Space Industry (Indemnities) Bill

Debate between Anthony Browne and Adam Afriyie

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th May 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

I cannot tell you how excited I am about the Bill, Sir Philip, although it seems to make only a very minor change to the Space Industry Act 2018—to one word in one section and then a specification in another. Does it win the record for being the shortest Bill? Is it close? Possibly.

The reason why I am so excited is that way back in 2007, when I was shadow Science Minister, I had a dream—and such small changes, which would enable horizontal take-off spacecraft, were part of it. We have now got there, and this Bill is the last little bit of the jigsaw. It ensures that when a company makes a commercial decision about whether to launch satellites, spacecraft or intercontinental travel in the upper atmosphere, it will be able to do a calculation on a spreadsheet to work out whether that makes financial sense. Having written the first draft in 2007, I am so relieved that, in what is possibly my parting year in Parliament, the provision has come to pass.

I very much welcome the measures. I have a couple of questions that I hope will not be too taxing. The Bill states that the licences issued must specify a maximum liability to the Government—to the people, if you like. Has there been any indication from my hon. Friend’s research about what the levels may be? Secondly, who actually decides what the figure should be? Those are my only questions. I have my own ideas about how this should be done. I suspect that the idea is to enable the regulating authorities, hand in hand with other bodies, to determine what the level should be to make things commercially viable. Does my hon. Friend have any thoughts on that?

Above all, I want to say that I very much welcome the Bill. I imagine the Government will, too. For me, it builds on the work done around transport. Liabilities for autonomous vehicles are now clearly laid out in legislation: the manufacturer of the vehicle is liable, so the insurance industry can come in. I hope that the Government will also welcome this legislation, which will also specify where and to what extent liability lies so that the market, the entrepreneurs, the innovators, the technical people and the scientists can produce the economic growth that we want.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Anthony Browne)]

It is an honour to serve under you, Sir Philip. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking for promoting this short but incredibly important Bill. I also commend the eloquence of his speech. He made all the points that I would have made. I have a speech here, but I will not go through it all; not only has he made all the points but on Second Reading we had a prolonged debate in which the issues were covered extensively. I covered all the points that the Government want to make and can declare that we fully support the Bill.

Before I conclude, I want to answer a couple of points. It was lovely to hear the excitement of my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor; I loved his description of the Bill being the last piece of the jigsaw being put in place. It very much is that. We now have a comprehensive set of legislation and regulation for the space industry, which I am sure will grow fast. I was looking for the information about how much it is going to grow; we do have a forecast somewhere. I will get back to my hon. Friend. At the moment, we know that 48,000 people are employed in the UK space industry, but that number will grow rapidly. There is a huge opportunity.

On my hon. Friend’s question about liability, I should say that that is set by the regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, under something called the modelled insurance requirement process; if he wants more detail on that, he can write to me and I will give him it. Basically, this is done on a case-by-case basis, depending on the type of spaceflight being undertaken. In the case of insurance for satellite orbital operators, for standard orbital missions there is a flat-rate liability limit of £51 million. I think that answers all the questions, but as I set out on Second Reading, there are no amendments and the Government fully support the Bill.