My Lords, I associate myself enthusiastically with the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord Deben and Lord Tunnicliffe. I touched on these issues when we discussed Amendment 13 on Monday. They relate clearly to the similar issues I raised in relation to Shell Island. It seems to me that line 42 and onwards on page 27 are especially important. The Explanatory Notes state that it is envisaged that these powers will be used only “as a last resort” when commercial options have been exhausted. That chimes very well with the noble Lord’s comments. On Monday, I demonstrated in my comments on Shell Island how quickly you can exhaust commercial options.
The Explanatory Notes also use the phrase,
“land in the vicinity of the spaceport site”.
I have a detailed question for the Minister: what does the term,
“the vicinity of the spaceport site”,
actually mean? Is there a legal definition of that, because we are talking about long-range travel and we could be referring to a very large area around the spaceport site that would in effect be intruded upon in terms of its rights and its use as a result of this wording.
Clause 40 contains the power to restrict the use of land to secure safety. This may include preventing people entering a given area of land for the duration of a launch window. The nearest simile I can think of is people who live near MoD ranges. People in those areas are well aware of the intrusion that that imposes on their lives. This is a very intrusive power and it could extend over a wide area, for the reasons I have already referred to.
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If the Bill does the job it is intended to do and the spaceports become successful and well used, I assume that this power could be imposed on a weekly, if not a daily, basis. The Minister himself referred to a possible monthly basis. The people who have lived around Heathrow for a long time refer to the fact that it was once a quiet little airport and no one envisaged its growth. We therefore need to plan for a future where this kind of thing is a daily occurrence, and the power we are looking at here could be a huge imposition on people in those areas.
I wonder how this interacts with the image of a new tourism industry and viewing platforms that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, mentioned in his speech on Monday. Will this fit with that concept of how space travel and the space industry will develop in the future? I think again of my happy campers on Shell Island. How will this impact on their summer holidays and on the business that is so well established there? I use that as a real-life example of the kind of impact this kind of activity could have. I entirely endorse the comments of both noble Lords; we need much more precision in these clauses.