Jayne Kirkham
Main Page: Jayne Kirkham (Labour (Co-op) - Truro and Falmouth)Department Debates - View all Jayne Kirkham's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
(3 days, 13 hours ago)
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Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) for securing this debate, which is really important, particularly to the people of Cornwall.
Cornwall’s unique geography gives us an advantage in a range of industries, and space is no exception, thanks to our remoteness, open skies and position jutting out into the Atlantic. Our growing space sector has enormous potential, not just for innovation, but for real economic opportunity across all our communities in Cornwall, which is really needed.
Spaceport Cornwall, which others have mentioned, is based at Newquay airport and in 2023 hosted the first horizontal satellite launch. Although the launch was ultimately not fully successful, it put Cornwall on the map and the spaceport itself worked perfectly. Ours is the first licensed spaceport in the UK and the only operational spaceport in Europe. With a 2030 carbon neutral target and the aim of being the first net zero spaceport in the world, it is also leading the way in making the space industry more sustainable. The spaceport education programme has done brilliant educational outreach in Cornwall schools, so there was a huge crowd in the middle of the night to watch the horizontal launch. A generation of Cornish children were inspired to reach for the stars, quite literally, and I really hope they will be able to do that from Cornwall in the future.
Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station on the Lizard peninsula is another pioneer in the space industry. It is in the constituency of the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), so he has talked about it in some depth already. In 2021, it created the world’s first commercial lunar and deep space communications network, and it has a bilateral pilot with the UK space industry, which enables it to provide operational support to international partners. I hope, as I am sure the hon. Member does, that the funding for that will be renewed, because it is an incredible organisation. If the Minister is in the area, she should go and see it.
A number of innovative SMEs and start-ups connected to the space industry, as part of Cornwall space cluster, have coalesced around the spaceport in Newquay and Goonhilly. The cluster is growing exponentially; it now has 477 businesses, having grown by 47% since 2018, and generates £116 million gross value added. It represents what could be a strong, innovative growth sector in Cornwall, bringing specialist jobs to a place that very much needs them.
We in Cornwall also have some of the best space courses and career development in the country. Truro and Penwith college, which is in my constituency, offers apprenticeships and degree courses, including the world’s first higher national certificate and higher national diploma in space technologies. The University of Exeter offers space graduate, postgraduate and short courses and workshops, and is a world-leading university for related climate and sustainability research.
Cornwall is world leading in this field, but despite being operational, Spaceport Cornwall has received no launch funding for the past two years. We need a national space strategy that recognises the value of regional clusters such as Cornwall’s. We also need strong leadership. The hon. Member for Wyre Forest made a good point about ownership in government; the industry touches many different Departments, but someone needs to grasp it, take ownership and drive it forward. It is often innovative SMEs that drive growth in the space sector, and they need to be supported through contracts rather than one-off grants, as the hon. Member for St Ives said.
We must also ensure that the economic benefits of the Cornish space industry are felt by the people who live there, rather than just by people coming in and out—people doing the space sector to us. Our space industry is not just a collection of buildings and equipment; it is a thriving network of people, businesses and educational institutions that has the potential to bring great economic value to the duchy and lift children’s aspirations for generations to come.