13
Examination of witnesses
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting and Colin Baldwin.
Q190 The Chair: Welcome to our next public session of the UK engagement with space inquiry. I am delighted that joining us is Colin Baldwin, the executive director of UKspace. We hope to be joined shortly by Professor Sir Martin Sweeting, the executive chairman of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. He is in Japan and so we are just making sure that we can reach him. In the meantime, we will start with you, Colin—if I may call you that—and Lord Shamash will ask the first question.
Lord Shamash: Thank you, Mr Baldwin, for coming. It is much appreciated. Could you give us a brief overview on the progress the UK has made since the publication of the National Space Strategy and how this current Government have performed on space policy since they came to power about a year ago?
Colin Baldwin: Thank you very much for inviting me today to give evidence. I have just a little bit of an explanation about UKspace first. We are the dedicated trade association for the UK space sector. We support the whole of the UK space sector from instrument manufacture all the way through satellite build, launch and the application of the data. We support companies of all sizes across the whole breadth of the country. I hope that, by pulling together those voices, we can give you some useful evidence today.
The National Space Strategy was published in December 2021, which was after the spending review and so, in effect, it was an unfunded strategy for three years. I think everyone would say that it was a bold, broad, ambitious strategy, but it did not have the granularity of detail that was needed to give actionable plans. Progress has been slower than we had all hoped; there was a lot of anticipation, and it has taken some time.
On the current Government’s performance on delivery of the strategy and space policy, if I had been here two or three months ago I would be giving a very different answer to that question. There has been a bit of a lightbulb moment fairly recently within the Government, which has linked space clearly to their growth mission but also to the national security mission and that has pivoted the thinking.
There has also been a huge amount of policy work going on within this Government, which we know only too well because we have responded to about eight consultations on behalf of our members over the last year and it has taken time for that to all work through.
We are now starting to see some positive signals coming through. For example, there has been a one-year budget uplift for the UK Space Agency of about 10%. Space was writ large in the strategic defence review as an activity within its own right but, if you look through some of the underlying messages, the fact that you need space to deliver all of the other capabilities is really coming through from that review, as well.
We were absolutely delighted that we were identified as a subsector in advanced manufacturing in the industrial strategy. Having looked at the evidence that you heard last week and the evidence we are seeing, we are starting to see a much more coherent view from across government and this idea of a one-government approach to space. There are some good signs; we are still waiting on the CSR outcome for the rest of the spending review period and the devil will be in the detail on that, but I think there is a real sense of optimism there.
Lord Shamash: Do you think we are meeting the five goals that have been set under the strategy? Are we getting anywhere near that?
Colin Baldwin: Again, it has been slow on all of them. What we are getting now, though, with the identification of these priority capabilities—or “categories”, I think they are now being termed—is that that will lead to some real delivery plans. That will then be an opportunity for us to take the bit between our teeth and get going.
Q191 Baroness Stowell of Beeston: Thank you for being here. Following what you were just talking about, the five capabilities—which is what I think they are now called—have been highlighted by the Government in their industrial strategy and in the space plan. We have also received some evidence that even those five capabilities, plus the development of launch capability, is still a bit too ambitious. You were suggesting that you thought things have got a lot better now from the Government. If I can press you a little harder, are you and the trade body not of the view that that is overly ambitious?
Colin Baldwin: We have gone down from 22 capabilities to five in the space industrial plan. That is quite a lot of prioritisation in itself. Again, it will depend on the funding that is available. There is probably capacity within the sector to deliver across those five capabilities.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: Is that plus the launch?
Colin Baldwin: It is plus the launch, yes. I think we will see, alongside the budget allocation, a phasing. Space missions and space capabilities take time to develop; there could be some that start early in this spending review period and some could start a bit later. We have to look back to some of those capabilities that have not been prioritised because, if we want to deliver them 10 or 15 years into the future, we have to start looking at the innovation that is going on now. That includes in our academic base as well, because a lot of the technology that we are using in the industry today comes from the academics.
We need to see how those plans shape up. The space sector is a collegiate sector and we collaborate a long way down the line before we start to compete. We have come together with things like the space innovation and growth strategy in the past. I think there is a real opportunity for the space sector to sit down alongside the Government, flesh out what these plans are and map out what is possible within one year, three years and five years.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston: That is a good response from the trade body to the space capabilities plan. I will hand over to my colleague who wants to ask more about funding.
