Space Policy

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

I have much to thank my hon. Friends the Members for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) and for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) for. Anyone observing me in the Chamber today will have seen me smiling broadly all the way through this debate. It is an incredibly exciting opportunity. I remember, as a young child, playing with my Airfix kit of the Apollo 11, with its detachable parts and so on, seeing how it all worked, so it is exciting to be in the Chamber today discussing the future of space policy—there it is, up on the annunciator; what an opportunity! It is just a shame there is so much space on the Benches—but I will try to avoid the puns and conduct myself with gravity.

I want to talk about the exciting opportunities out there. Yesterday in the Chamber, we discussed trade and industry and innovation, and again I want to talk most today about innovation and the skills required. There are so many wonders in space and so many things we can learn that we cannot comprehend at the moment. Without the investment that hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), have talked about, and without making sure we can learn those things, how can we hope to take full advantage of the opportunities to develop ourselves as a race? There are stars out there 1,500 times bigger than our sun, and how much do we know about them? 3c303 is a galaxy with a black hole in the middle of it that has the biggest electrical current ever detected in the universe. There are fantastic opportunities to find out how that happens. What can we learn from that about how we conduct our lives and protect our planet into the future? I was stunned to find out there was a gigantic raincloud out there, floating in space, that is not just the size of the Pacific ocean, but 100,000 times larger than the sun. It is an amazing thing to comprehend, but we do not know enough about these things. We have to invest.

The Scottish Government see huge potential for the space industry in Scotland, and we are pleased that the UK Government and the Civil Aviation Authority do too. We should be exploring these opportunities jointly. The Scottish Government have committed to supporting science and technological development in education and industry, having recognised science’s contribution to a sustainable economy. The hon. Member for Hartlepool talked about opportunities. The space industry, 16% of whose employees are in Scotland, is growing by 7.5% a year. These are encouraging figures, but we must do more. There is a recruitment exercise to ensure that there are members to join the Scottish Science Advisory Council. The Scottish Government have engaged with the world-leading science sector on the post of chief scientific adviser for Scotland and are currently advertising for the post, which is the right thing to do just now. They are continuing to invest in four science centres and to support science festivals in Scotland. They continue to promote the value of science as a career for young people.

In my previous career as a councillor in the highlands, I was passionate about getting our young people interested and encouraging them to lift their sights and see the opportunities available, not just to us as a set of countries on these isles but to them. There are rewarding and meaningful careers and they can build something important for themselves. As a new councillor eight years ago, I saw an advert put out by the European Space Agency calling for the next generation of recruits to come forward. As an enthusiastic councillor, I thought I would put out a press release across the highlands saying, “Young highlanders should come forward.” I was disappointed that it was met with scepticism from my colleagues on the council. They thought it was a mad idea to encourage highland children to get involved in the space industry. I was desperately disappointed by their attitude, but it highlighted to me the need to change people’s attitudes to these opportunities and how they could take advantage of them.

I am pleased to say that one development from that is the science skills academy, which is starting up in the highlands. It is a collaborative enterprise that brings together organisations such as Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the Highland Council and a range of private businesses and engineering firms, as well as other non-governmental operatives in the highlands. It aims to encourage young people from pre-school, throughout their education and beyond, to take advantage of the opportunity of gaining these skills, which directly transfer not just into the aerospace industry but to and from oil and gas, renewables and so forth. These are similar skill sets that can be transferred across. Embracing this into the future provides enormous opportunities. I hope that future attitudes in the highlands will be changed, but there is a job of work to be done in this Chamber, in the Holyrood Chamber and in all the devolved Administrations to make sure that we get the word out to our young people to raise their sights and look for an opportunity.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire for telling us that Helen Sharman was the first astronaut from Britain in space. It is important to repeat that message because we need to encourage young girls and women to consider these opportunities. Tim Peake is a fantastic ambassador for space and I have great respect for what he has already done in a short period of time, but let us imagine the impact if he had been Tina Peake and that message had gone out to young girls and women about such opportunities. When it comes to encouraging young girls and women into engineering just now, there are clear systemic problems in our culture that must be tackled. I call on the Government to join me and others to make sure that we change this attitude over the coming years.

Some 11% of engineers in the sector are women, but 21% of engineer graduates focused on the sector are women. This is the lowest percentage female employment rate in the sector in Europe, and we have the lowest retention rate in Europe. That is at a time when there are significant skills shortages at every level of the industry.

