My Lords, as the Bill stands, there is no obligation to get down what you have put up into space. As my noble friend outlined, it is becoming increasingly cluttered.
In my mind there are parallels with, for example, Everest or the Arctic, where historically as a human race we have dumped what we no longer need because we are in difficult circumstances and we cannot retrieve it easily. Of course, the difference with space is that it is floating around. When we worry nowadays about drones—I saw a report only today about a near-miss involving a drone—we are increasingly aware of things that are in space, in the skies, which are not accounted for and not under any kind of official control or pathway. Clearly, there is a risk to other spacecraft and to earth itself. We take fly-tipping seriously here on earth, so why not out there in space? Amendment 17 would make it a condition of a licence that the operator has to take reasonable steps to dispose of a payload, as my noble friend said.
It is important that we recognise that the international group that regulates space debris is not an international organisation but an advisory body. Amendment 21 amends conditions that may be included in licences to refer to advisory bodies as well as to international organisations. Those in the industry are concerned that groups that advise on space debris mitigation have too few members or lack formal decision-making powers to be recognised in law as international organisations. We are interested in whether the Minister has had legal advice that these bodies would be recognised as international bodies rather than having to be separately specified as advisory bodies. The amendment would allow operators to take account of advisory groups, such as the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee and ISO’s orbital debris co-ordination working group. We are seeking certainty that they would be covered by the term “international organisations”.