Q192 Baroness Mobarik: You may have addressed the issue of funding, but the question is: is it adequate government funding? Space Solar has argued that the UK Government need to become more adept at picking winners and that their existing hands-off approach is outdated in an area of interventionist industrial policy. What is your view on that?
Colin Baldwin: We invest significantly less than other nations in our space sector as a percentage of GDP and in real terms. France is three or four times as much as us, the US is four times as much, and Japan and Italy are three times as much. We do not invest in the same way and that has been quite an historic situation. Clearly, we would like to see more funding. There is a lot that can be done, though, to better brigade the funding we have and to enable us to access some of those non-space funding pots.
You mentioned Space Solar. We should be looking at DESNZ for that kind of initiative, because it will solve the energy problems of the future. You have had evidence from Dr Katie King from BioOrbit. The technology that she is going to develop could absolutely transform and lead to massive savings within our health service. I think that joining-up of budgets across a number of different funding pots and funders would go a long way to us getting more bang for our buck for the funding that we have.
Q193 Lord Clement-Jones: Good afternoon. You have made the point that we do not invest in the same way as some of our other European counterparts and so we sit apart from some of them. We do not have a large national government-funded space programme. Do you think that the UK can develop its capability goals and become an international leader without such a programme?
Colin Baldwin: The different funding programmes do different things. As a result of the 2010 innovation and growth strategy, we did significantly scale our ESA investments. Now about 80% of our civil budget goes to ESA and about 20% goes to national. That is out of kilter with other nations, which are roughly on parity.
The way we look at funding between things like national and ESA, the national funding pool gets technology up to a certain level where it is ESA ready and then the companies can participate in those ESA programmes. The national budgets also come in at the other end to help to commercialise that technology and get it into markets. You need to have a balance between the different funding if you want to deliver that kind of ultimate goal. That is one important aspect.
We talked a little bit just now about that complexity of funders and we have funding from various parts of UK Research and Innovation, MoD funding and UKSA funding. We need to understand what all that funding is trying to do and, better still, how we get the pipeline that brings those technologies through to market from all those funding routes. That could be done through changes to government structures, but it should also be possible through much more co-ordination. At the very least, that is something that we would like to see.
On the national programme, our sector is quite skewed compared to other equivalent sectors across Europe. We have a small number of companies at the top, a huge number of companies down at the bottom and a group in the middle. That co-ordination is to build the supply chains and scale those companies up, and part of that is private sector funding to grow those companies. However, with a national approach you can target it in a different way to give those companies the ability to scale as well.
There are some caveats to a national programme in that, of course, it will be subject to the usual spending review cycle. One of the big challenges we have is that space programmes take a lot longer than one to three years. We know that the new Government talked about 10-year funding for R&D. We have not yet seen whether space is being considered within that remit, but it is absolutely fundamentally needed if you want industry to plan and to invest itself to enable the development of capabilities but also to enable the industry to thrive.
Lord Clement-Jones: That is really useful. Underneath that, I can see that you are making a point that it is not all about money, but actually money is pretty important for long-term funding. You compared us and said that we are not 50:50 but are more 80:20 in that sense. If we were to develop a more ambitious sovereign space programme, what do you think, in your dreams, it should look like?
Colin Baldwin: I think it is about co-ordination and scaling-up the funding pots. We scatter money over a lot of different places, and we have to start prioritising. We have to enable low-level innovation but then how do you take those most promising technologies to the next stage? In the space sector, we have talked for a long time about having a twin valley of death. You have the valley of death of getting over that first technology development hump and then we have to go and demonstrate what we have done in space, which is another valley of death before we can really commercialise. It is a bit of a tortuous path to get from—
Lord Clement-Jones: Then the investment valley of death, of course.
Colin Baldwin: Indeed, yes—that is just the technology one. My colleague was in a launch of a privately led activity that is looking at enabling in-orbit demonstration. There is appetite there: how do you join up the early-stage technology development, demonstration, commercialisation and export? My absolute nirvana then would be, if we are running bigger programmes, to have an education and skills programme alongside with every single schoolchild having space-related STEAM education at every stage of the curriculum. Then you start to build that pipeline of not just people working for the space sector but scientists, engineers and technicians for the whole of the economy. Sorry, that is a bit of a hobby-horse.
Lord Clement-Jones: I think we will definitely build on that. Thank you.
