Space Industry

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may briefly, in advance of his maiden speech, welcome my noble friend the Minister to your Lordships’ House. He brings with him a rare combination of diplomatic skills, commercial knowledge and political astuteness, having served as Her Majesty’s ambassador in Copenhagen, as the chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association and as a special adviser to the Prime Minister, both at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and at No.10. He has also negotiated not one but two major agreements with a tough and aggressive counterparty, two more than many of the most distinguished diplomats of his or recent generations can claim. I am sure that we all welcome him.

I welcome this debate. As my noble friend Lord Willetts clearly explained, we have tremendous opportunities in LEO satellite technology, but to achieve our potential as a sovereign independent nation, we need a strategy and I look forward to hearing further from my noble friend on that.