Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of trends in the number of commercial providers being used to implement the UK's defence space capabilities on the resilience of those capabilities.

The Ministry of Defence is committed to investing £6.5 billion over 10 years to ensure the UK is a competitive force in the Space domain. The National Space Strategy makes clear that to meet the Government's goals, the UK requires a flexible approach to determining where space capabilities can be most useful and where multi-use capabilities can best meet civil and defence needs.

The Defence Space Strategy delivers this flexibility by fully embracing the own-collaborate-access (OCA) framework making informed decisions to protect sovereign requirements (own), whilst maximising shared force output (collaborate, access).

All capabilities within the Defence Space Portfolio incorporate a robust level of scrutiny to ensure the appropriate level of security and resilience is applied.