The Chair: I will ask a supplementary on funding. There are different views about how much we should focus on ESA and how much we should focus on a national programme or other collaborations. With a finite amount of money, do you think it matters or not whether we stay in ESA at number four or whether we drop to number six or whatever? If it is 80:20 going to 50:50, does the 50 have to equate to the amount of money in the 80 currently or not?
Colin Baldwin: I am looking at it in a slightly different way because I think each of the funding routes serves a different purpose. A lot of European Space Agency funding is contracts at the moment rather than grants, so it is a different type of money. We can only take part in some of those really ambitious programmes by working in partnership with others. We are never going to deliver a Mars rover on our own. That is one colour of money, if you like.
The development of capabilities within the UK is really being steered by us. The question then is: what do we actually want to do? I would work back from what we want to achieve and, therefore, the funding routes to do that? What are the ESA programmes in which we would invest to enable us to get to that point? What will we supplement with national funding? Also, what would that capability give us to offer on an international stage when you could then look at bilateral programmes?
I am sorry; it is not quite the answer to the question you were asking, but I think that that is probably the approach we should be taking—being much more focused on what we want to achieve.
The Chair: Thank you. I apologise for interrupting. Sir Martin, I think you are with us. Can you hear us?
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting: I can now hear you perfectly. Thank you very much. I was looking at an empty committee room previously.
Q194 The Chair: Yes, I do apologise. We switched rooms and that occasionally causes a degree of havoc. I love the backdrop, by the way. It is fantastic. I wish it were real for you, but I suspect it is not.
As we have you, I will ask you a rolled-up version of the questions that we have just had, because that will give Colin a little bit of a break. We were looking at the progress that has been made since the publication of the National Space Strategy, the five key space capabilities, as well as the development of launch and whether they are overly ambitious, the fact that we do not have our own large national space programme and whether we could develop that and become an international leader. We were just discussing how that fitted in with the collaboration that we have with ESA. Apologies for rolling all of that up but, if you could give us a view on a few of those things, then we will move on and carry on the questions as normal.
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting: Thank you very much for being patient and letting me join. I will try to cover those points as quickly as possible. I assume that Colin will probably have done so, so I will not elaborate too much.
First of all, it is good news that the Government have recognised the importance of space. We have seen that reflected in the spending review and the SDR. Of course, we are anxious to see the exact details and what that means in practice and the funding that will be attached to that. It is good to see that a space industry advisory council has now been established. That is a good sign that space is now beginning to be better appreciated by the Government, as is the contribution it makes to our security and to our economy.
I think that the strengths that have been identified and the capabilities that we should be pursuing are the right ones. We have some good strengths in satellite communications and there are some new opportunities when we are looking at opportunities in, for example, not just the traditional ones but new ones like lunar communications and the lunar economy, as it is likely to be evolving over the next decades.
We have seen strong movements in things like in-orbit servicing and in-orbit manufacturing. There are good companies there like Space Forge, Astroscale and others. Space application—space data for applications—is also critical for climate change. We have very good strengths there. There are companies like SatVu and new projects like HydroGNSS with ESA, looking at the criticality of water. Space domain awareness is absolutely critical for maintaining our access to space and monitoring space. I am not forgetting, of course, space weather because that has wider implications. Position, navigation and timing is a key element that underpins our economy, and it is getting close to 20% GDP; it is underpinned by PNT. We see opportunities also, of course, with quantum.
Launch is a slightly trickier one in that having a national capability for launch clearly would be useful for industry, academia and defence, but the business case behind it is perhaps not quite so robust. Time will tell. Speaking purely on a personal basis, I am yet to see how robust that business case is.
The question about how we should develop those is a critical one because we do not have a lot of money available in budgets for space, so we need to choose carefully the areas where we will get the best return. We need to have a spread of capabilities, but we also need to decide on the priorities so that we have a profile that gives us the essential ingredients but has an eye on the new developing opportunities. I am sure Colin has covered this, so I will stop there.
Q195 Lord Tarassenko: I want to ask a supplementary if I might. Personally, I think Surrey Satellite Technology is one of the unsung heroes of university spin-outs. It was one of the early spin-outs, 40 years ago. Of course, we are now discussing more sovereign capabilities, and you were acquired by Airbus. If it were possible to go back in time, would you wish to be a sovereign company for the UK or do you think it has been a good thing to have been acquired by Airbus?
