Space Industry

Lord Lennie Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Lennie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, from Labour’s Front Bench I welcome the noble Lords, Lord Parker and Lord Johnson, who spoke earlier, and I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Frost, who we will hear from in about 45 seconds’ time. There is a guy, Sanjeev Gupta, who currently rents a one-bedroom flat above a hairdresser’s on Lewisham High Street so that he can work from home. Sanjeev is a geologist, and in his flat he has five computers and two other screens for Zoom meetings. He is helping to direct and control the movements of Perseverance to drill and collect samples to help determine whether there has ever been life on Mars. Compare his endeavour with the Government’s investment in OneWeb, against the advice of experts and the concerns of the space agency. Is this OneWeb investment part of the UK’s global navigation satellite system? If not, what is it? As we have heard, OneWeb continues to manufacture its satellites in Florida. The high-skilled, well-paid jobs will come only if we get our investment and industrial strategy in sync—or are we destined, like Sanjeev Gupta, to rent more flats in Lewisham from which to explore the final frontier?