Select committee: Defence Committee
Conclusion 12
Third Report - Defence Space: through adversity to the stars?
Published 19 Oct 2022
Paragraph 102
Addressed to Ministry of Defence
Defence Committee Space Defence All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Ministry of Defence will have to carefully balance competing priorities in determining which defence space capabilities must be “owned” by Government and which can be provided by collaboration with Allies or through a commercial contract. Russia’s recent impounding of OneWeb satellites at the Baikonur cosmodrome demonstrates the potential dangers of making the wrong call, and the subsequently announced proposed merger of the OneWeb with Eutelsat has raised further questions concerning sovereignty and national security. The planned merger between OneWeb and Eutelsat must be subject to the most stringent scrutiny under the National Security and Investment Act. More broadly, it is critical that decisions affecting the sovereignty of the UK’s defence space capabilities are made transparently. The MoD should confirm in its response to this report how it plans to make details of these decisions available for scrutiny by Parliament.
From: Defence Committee, Third Report - Defence Space: through adversity to the stars? (HC 182), paragraph 102, 19 October 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 13 January 2023.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government's response sets out how space governance, skills, space domain awareness, navigation, procurement and international work are being taken forward, without adopting the Committee's call for a Minister for Space within the Cabinet Office.
- On governance, it says discussions on space "will be taken by the most relevant Cabinet Committee", and that the Space Directorate's transition into "extant structures" is part of integrating space into business as usual.
- On skills, it says a new foundational space course will be integrated across all Defence entry-level training "next year", and that an Invitation to Tender for the UK Space Academy will be initiated before the end of March 2023.
- On navigation, it says a BEIS PNT project team "will be completed by Spring 2023" and will help decide next steps. It says the Space-based PNT Programme "successfully concluded", with its analysis to be considered by that team.
- On space domain awareness, it states Defence is investing "£85 million over ten years" and that it expects to publish capability goals, including for SDA, in early 2023.