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting: Well, let me answer that in two ways. First of all, we are a UK company within the Airbus family, so we are a UK company and Airbus is our shareholder. When SSTL was acquired from the university nearly 15 years ago, the Government insisted on some strong protections to ensure that we would retain our activities in the UK and have our own footprint in the UK. Indeed, although Airbus is a shareholder, we have our own brand, and our own marketing and business activities.
I think it is also true to say that it has been a successful relationship. There are not many relatively small companies that get consumed by a big company and live to tell the tale. Most disappear and lose their position after a few years. The fact that Airbus has maintained SSTL as an independent UK company within its family I think is of credit to Airbus.
Q196 Lord St John of Bletso: Sir Martin, welcome all the way from Japan. I have a question for Mr Baldwin. You mentioned earlier the recent budget uplift but, as you appreciate, the biggest challenge for the space economy is access to the very limited pool of grants from the Government. Several of our witnesses have argued that the Government should be encouraged to be a procurer of space-based data and services, but getting these government contracts is proving to be mission impossible. I speak from a certain amount of experience having worked with government on procurement policy, which tends to be centralised. Is this a reality or is this a pipe dream and what can be done to encourage more awards of Government contracts?
Colin Baldwin: It is not a pipe dream at all. I think this is where more detail on the capability requirements that the Government have identified comes into play because, if the Government want to procure satellites or services, that is, in effect, run through a contract. The important thing here is that we are not saying it is grant or contracts; again, they do different things in different parts of the ecosystem and you would not want to cut off innovation at the lower level. Certainly contracts make a company a more investable proposition. Also, if you are trying to sell to overseas Governments, having the UK Government as an anchor customer is clearly a massive seal of approval. I do not think it is unachievable; it is what we really need to see. Martin, I am sure that you have some thoughts on that as well. I saw you nodding.
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting: Again, there are times when grants are particularly useful and there are times when contracts are. In our own experience, there was a programme back in the 2000s called Mosaic where the Government co-funded a new idea of a satellite constellation for earth observation. The fact that the Government were procuring one of the satellites made a huge difference in our international business credibility. In fact, it brought together another half-dozen countries together to work with us on that earth observation satellite constellation. That was done through a grant mechanism and the grant was executed as a contract. As I say, it depends very much on what the situations are. I think having clear contracts gives companies, particularly small ones, credibility in the international market.
Lord St John of Bletso: What scope is there for more public-private partnerships for these contracts?
Colin Baldwin: Again, it comes back to what the Government actually want at the end of it. If the Government have clear requirements and industry can make a business case that then stacks up, that is absolutely a way to get investors in or for companies to invest their own funds because they know that there will be a contract at the end of it.
One of the things that we have been talking about for a long time in the sector is the amount of data that Government buy across lots of different departments. There is probably an opportunity there to aggregate those demands up. Could we develop a national flood mapping service? We have had projects in the past where satellite data has been used to help local residents identify if their bin has been collected or not.
There are so many different things that local authorities could do with space data, but it is all so granular. We have had grant funding, which has demonstrated those cases and then they have never gone anywhere because they could not then procure it as a service. There must be an opportunity to look across the totality of the UK Government and identify what those data requirements and service requirements are. That will lead to efficiencies for Government, and it will lead to more contracts and a growing space sector.
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting: I support that wholeheartedly. Making clear what they require across all the departments allows industry to respond, not only in developing the necessary services that it wants but in providing the efficiency, so I thoroughly support that.
Q197 Lord Booth-Smith: You may have partially answered my question, but there is a subset to it that will be relevant. Many of the people who have given evidence to this committee have highlighted the fragmented nature of space policy across government, and that gets in the way of implementing cross-cutting strategies. You mentioned previously, Colin, that the Government were taking or trying to take—I did not know which side of the line it fell on—a one-government approach to working on space policy. How much do you recognise that as a problem? I ask the same to you, Sir Martin but, more importantly, what do you think is necessary to address it?
Colin Baldwin: It is a problem. I alluded to all the different funding routes and the lack of co-ordination between them. You have policy across a number of different parts of government as well.
The junior ministerial council was announced recently after the hiatus from the National Space Council and we have been hearing that is a far more “roll your sleeves up, go down into the weeds and get things sorted” committee. If it actually delivers, that would be a huge opportunity for us. There is certainly something there.
