and Hanwha Systems in South Korea, which is a massive step forward for one of the UK’s leading companies. We have really strong examples of international partnerships, the financial impact and the foreign impact, showcasing the power of our space industry to reach out around the world.
Andrew George
The Minister mentions the importance of international partnerships. In the context of the unpredictable environment in which negotiations take place, particularly with regard to trade with the US, what conversations have taken place between the UK Government and NASA? It is clear that a lot of UK companies, large or small, depend on ensuring that such relationships and future contracts are well founded.
Sarah Jones
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. NASA and the European Space Agency are both really important in terms of ensuring that our companies get the contracts they need. We will work with our American counterparts on that. My focus with our American counterparts in recent weeks has been more on the UK’s steel industry, automotive industry and aerospace industry, up to a point, but I will take away the hon. Gentleman’s point about NASA. Of course, we need to support our companies in getting contracts, and we work closely together.
We can have different views about the future of space. Tim Marshall’s great book on the future of geography, which I have read, talks about space not in the context of a leap into a beautiful, unknown world, but as a continuation of the power struggles here in the UK, so it is important to work collaboratively across all kinds of agencies if we are to find a way forward. The spokesperson for the Lib Dems, the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins), talked about how we navigate the legal future of space. That is an important point, and why we are supporting the space industry by giving an 11% uplift to the UK Space Agency’s 2025-26 budget. I hope that increase shows the direction of travel. Our trade strategy will come out in a couple of weeks. The world of exports is important to our space industry, and we need to ensure that we support advanced manufacturing and space through our trade strategy.
I hope Members are reassured of how important we see the space industry as being. We see it as one of the key growth-driving sectors. The industrial strategy will set out exactly what we are going to do. The hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire talked about the risk of losing world-class talent and industry from these shores; he will be an expert in that, as so much of it happened under the previous Government. We are trying to ensure that we attract and keep people here, and build young people’s talents to develop a space industry that we can all be proud of. Watch this space in terms of the industrial strategy; I look forward to coming back and talking about it.