My Lords, before I speak to Amendment 19, for the sake of the record I shall say that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, has on two occasions referred to Glasgow as a possible site for a tragedy as a consequence of a spacecraft crashing. I wish to make it absolutely clear for the record that the proposal in the Prestwick application is to head north-west, straight out to sea. The sea is no more than two miles from the end of a three-kilometre runway. Prestwick Airport would be applying for a licence, not Glasgow Airport.
That said, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, will support what I am going to argue on behalf of the European Aviation Safety Agency’s relationship to us in the UK. The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee argued that it is not clear whether the new regulatory framework proposed by the Government would apply to commercial spaceflight operations or whether they would be subject to European Aviation Safety Agency regulation. The Government have argued that the European Aviation Safety Agency’s exemption of experimental aircraft from its regulations means that spaceplanes are not subject to EASA regulations and would therefore come under the provisions of the Bill we are considering.
The Science and Technology Committee argued, however, that it was not clear whether this exemption would be sufficient, particularly if spaceplanes were deemed to be operating on a commercial rather than an experimental basis. The committee recommended that the UK seek to establish a memorandum of understanding with the EASA to clarify the point.
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In a further response to the committee’s recommendation that they seek to establish an MoU with the EASA, the Government argued that that this would be unnecessary as they were “satisfied”—the word that I am most concerned about in this context—
“that both EASA and the Commission are content with UK proposals to develop national rules to regulate sub-orbital spacecraft”.
All I seek to do in the present amendment is to hear from the Minister what he means by “satisfied” in this context. In the opening amendments this evening, we faced the consequences of a future relationship between the UK and Europe. Things will change—there is no question about it—so will satisfaction need to be replaced by something more concrete? There are many in the industry who believe that satisfaction is too weak a word. Being enshrined into an MoU, even at this early stage in the Bill, would be of significant comfort to the industry, given the uncertainty. Put simply, is satisfaction sufficient or would it be wise to go further to give greater clarity to the industry in this point?