You could look at this in different ways. One is more co-ordination and one is to try to move different bits of government into different places. Having been a civil servant for part of my career, I know how much time and machinery government change can take. You do not go into that lightly. If you are going to change the government structure, you need to look at what the real problem is. For example, the DSIT space directorate sponsors the UK Space Agency, then you have a whole chunk of civil funding going to UKRI, which feeds into a different part of DSIT.
What was effectively highlighted in the NAO report was that we did not know how much was being spent on the space strategy because it was not reporting in the place where people thought it should be. I think we have to look at what we want to fix, then whether you could do that through a powerful, small unit maybe in the Cabinet Office that directs across civil and defence. Or do you want to look at something different?
Going back to your original question, we are starting to see some good signs in bringing things together, but it is early days. We are certainly very happy to talk about some of the challenges that we see and have industry and academia in the room alongside some of these conversations. There is a huge amount of subject matter expertise in the UK sector that could be brought to bear to help to deliver better policy and shape better delivery.
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting: Once again I find myself in agreement with Colin, but it unpacks into a number of different areas as well. I would certainly hesitate to give any comment on how to reorganise the Civil Service to manage these challenges, but I have a couple of things. There are challenges in policy, which covers spacecraft licensing, export control, launch licensing and so forth, and some of those are not as neatly welded together as they perhaps could be.
The second point is a broader one. Colin touched on the space council, which is about having an overarching line of direction for UK space activities. At the highest level, space underpins our whole society now. Whether we like it or not, it is absolutely fundamental. I am not sure that this gets visibility at senior government levels and the lack of the space council was an opportunity missed to bring different departments together, to make sure that priorities are established and reflected, and that everybody broadly knows the direction of travel. I find myself in agreement with Colin, but I hesitate to make any comment about how one might solve it.
Q198 Lord Tarassenko: We have seen the Minister twice—not the Minister for Space, but the Minister within DSIT who looks after space, Sir Chris Bryant—once in this committee and once in a joint session with the Scottish Affairs Select Committee. He absolutely ruled out the idea of having a Minister for space.
I am interested at a more practical level. Let us say that I am a new company with new capabilities in earth observation data, either providing it or processing it to some metre accuracy. It has applications in agriculture; indeed, even a national flood map would be very much helped by that sort of technology. It has applications that MoD and DSIT would be interested in. DBT would be interested because I am a UK company. Is there a single front door through which this company could go and be sent to the relevant department? Does that really exist?
Colin Baldwin: There are multiple front doors and the great thing about the multiple front doors is that, on the sector side, we are a really connected ecosystem. I am not talking about the government side, but you have us as a trade association, the regional clusters and the academics who are all well connected, and we all talk to each other all the time. We do a huge amount of brokering people from one place to another. It is a no-wrong-door approach rather than a single front-door approach.
On the front door into government, I would always advise going to the UK Space Agency. It has a series of programmes that are looking at space for new markets, space for investment or unlocking space. Hopefully, you would get to the right person very quickly in the UK Space Agency and they would then broker those relationships and conversations onwards. For me, the agency is the most sector-facing part of government and then, as a company, you do not want to worry about the wiring diagram behind that. That is for officials to sort out.
The Chair: That is very clear. Sir Martin, do you agree with that?
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting: I have nothing to add on that. That describes the situation quite precisely.
Q199 Lord Lansley: Sir Martin, a little earlier before you joined us, we discussed the balance of UK investment between our participation in the European Space Agency and, through that, sovereign space activity and bilateral international partnerships. Could I start with you and say that we have had witnesses who, while not wholly disagreeing with each other, have none the less had quite significant differences about what the balance of our national activity and national budgeting should look like. What should be our approach?
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting: There is absolutely no doubt that our membership of ESA provides us with access to technologies, but also participation in programmes and projects that we could not afford nationally. It also has the advantage that these programmes are relatively lengthy, where commitments are essentially made through treaty, which are not easily subject to the wind and the waves. The projects carried out through the European Space Agency have those two benefits—participation in something greater than we can afford ourselves and, at the same time, perhaps a more robust life, which is less easy to disturb. This is really important. Of course, it also provides us with opportunities to develop our academic science space, which eventually leads on to innovation and contributes to our prosperity.
The balance of how much one should put into European Space Agency projects as opposed to national capabilities has been argued for many years. A national programme alongside European Space Agency programmes is particularly important. By having national programmes, we can develop our technologies, our workforce and skills and capabilities, which then allow us to play more meaningful roles within the European Space Agency—and, by the way, not just the European Space Agency but other international, bilateral and multinational programmes.
