Space Industry

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Verma (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Willetts for this debate, be it short. I also want to welcome my noble friend the Minister and congratulate him on his maiden speech and new role. As a person from Leicester, where we have the National Space Centre and where the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, is the chancellor of the University of Leicester, I want to ask my noble friend where we can explore better collaboration programmes with the emerging markets in space development and high-tech knowledge exchange. Cities such as Leicester need to reinvent themselves post pandemic. We have brilliant universities and brilliant research collaborations going on across the world. We now need to maximise those partnerships globally. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sarfraz, that it is not just about space; it is about all the other side events that can come into fruition from better collaboration.