Space Policy

Lord Craig of Radley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I am afraid that I cannot help the noble and learned Lord as to the ownership of that land. On the second issue, he is right to point to the environmental impact of such a Statement. I am not fully au fait with the planning processes in Scotland—which local authority deals with which issue, and what the involvement of the Scottish Government is—but obviously, this will have to go through a full planning process and in that process, an environmental impact statement will have to be produced to ensure that we know what the effect is going to be. Coming back to England, we only have to look at what happened recently on Saddleworth Moor to know that when one is dealing with highly inflammable objects in remote areas, such things obviously have to be taken into account.

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Statement, which is forward-looking and much more proactive than is sometimes the case in this field. Will this site be used entirely for civilian activity or will there be room for Ministry of Defence activity as well, if its northerly latitude does not prevent the launching of MoD-type satellites, which normally go up from nearer the equator?

[Lord Henley]

I think that would have to be a question for the Ministry of Defence and the operators of the site, in terms of whatever satellites the MoD wanted to put up, the needs of those satellites and whether it wanted to do it from a civilian base or from elsewhere. That would be more properly addressed once it knows what satellites it hopes to launch.