Global Positioning System

Lord Fox Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes some fair observations and, as I said, the noble Lord raises an important question, which the Government do not underestimate. We are currently updating our risk assessment on the critical dependencies that we have on GPS and other positional, navigation and time data sources. This will inform the measures we are taking under the various programmes I mentioned to the House. These potential threats need consideration; resilience is vital, and the Government will seek to address it.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, in an earlier answer, the Minister set out a variety of different programmes and initiatives. Where is the guiding hand, and what is the guiding hand for this? How often are these many and various programmes assessed against each other, and when might we see how they move forward?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for BEIS wrote to the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons on 25 March setting out the position and saying that his department would be leading the co-ordination—subject, obviously, to continuing resourcing. As the noble Lord acknowledges, the matter involves other departments, but the authoritative letter on the record from my right honourable friend sets out the position on co-ordination.