Satellites: Adverse Effects on Astronomy
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(5 days, 10 hours ago)
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Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The cost of launch has come down by something like 95%. The UK remains committed to getting a launch and remains committed to the space strategy as laid out.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, in that National Space Strategy, the previous Government focused on encouraging lower earth orbit satellites, which are increasingly contributing to the loss of dark skies, as we have heard. Will this Government focus on incentives for the development of higher-orbit satellites, such as geostationary satellites, particularly the micro versions, of which far fewer are needed? They offer the best cost economics, compared to LEO systems, and have a lower impact on the night sky.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an extremely important point about the size of satellites, which is one of the problems with the interference from both radio and optical imaging. The smaller satellites, which the UK is extremely good at making, will become an increasing part of the solution. On orbit, we have a commitment to low orbit through the OneWeb approach—where there are about 700 in low orbit—and to higher orbit where it is appropriate to do so.
Specialised Research Units: Closures
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(4 weeks ago)
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Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The noble Lord knows that I know that unit extremely well. It is a very important unit globally and it was given an award of £30 million recently. The new model will allow for a longer period of funding—seven years plus seven years’ funding, so a total of 14 years—with a different process of evaluation, which is a lighter-touch, less bureaucratic process. There is no reason why there cannot be a similar number of trainees going through the new system.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of a university governing council. To some extent the Minister’s responses are reassuring, but is this part of a wider trend towards centralising decisions on research funding through UKRI? Are we moving towards a situation where the Government will fund research only within particular sectors set out in their industrial strategy? If that is the case, will that not stifle new research talent and innovation?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
As the noble Lord may be aware, I have been very clear about the need for supporting basic curiosity-driven, investigator-led research, and I will remain resolute in that determination. Some of these new centres have specified areas, such as mental health and multi-morbidity, but there is a whole round which is unspecified, allowing for people to put forward ideas of their own for units of the future, which I believe will be important for the very reason the noble Lord says.
King’s Speech (4th Day)
Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. I join in congratulating all the new Government Ministers and Whips on their appointments. As the DSIT spokesperson on these Benches, I give a particularly warm welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Vallance of Balham, and his excellent maiden speech. While he was the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, he was pivotal in setting up the Vaccine Taskforce and in organising the overall strategy for the UK’s development and distribution of Covid-19 vaccines, and we should all be eternally grateful for that.
I warmly welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, to her role. We have worked well together outside and then inside this House, and I very much want to constructively engage with both Ministers on the Government’s science and technology agenda. I also thank the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, for his engagement when in the department, and for his courtesy and good humour throughout.
I welcome the Government’s agenda for growth through innovation, their mission to enhance public services through the deployment of new technology and DSIT’s central role in that, opening up what can be a blocked pipeline all the way from R&D to commercialisation—from university spin-out through start-up to scale-up and IPO. Crowding in and de-risking private investment through the national wealth fund, the British Business Bank and post-Mansion House pension reforms is crucial. Digital skills and digital literacy are also crucial but, to deploy digital tools successfully, we need a pipeline of creative critical thinking and collaboration skills as well.
In this context, I very much welcome the new Government’s tone on the value of universities, long-term financial settlements and resetting relations with Europe. I hope this means that we shall soon see whether spending plans for government R&D expenditure by 2030 and 2035 match their words. Disproportionately high overseas researcher visa costs must be lowered, as the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, knows.
But support for innovation should not be unconditional or at any cost, and I hope this Government will not fall into the trap of viewing regulation as necessarily the enemy of innovation. I therefore hope that the reference to AI legislation, but the failure to announce a Bill, is a mere timing issue. Perhaps we can hear later what the Government’s intention is in this respect. Before then, we are promised a product safety and metrology Bill, which could require alignment of AI-driven products with the EU AI Act. This seems to be putting the cart well in front of the regulatory horse.
We need to ensure that high-risk systems are mandated to adopt international ethical and safety standards. We all need to establish very clearly that generative AI systems need licences to ingest copyright material for training purposes, just as Mumsnet and the New York Times are asserting, and that there is an obligation of transparency in the use of datasets and original content. The Government in particular should lead the way in ensuring that there is a high level of transparency and opportunity for redress when algorithmic and automated systems are used in the public sector, and I commend my forthcoming Private Member’s Bill to them.
As regards the Bills in the King’s Speech, I look forward to seeing the details, but the digital information and smart data Bill seems to be heading in the right direction in the areas covered. I hope that other than a few clarifications, especially in research and on the constitution of the Information Commissioner’s Office, we are not going to exhume some of the worst areas of the old DPDI Bill, and that we have ditched the idea of a Brexit-EU divergence dividend by the watering down of so many data subjects’ rights. Will the Government give a firm commitment to safeguard our data adequacy with the EU? I hope that they will confirm that the intent of the reinstated digital verification provisions is not to have some form of compulsory national digital ID, but the creation of a genuine market in digital ID providers that give a choice to the citizen. I hope also that, in the course of that Bill, Ministers will meet LinesearchbeforeUdig and provide us all with much greater clarity around the proposals for the national underground asset register.
As for the cyber security and resilience Bill, events of recent days have demonstrated the need for cybersecurity, but have also made it clear that we are not just talking about threats from bad actors. There needs to be a rethink on critical national infrastructure such as cloud services and software, which are now essential public utilities.
Finally, I hope that we will see a long-awaited amendment of the Computer Misuse Act to include a statutory public defence, as called for by CyberUp, which was recommended by the Vallance report, as I recall. I very much hope that there will be no more Horizon scandals. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.