We have heard that many people are not aware of the opportunities in the space or the aerospace sector. I was delighted yesterday to meet Bridget Day, the deputy programme director for the national aerospace technology exploitation programme. I crave your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I would like to read something she sent to me, at my request. She said:

“I have worked as an Engineer in the Aerospace industry for nearly 40 years. I worked for 30 years in the supply chain for a heat exchanger manufacturer in Wolverhampton, starting as a graduate apprentice and becoming Engineering Director. In my personal experience there has been little progress in encouraging women into engineering. I currently lead a team of engineers helping aerospace supply chain companies with new technology”—

within NATEP, as I have said. She continues:

“In a team of 24 there is only one other woman”,

That is a shocking figure. She continues:

“I know that engineering is considered difficult, dirty, and dying by the general public. This means that parents and teachers often encourage young people away from engineering, thinking that industry is something in the past and not for the future. The increasingly ‘green’ views of our youth are annoyed with industry building on green belt land and taking priority over wild life. So the reputation of industry publicly is not what my experience is. I have had a very varied working life, every day something different, everyday keeping me interested in solving problems with new ways of thinking, new materials, new possibilities. The amount of new possibilities is better than ever before and NOW”—

she capitalised it—

“is a great time to become an engineer. We are very short of engineers. As a woman in engineering I am often the only woman in the room, usually only 5% are women even at a large event. There is an assumption that I am the secretary and not that I am the boss. My reputation is never assumed, like a man’s often is, I always have to earn it.”

[Jim Shannon]

If I had been allowed to ask two questions at Women and Equalities questions this morning I would have raised this issue. The Government need to target girls-only schools and introduce the STEM industries, including engineering, to those girls.

[Drew Hendry]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his substantive point about engaging young girls and women with these industries, and I absolutely subscribe to that view. As I have said—I will continue to repeat it here until we get it right—this is an issue that we need to tackle together to ensure that girls are able to take advantage of these opportunities.

[Carol Monaghan]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one serious issue that has not been properly taken up is our major shortage of STEM-qualified teachers. Unless much more attractive and lucrative wages can be offered, this shortage will continue and it will impact on the number of girls coming through.

[Drew Hendry]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that education is the key. I mentioned the science skills academy, and the idea behind it is to influence children as they develop and give them these opportunities, but also to try to reach out to society in general and to say to parents and grandparents that they need to talk about this. It is also about saying to education professionals and to those who make the investments that lead to their recruitment that this issue has to be taken incredibly seriously.

Stakeholder activities going on at the moment are to be encouraged. For example, I congratulate The Telegraph on creating the women in space jobs resource, which includes educational resources encouraging women into STEM subjects. Another example is the Royal Society of Aviation, which established the women in aerospace and aviation committee in 2009.

On solutions, we need to increase public awareness of the UK space industry and its value to the economy. We need to increase engagement with young people through projects such as Scottish Space School. There will doubtless be others of which I am not aware, but we need to make sure that this sort of thing carries on. I support calls for the need to concentrate funding on research and development projects. We absolutely need to stop thinking about what is happening today and start thinking about the opportunities for tomorrow. We need to work to increase peer support to encourage female graduates to enter and remain in the sector.

Let me finish by citing Professor Alan Smith, head of the department of space and physics at University College London, who acted as rapporteur for an event hosted by the Scottish Government and the Civil Aviation Authority. He said:

“Scotland has embraced space. Space feels at home in Scotland.”

Let us make sure that all of us and all our children get the opportunity to feel at home in space, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I want to start by paying tribute to the original spaceman. I am not talking about Yuri Gagarin; I am talking about the legend who was David Bowie, and I am sure the House will join me in sending our condolences to his family.

I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s and there are three things I remember vividly from my childhood. The first was the excitement of the power cuts. That was maybe not so exciting for the industries, but, for me, as a child getting the candles out and wandering through the house in darkness always holds great memories. I remember Margaret Thatcher coming to power, too—probably the less said about that the better—and I remember space. I remember the space programme and the space shuttle programme, which started in 1981, with great excitement.

