Space Industry (Indemnities) Bill

Ruth Jones Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 23rd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Browne]

This has been a Brexit opportunity, dare I say. Leaving the EU enabled us to set up a whole new regulatory regime in great detail. Other European countries have regimes for space activity, but none with the same detail or launch opportunities as the UK. In the UK we are blessed with our geography, for various reasons. To launch a rocket in space, it needs to be launched from somewhere where there are not a lot of people, and with a trajectory so that if the rocket has a splashdown, it will not land on any other people. Cornwall is obviously very interesting, as is the north of Shetland. If a rocket is launched into orbit from there, it goes north and through the Bering strait. The first land it would hit would be New Zealand, but hopefully it will be up in orbit by that time. Not many other European countries have such geographical opportunities. It would be very difficult for Switzerland or Germany to do that. We are blessed with our geography.

Another difference—and why there is an opportunity for the UK—is that if we go back a couple of decades, the main focus was on big rockets launching satellites into geostationary orbit, which is 47,000 miles out, where they stay above the same point of land as the Earth rotates. A very big rocket is needed to get a satellite up there and into place. It is far easier to do that if the rocket is launched close to and in the direction of the equator. The European Space Agency’s launch site is in French Guyana because it is close to the equator. We now do not send geostationary satellites that far out into space—all the interest is in low Earth-orbit satellites. All the satellites launched by SpaceX for its internet service are low-orbit satellites. It is easier to do that over the north pole.

The changing technical nature of the use of space and satellites represents a huge opportunity for the UK. The satellites themselves are getting a lot smaller. Going back 20 or 30 years, the satellites were the size of buses, whereas now they can be the size of fridges or microwaves. They require much smaller rockets to launch them into space. I hope you enjoyed all that explanation, Mr Deputy Speaker.

As we have heard from various hon. Members and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), the UK space industry supports an industrial base of over 1,500 space companies and provides highly skilled, high-quality jobs across the UK, with over 77% of employees holding at least a primary degree. We heard about jobs in Cornwall and Manchester; this is true levelling up. I also mentioned space jobs in Glasgow and at SaxaVord in the Shetlands. In 2018, Orbex, another Scottish company, opened a new facility in Forres, incorporating design and manufacturing facilities for its Prime launch vehicle. The Prime project has created more than 140 highly skilled jobs in the local area so far, with many more anticipated as the company continues to grow.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise anticipates that the Sutherland spaceport will support around 613 full-time equivalent posts throughout the wider Highlands and Islands, including an estimated 44 full-time equivalent posts on the site. SaxaVord anticipates that by the end of this year, its spaceport site could support 605 jobs in Scotland, including 140 locally and 210 across the wider Shetland region. As we heard, Spaceport Cornwall anticipates that its project will deliver 150 direct jobs and 240 indirect jobs by 2030.

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I am a little bit anxious that the Minister will forget Airbus, which is in Newport West. I am sure that he was going to mention it. As the shadow Minister said, it is really important for cyber-security and tech jobs in south Wales. It is a vital part of our network, and I wanted to remind him about it.

[Anthony Browne]

The challenge is that there are so many businesses and companies involved in aerospace in the UK, and in the space industry generally, that I cannot list them all. The shadow Minister mentioned Airbus. Clearly, Airbus and British Aerospace are the two really big aerospace companies, but the industry is not just about those two giants. There are many thousands of small and medium-sized companies, and there is a whole supply chain, creating jobs, value and economic opportunities for the UK, which the legislation is designed to help enable.

Building on the success of the UK space sector, the Government have set out bold spaceflight ambitions—the text I was given by officials is definitely bold. In our national space strategy, the UK is boldly going where no country has gone before. [Hon. Members: “Hooray!”] The puns are not stopping. That includes making the UK the leading provider of commercial small satellite launch in Europe by 2030. As I say, the small satellites present the opportunities, not the big ones. To achieve our ambition, the Government have invested over £57 million so far through the Launch UK programme to grow new UK markets for small satellite launch and suborbital spaceflight.

Before I come to the regulatory aspects of the Bill, let me say that many hon. Friends have talked about the commercial opportunities. I will not talk only about that, but the choice to land the Odysseus robot on the moon yesterday was interesting. Why go to the moon? I am trying to paint a bigger picture, rather than concentrating on the immediate commercial opportunities, because lots of people see opportunities for further space development. Elon Musk, who has a few achievements under his belt, has said that he wants to die on Mars. I do not know how realistic that is, but he has launched a Tesla, or one of his cars, into orbit. There are plans to send humans back to the moon next year, and plans to send humans to Mars.

Humans have looked to the skies since time immemorial and dreamed about what is up there. Human instinct is to go and explore, which is why we went around the earth. In Polynesian culture, people went from one island to another. They set forth in their boats without necessarily realising what they would find when they arrived. The human instinct is to explore the universe. We do not know what we will find there, or what the opportunities will be, although I do not think we will find the Clangers or the Soup Dragon on some other planet.