There is indeed a problem with space debris. The aim is not to bring it back to earth—although I love the Liberal Democrat imagery of pavement politics and everything being recycled—but to knock it out of its orbit so that it burns up in the atmosphere
and therefore disappears. We should take some pride in the fact that Fylingdales is where a lot of this debris is tracked. We have fantastic expertise there. It has always proved very difficult to get international agreement in this area, but the UK has a strong capability in disabling debris, and I very much hope that we will hear from the Minister that this is something that the Government continue to support. However, the prospects of any kind of international agreement in this area are, sadly, remote, not least because some of the technologies that are used for moving stuff out of orbit and disabling it are dual-use technology which can also be used in a very different way, so it has been very hard to reach any international agreement on the circumstances in which it would be used.