That excitement took off for me when the space shuttle made a surprise visit to the Paris air show in 1983, and for it to get there it had to piggyback on a jumbo jet. I was at primary school in Glasgow at the time, and we knew the jumbo jet would be flying over at some point in the morning. We had been told that when we heard the jumbo jet we had to stand, quietly put our chairs under our desks, line up at the door and all go carefully outside. Of course all order was abandoned when the noise of the jumbo jet was heard. Chairs were thrown, people climbed across desks, people were knocked down in the rush—[Interruption.] It was the west end of Glasgow. Eventually, out we went to see the incredible sight of the space shuttle perched—precariously, it seemed—on the back of this jumbo.

It was that single event in my childhood that sparked a major interest in me both in science and technology and particularly in physics. It was how I ended up choosing to study physics at university and eventually becoming a physics teacher, so the inspiration offered by space stretches across all strands of society.

At this point, I want to mention another physicist. He is a far more famous physicist than I am and has done great work for space: Professor Brian Cox. It was a great treat for my pupils at school to see clips of Professor Brian Cox taken from his wonderful DVDs “Wonders of the Solar System” and “Wonders of the Universe”. It never surprised me that the academic students would be interested, but what was really surprising to me was that the less academic ones wanted to see him as well, and regularly would say to me, “Miss, are you going to stick on that professor guy?” They enjoyed that. I was lucky enough to be at the Science Museum on 15 December for Tim Peake’s launch. There were thousands of schoolchildren there, and their enthusiasm and excitement reminded me of the incident from my childhood with the jumbo jet.

One of my colleagues asked me a couple of days ago: “What is the point of this debate? Is it really that important? Why does space exploration matter?” Well, it is absolutely crucial that we have this debate and it is timeous to have it at this point. I want to talk about the three aspects of space exploration that I think are most important. First, there are only two industries that push innovation in great leaps and bounds: defence and space exploration. Space spin-offs have found their way into all aspects of our everyday lives, through materials such as Teflon, solar cells and robotic arms, which have led to the development of prosthetic limbs. The basic memory foam mattress was developed as a result of providing cushions for astronauts during take-off. There is also a story about the space pen that NASA spent a great deal of money developing, only for the cosmonauts of the time to decide that a pencil would work just as well in zero-gravity conditions.

Space technology has wide-ranging applications. For example, the damping system on the launch pad has special fluid dampers to ensure that the launch can take place in a stable manner, and when the Millennium bridge just down the road developed vibration problems in the first couple of days after its opening, it was those same dampers, taken straight from the shuttle’s launch pad, that provided the solution. Such applications happen throughout. Those spin-off technologies do not simply have an impact on our lives; they also have huge economic benefits, and it is important that we recognise that.

Secondly, the satellites that are in orbit have become fundamental to the way in which we live our lives. The largest satellite in orbit around the Earth is of course the Moon, which is of fundamental importance to our lives. It creates the tides, which create great benefits for life in the tidal areas. Artificial satellites that have been put into orbit provide us with television from around the world through satellite broadcasts that come to us via geostationary satellites in high Earth orbits more than 22,000 miles above the Earth.

[Drew Hendry]

Does my hon. Friend agree that micro-satellite technology is providing some really exciting opportunities to dramatically reduce the cost of putting satellites into space while still performing the functions previously carried out by larger machines? Does she also agree that, on that basis, there should be much more investment in innovation in order to take forward that work?

[Carol Monaghan]

Absolutely. It is often not understood that satellite launches take place regularly. The next such launch is in fact on Sunday, but we have not heard very much about it in the news. The micro-satellites that my hon. Friend has just mentioned are providing us with more and more great services.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Freeman]

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), David Bowie’s constituency, rose to speak at that moment.

This debate and story is about more than the space endeavour alone. It is about business—the UK space industry is an £11.8 billion industry, employing 35,000 highly skilled people. It is about extraordinary technology in optics, communications, rocketry and engineering. It is about an activist industrial policy and strategy, for which I am delighted to confirm our support, to encourage leading technologies and industry. I pay tribute to the work done by Paul Drayson and by my great friend and colleague David Willetts, now a Member of the other place, who in 2012 was instrumental with the Chancellor in securing the £80 million for the international space station, which was crucial to securing Tim Peake’s role in it, and in securing the money for the reaction engines programme, on which this country is leading.