This balance is very critical. I hesitate to put a figure on exactly what the ratio should be, because that requires some fairly careful thought. I think we have put £400 million or something into the European Space Agency. I may have that wrong. I think we should be putting something like 20% into our national programmes. That then gives us the better opportunity to make the most out of the ESA programmes and, at the same time, develop our national capabilities and work with other international partners beyond ESA to best effect.
Lord Lansley: Thank you very much for that. I would like to bring in Mr Baldwin as well, but I will just add this question. Of course, our relationship with ESA is slightly complicated by the nature, over recent years, of the relationship between ESA itself and the European Union and its programme for the space agency. In a sense, it was simpler in the past: when ESA had a programme, the United Kingdom could decide to be in that programme or not in that programme. To some extent, we are still in that position of being able to make that judgment for some ESA programmes but not all because, for example, Galileo has shifted into being a European Union programme.
I will start with Mr Baldwin and come back to Sir Martin about this. How do you think we should be addressing some of those questions about the relationship between the European Union and ESA?
Colin Baldwin: Martin and Surrey Satellite Technologies Ltd has first-hand experience of Galileo, so I will not go too far down that route. Certainly the impact on our PNT sector of not being able to participate in Galileo has been significant. We have lost a lot of ground. There is still a PNT sector there, but it is not as vibrant as it was.
You need to have a certain scale of operational capabilities, so clearly working with partners to do that is an attractive option. We have a lot to offer our European partners. We are now back in the Copernicus programme, but it is taking a little time to get some contracts flowing, because we were out for a long time and new relationships formed. It is about how we get back in. That is an interesting case in point of where a national programme alongside an ESA or EU programme could be targeted to try to build back some capability. Again it is about what we want to achieve and how the money carves up around that.
I know that you pushed the Minister last week on the relationship with the EU, and I think the answer was that that is clearly timed with the next MFF negotiations. Of course, that is when we invest money, but we have an ESA Council of Ministers coming up and there are certain EU-related programmes that have an ESA element. From a sector perspective, it would be good to start having those conversations with the EU now, because we need to plan and to recover ground, and it will shape what we invest in at ESA. I hope that is helpful.
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting: Again, I will only add rather than repeat, because I agree with what Colin has said. On our experience with Galileo, there is no point crying over spilt milk; however, the UK did lose a huge capability and position within Europe by not being able to participate as part of the European Union programme subsequently. To try to regain that from our current position through ESA, if we develop capabilities through our national programmes, we can contribute them the wider European context. Particularly with the change in geopolitical flavours recently, we can now come in and play roles a little like Norway and Canada do; they have a very effective relationship through ESA into the EU. We need to encourage that type of change, so that we can engage even if we are not fully able to participate. We must bring something to the table.
Colin Baldwin: I absolutely agree. In all international collaborations we need to have something to put on the table. We talked about lunar communications earlier and the UK Space Agency invested some money with Goonhilly Earth Station last year to buy time for deep space communications to be used in bilateral and multilateral initiatives, so we have seen it done. We have seen contracts supplied to deliver a capability that we can then use as a negotiating point internationally, so it can be done. Where there is a will, there is a way.
Viscount Stansgate: Do we have time for a quick question before the vote?
The Chair: Yes, of course.
Q200 Viscount Stansgate: What role, if any, do patents play in the development and scaling-up of space-based businesses and are they an advantage? Are they difficult to achieve for space compared to development and the position and operation of patents in normal industrial operations? Is there something about this area that we should be looking at?
Colin Baldwin: I do not have a huge amount of direct experience of that. I know that there are a lot of patent attorneys who are interested in providing services into the space sector. It is the usual situation that, when you have a large number of start-up companies, often IP is not the thing that they think about. I know that the number of accelerators and incubators out there are trying to bring in that advice, but I do not know if there is a particular challenge; I am sorry.
Professor Sir Martin Sweeting: The area where patents apply most is in the space academic sector, where they tend to come up with new techniques or technologies that are patentable. Industry is, on the whole, exploiting those and building on them. As Colin says, quite often the small industries do not have the time to implement it and, actually, patents restrict things at times. So I think industry tends to concentrate less on patents, but the space academic community has some real opportunities there.
The Chair: Thank you both very much for joining us this afternoon—in our case. Sir Martin, I think it is probably well past midnight where you are. Thank you very much for staying with us. It has been a great pleasure to have you both.
