Space Industry (Indemnities) Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Friday 5th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and to congratulate her on having outlined so clearly the purpose of the Bill, and for the skill with which she did so. She did it so well that I hope it has given the House every reason to know that we should give the Bill our unanimous consent. I speak on behalf of the massed ranks of the Government Back Benches.

I pay tribute to those Members in another place who played their part in getting the Bill to this stage, including former Member for Woking, Jonathan Lord, and the current Member for Glasgow East, John Grady. I look forward to the contribution of my noble friend the Minister. I have had the pleasure of being driven by him in a double-decker bus, and I want to know whether, in his transport capacity, he might in future be able to steer satellites.

I am sorry that we do not have time to debate—the advisory time limit is four minutes—but we do have until 3 pm. The thing about this Bill is the change it will make to Section 12(2) from “may” to “must”, and there is nothing else to discuss. We can therefore leave the Bill to one side, which frees us up in this debate to talk about what I hope many of us will want to: extolling the huge potential of the UK’s future in space.

Here, I declare an interest—and what a wonderful interest to declare. I am a member of the special committee set up by the House earlier this year, UK Engagement with Space. I am, at the moment, gazing across the Chamber at the other members, my noble friends—I can call them that, because we all are on the committee—who will be participating in today’s debate. Our inquiry is nearing its end. Often, you have to wait ages for parliamentary time to debate a committee report but we are in the position now of debating a subject before the report has even been published.

This Bill is all about unlocking the potential of future investment in space by providing a more certain climate. I want to highlight some of the areas in brief. One is economic opportunity. The Explanatory Notes for the Bill helpfully set out the fact that space is not just big but a very big business. The figures in the House of Lords Library briefing indicate the sheer scale of the market for space satellites, estimated to be $50 billion by 2033, and the value of the sector to the UK.

Sovereign launch capacity is a point that may be raised by others in this debate. Everyone knows that there are civil and military uses to space, and we may not always be able to rely on the United States for launch capacity in future. There is an argument to be made about our launch capacity. The noble Baroness mentioned SaxaVord. I do not want to pre-empt what our committee may say; I know that there are other potential sites available, and we may hear Sutherland mentioned in this debate. It is a point worth making.

We have unique geographic advantages. Forgive me if the House already knows this, but, unlike some countries, such as Germany, which is what is called “space-locked”, we have the capacity to launch from places in the Shetlands, which is ideal for polar orbit. The more important the Arctic gets, for all kinds of reasons, the more important it is to have a position where you can launch satellites in that orbit.

Then there is space debris. The one thing you need to know about the space above our earth is that it is anything but empty. Most Members might be staggered at the amount of space debris we think there now is. Our committee was told there might be 30,000 tracked objects but that there could be up to 1 million others, untracked. Some of them could be really tiny but, if they punch a hole in your satellite or spacecraft, they could ruin it. Even now, the International Space Station has had to manoeuvre itself to avoid known risks of collisions.

In our committee, we had a wonderful example of a space satellite brought into the committee room. It has a little arm that will reach out and grab a satellite, at 24,000 miles an hour, then slow down considerably and release it so that it will fall to earth. One of the things that most impressed itself on my mind is that we are moving to a stage where, between pollution on the earth and in the sea, and pollution in space, the earth is experiencing a pollution sandwich.

Heavens, my time has already run out—the Whip is looking at me. I do not have time even to mention farming, insurance services and some of the other major areas of our engagement with space. I hope very much that the House will give the Bill unanimous support. We look forward to it progressing with no amendments, so that it can safely reach the statute book in the course of this Session.