Lord Adonis
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Space Industry
Lord Adonis Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, it is good that we have the noble Lord, Lord Frost, with us to be accountable for Brexit, because he has a lot to be accountable for. His UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement is the most damaging treaty negotiated by a British Government for more than 50 years. It reduces our trade and undermines our co-operation, and nowhere is the damage of Brexit greater than to our space industry. Some £1.2 billion has been needlessly squandered in our expulsion from the Galileo project, and £500 million has been speculatively invested in OneWeb. Dr Bleddyn Bowen, a space policy expert at Leicester University, says that the OneWeb investment is a “tech and business gamble”, and OneWeb satellites have been described as unsuitable for navigational purposes by our own space agency. Space is turning into another Brexit catastrophe, and no one is being held accountable.