This debate is also about science, not just in space, but solar and earth science. Taking in rocketry, engineering, climatology, optics and communications, this is a deep science project to inspire all. It is about women in science, as others have said. Dr Helen Sharman was the first British woman in space, and the Italian Samantha Cristoforetti was the first European Space Agency woman astronaut; she did inspiring work and has become something of a legend and a role model for girls and women in science. It is also about our perception and consciousness of our environment. The “Earth dawn” photo changed perceptions of the fragility of the Earth’s ecosystem.

The debate on space is also about geopolitics. Who, in the appallingly dark days of the cold war and intercontinental ballistic missile threats in which many of us grew up, could have imagined that we would now have an international space station in which Americans, Russians and people from across the world work together for the good of all? It is about defining a new common space for all and a new approach to our defence and security through common leadership. It is not a subject I get to speak much about at the Dispatch Box, but today’s debate makes it possible to talk about mankind’s destiny—the questing spirit deep in us all and in society to inquire, discover, imagine, explore and make possible whole new worlds and opportunities.

This debate is also about the power of ambitious, positive, global, purposive and internationalist leadership to inspire and unite to produce a better politics from us all. No one spoke better on that than JFK, in his inspiring inaugural address in 1960, when he famously said, on a frosty morning in Washington at the very height of the cold war,

“my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

He launched America on a mission of internationalism, and two years later, in his Apollo speech, announced that America chose to go to the moon not because it was easy, but because it was hard. He did so in the spirit of internationalism and of appeal to the best instincts of mankind. It is a beautiful thing, I think, that on the moon is left an inscription stating that mankind came to the moon in a spirit of freedom and peace. That mission captures so much that is best about our society and what we want to achieve.

It is for those reasons that the Prime Minister asked that we harness the inspirational power of Major Peake’s mission to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers and to bring the country together. All of us found it difficult to avoid the excitement associated with the launch and arrival of the first British ESA astronaut at the international space station. We held celebration events in Edinburgh, London, Cardiff and Belfast, at discovery centres throughout the UK, and here in Parliament. The Science Museum in London attracted almost 11,000 visitors, and if the sheer exhilaration of the 5,000-plus primary schoolchildren at the museum translates into an increase in future sciences, Tim Peake’s mission will already have achieved its goal. In all, 35% of the viewing public watched the launch, and a further 3.8 million people watched the Soyuz spaceship dock with the international space station that evening.

Our Government are providing £3 million of support to the education and engagement programme associated with Tim Peake’s mission, and we have been lauded by the ESA as the country doing the most to invest in and promote educational outreach. We will measure whether the excitement inspires young people to take up STEM subjects—several Members rightly commented on that—and increases public understanding of and engagement with science through an evaluation study being undertaken by York University. It is the first such research since the Apollo effect study in the 1970s.

The Peake mission is possible because of a decision made at the 2012 European Space Agency Council of Ministers meeting by the then Science Minister, David Willetts, which resulted in the UK joining the international space station and the related European programme for life and physical sciences—ELIPS. The UK made a further investment at the Council of Ministers in 2014. The total investment, which exceeded £80 million, provides substantial value for money, giving UK scientists access to a laboratory that has cost others up to $100 billion and is testament to international collaboration in science. The three man crew on the Soyuz, which launched on 15 December, comprised Tim Peake, the American Tim Kopra and the Russian commander Yuri Malenchenko. It is early days, and evaluation of UK involvement is ongoing, but the current results are incredibly exciting.

Experiments for the ELIPS and subsequent experiments undertaken on the space station are selected on the basis of science excellence, which plays to UK strengths. We sometimes forget that this is a massive international set of experiments up in space. In the most recent competition, the UK won more than 10% of awards for experiments, although UK involvement in the space station is at about 5% of costs, so we are punching above our weight. About 40 to 80 scientists across the UK are involved.

Space is not just about national exploration; it is about critical national infrastructure and services, such as weather forecasting, satellite navigation and satellite television. Space-based technologies are used for tackling many global challenges. Satellites can assist with tackling illegal fishing, efficient urban and rural land use, resource management, safe implementation of autonomous vehicles, and myriad further uses underpinning new technologies and new markets. For example, over half the essential climate variables needed to understand climate change derive from our satellite observations.

