Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether it is Government policy to build a satellite system to rival the EU's Galileo network.

In the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review, the Government made a commitment to enhance the resilience of Position, Navigation and Timing services for military, key domestic resilience responders, including Critical National Infrastructure. The terms that the European Commission are prepared to offer for continued UK participation in Galileo fall short of the minimum that we consider acceptable, to be able to rely on Galileo for such critical services. As such, in December 2018, the former Prime Minister announced that we would not use Galileo for these users. The UK Space Agency with the Ministry of Defence is currently undertaking an Engineering, Design and Development Phase to confirm the viability of a UK Global Navigation Satellite System to meet the specific needs of the UK and its allies. The UK Government does not see our work on a UK GNSS as a rival to Galileo, we are designing a system that meets the specific needs of the UK and allies and one that would provide services complimentary to Galileo and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems.

This approach fits in the wider UK ambition for space, which will see the UK as leaders of the global space industry with a target to capture 10% of the global space economy by 2030.