Space Industry Bill [Lords]

Andy McDonald Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 15th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

It must be a blessed relief for Government Front Benchers to move their attention away from their trials and tribulations here on planet Earth and to lift their eyes up to the heavens. Much of the country is doing likewise, aghast in sheer disbelief at the Government’s continued appalling judgment on our country’s transport system.

It is perhaps no surprise that the Secretary of State for Transport is not present for the Second Reading of this important Bill—perhaps he is explaining to the Prime Minister how he came to the view in July 2017 that Carillion was a safe bet and fit to be awarded the High Speed 2 contract, despite dire profit warnings. He is making a habit of not being at the Dispatch Box when his decisions make the news for all the wrong reasons.

Just as the Secretary of State has today delegated responsibility for the Space Industry Bill to the newly appointed Minister of State, the Government have produced a Bill that delegates more powers than it has clauses. That said, I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) for his open attitude to producing the best possible legislation, which is consistent with his attitude throughout. I commend him for that, and I trust that the same arrangement will continue with his successor so that we can produce the best possible Bill.

The UK’s space industry is an important and burgeoning part of our economy. It was valued at £13.7 billion in 2014-15, supporting almost 40,000 jobs. This Bill will establish a licensing regime for spaceports, spaceflights and satellite launches that is currently missing from the statute book and will put in place the regulatory framework to allow further expansion of the industry.

The UK Space Agency’s assessment, published in 2016, showed that the UK had a 6.5% share of the global space industry, and we hope the Bill will help to increase that share as the space industry grows globally in the coming years. Accordingly, Labour will be supporting the Bill as it continues its passage into law, although not without reservation about certain aspects, which I will spell out.

I put on record my party’s thanks to our Front-Bench colleagues in the other place for their valuable work on this Bill. They secured a number of important concessions from the Government, particularly the removal of the Henry VIII powers, which has much improved the Bill and for which we are grateful. However, we will still press Ministers on delegated powers and on the Bill’s impact on the environment, health and safety regulation and land powers.

During the Bill’s passage through the other place, the Government gave assurances that they would table amendments in this House on a duty to carry out full environmental impact assessments as part of the licensing process. We look forward to Ministers following up on that assurance in the Bill’s later stages.

Similarly, the Government gave an assurance in the other place that a specific regulator, either the Civil Aviation Authority or the UK Space Agency, will be a single point of accountability for health and safety on each individual mission. However, we will seek further details from Ministers on the relationship between the Health and Safety Executive and the CAA or the UK Space Agency, and on how best practices will be shared.

In relation to joined-up thinking on health and safety matters, will the Minister illuminate us on whether the Government have put any thought into how this Bill and the recently introduced Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Bill will cover legislative issues relating to the pointing of lasers at suborbital spacecraft and horizontal-launching spacecraft?

Moreover, can the Minister shed light on the Government’s thinking on clause 33(5), which addresses

“provision for an operator licence to specify a limit on the amount of the licensee’s liability”

in the unlikely event of “injury or damage” being caused by licensed spaceflight activities? My recollection is that a figure of £20 million was suggested in my previous discussions with Ministers. Will the Minister confirm whether that is the case? If it is, I suggest the Government reconsider the limit.

We recognise this is a highly technical and highly skilled environment and that the chances of something happening will hopefully be extremely remote, but, if it were to happen, the consequences could be dire. In those circumstances, £20 million may not be anywhere near sufficient. Two catastrophic injury cases could take a large share of that sum. In the case of brain injury or other catastrophic injury, the costs incurred by long-term support, accommodation or care would be considerable. I ask the Minister to think about how we might work around that difficulty.

The Government conceded in the other place that the wording of the Bill needs to be tightened to clarify that any restrictions over land would be temporary and would need to be established individually for each specific mission. Further clarity is also required on the ability of those affected by such restrictions to appeal against the decisions. We want Ministers now to outline how the Government expect the powers to be used and to ensure that the Bill provides an adequate legislative framework should the UK’s space industry undergo significant growth in the future, as we all want to see.

Finally, returning to the point I outlined at the start, the Bill appears to have been introduced well before the Government have done sufficient work to allow Parliament to scrutinise the legislation—the Bill contains 100 delegated powers in 71 clauses. Despite the Government’s concession to remove the potential Henry VIII power from clause 66, clause 67 still has a catch-all regulation-making power that allows the Government to make general provision for regulating space activities and “associated activities”. We look to the Government to better define those associated activities.

Furthermore, the Government appear determined that significant statutory instruments arising from the Bill’s delegated powers will be affirmative when they are first made, with negative procedures following afterwards. As the Bill progresses, we will seek to persuade the Government that such statutory instruments should be consistently affirmative each and every time they are made.

We will be supporting the Bill on Second Reading, but unfortunately the Government have introduced a Bill that is inadequately detailed and imprecisely worded. We will seek to change that as the Bill progresses, but sadly the Government have been too busy making a mess of our public transport by hiring failing companies to build national infrastructure projects and by bailing out private companies when they fail to run our rail network.

It is time that this Government made decisions in the interest of the UK economy and hard-pressed taxpayers, instead of dishing out corporate welfare. It is time they started focusing on the day job.