The UK space sector is undoubtedly a massive and growing success story. There are real prospects for the young people inspired by Tim Peake and the Rosetta mission to work in our very strong and vibrant space economy in the future. It is currently worth more than £11.8 billion to the UK economy. That is growing at about 8% a year, which is three times faster than the average non-finance sector. It is characterised by an incredibly highly skilled workforce of more than 37,000 people, half of whom hold at least a first degree. Those direct jobs each support more than two jobs in the wider economy. The sector has a general value added per job of £140,000, three times higher than the UK average.

To reflect the strategic and economic importance of the sector, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills launched the national space policy on 13 December to coincide with the Peake mission. It showcases how deeply space now impacts on our daily lives, not least in the field of satellite data and information. It describes how the sector is a unique, strategic national capability which delivers science and innovation, national security, essential public services and prosperity. The policy spells out how the UK Space Agency has brought together the roles and responsibilities of 17 different Government organisations and other partners, such as research councils and Innovate UK which are involved with space.

Space-based activity is a long-term endeavour with international collaboration, industrial co-investment, skills development and considerable planning at its heart. Stability and certainty are important, and the national space policy is the Government’s expression of our long-term commitment to seeing it through and to putting in place a policy landscape to support that investment.

The UK’s involvement in space ranges from fundamental underpinning research into the origins of the universe, to understanding and protecting our planet, through to supporting the research that leads to UK companies launching entirely new multimillion-pound telecommunication satellites. Some 25% of the world’s telecommunication satellites are substantially built here in the UK. Satellites operated under the disaster charter and earth observation data procured commercially were critical to effectively targeting the response efforts on the ground in the recent floods.

This is an exciting time for space. In 2016 the UK will be building the main experiment on the Plato mission that will search for new earths orbiting other stars, in pursuit of answers to the profound question about life elsewhere in the universe, and will precipitate key contracts for UK companies. We look forward to a major European Space Agency Council of Ministers meeting in November/December 2016, where we will negotiate to ensure that the UK continues to play an influential part and benefits fully from European Space Agency programmes. The programmes that we are looking forward to in particular include the UK-led biomass experiment that will calculate the capacity of the world’s forests to store carbon. As well as improving our ability to control climate change, this offers a considerable opportunity as UK companies are poised to win contracts to provide the craft that will host the experiment in orbit.

2017 will see the launch of the joint European-Japanese BepiColombo mission which will set out on a voyage to Mercury, using a very efficient ion drive electric propulsion engine manufactured by UK firm Qinetiq.

In the field of space flight, through companies such as Clyde Space and SSTL, the UK has become a leader in the manufacture of smaller satellites and has largely secured cost-effective launch by arranging “piggy-back” launches with larger satellites in a competitive launcher market which is not yet sustainable but is growing fast. This is connected to the growth of commercial constellations of tens or even hundreds of low-cost small mass-produced satellites that can provide ubiquitous communications across the globe or near real-time imagery from low earth orbits.

Indeed, we believe that commercial space flight is a market which, when combined with the emerging trend to use large constellations of small satellites, could provide a cumulative economic benefit to the UK of £20 billion by 2030. This will provide new and long-term manufacturing and service jobs and will stimulate high tech growth. This includes exciting developments such as single-stage to orbit launchers, the engines for which are being pioneered by Reaction Engines, a rapidly growing company in Oxfordshire.

This is the context for the UK to explore having a launch capability. We believe there is at least a two-stage process to achieving it. The first part of our ambition is for the UK to become the European hub for commercial space flight and related space sector technologies. The initial focus is on creating the necessary legislative and regulatory framework that will enable commercial suborbital space flights alongside existing civilian and military airspace operations. Alongside this, it is the Government’s intention to select a preferred location for a UK spaceport that will be capable of operating horizontal commercial spaceplanes. We are closely examining what this process will look like, to ensure that it is fair, transparent and robust.

We will seek to draw on established Government approaches to appraisal and will ensure that the preferred location meets a number of key criteria—that it can deliver a spaceport technically capable of operating horizontal commercial spaceplanes, that it will be commercially viable, that it can ensure the safety of the uninvolved public, and that it takes into account the potential environmental impacts of the spaceport and will deliver local and national economic growth. These criteria are likely to form the core of any selection process, though we have not settled on the final criteria.

[Drew Hendry]

The Minister is outlining an exciting programme of opportunities and economic development. He has heard from a number of Members today about the need to encourage girls and young women to get involved in the industry. Will he take that message away to the Government and do something practical to promote that?