Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, on what date he received correspondence from the European Commission on the UK's future relationship with the Galileo satellite project.

On 24 January 2018 the UK Permanent Representative to the EU, Sir Tim Barrow, received notice that the UK would no longer be allowed access to information about the future design of the Galileo satellite navigation programme because this could compromise the integrity of the system following the withdrawal of the UK from the EU.

Since receiving this letter, the Secretary of State for Defence has raised the issue with his EU counterparts on several occasions, including at February's meeting of NATO Defence Ministers, and in subsequent bilateral contacts. He emphasised that we have a world-leading space sector that has contributed a significant amount of specialist expertise, time and money to the Galileo programme, and that we have a shared interest in continuing a close partnership on Galileo. He made clear that the UK would seek to overturn this decision and expressed his belief that the UK's exclusion would not be in the interests of the Galileo programme or our EU partners. We are unambiguously committed to European security and we hope that an ambitious partnership on security matters will be a core component of our future relationship with the European Union.