§ Lord Rippon of Hexhamasked Her Majesty's Government:
Why they failed to meet the deadline of March 31st set by the Canadian Government for a decision on their participation in the RADARSAT satellite project; what is the present position; and how much has been spent to date; and
What United Kingdom participation is now contemplated in the development of the Columbus polar platform and what is the present state of their negotiations with the European Space Agency.
§ The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Lord Young of Graffham)The Government have considered carefully the options for the Columbus Polar Platform and RADARSAT earth observation projects. I am pleased to announce that we shall be proposing today to our European Space Agency partners that the UK should take a leading role in the polar platform. This represents a sensible next step, based on our consistent policy of supporting earth observation, where a commercial market can be developed through the acquisition and processing of data for sale to end users. We joined the ERS-11350WA project under ESA in March 1982; ERS-1 is due to be launched in 1990. I announced on 10th February 1988 (Official Report, col. 250) our decision to establish a new Earth Observation Data Centre at Farnborough costing an additional £20m. We are now set to proceed with the next major project, the polar platform, at a cost, including the associated instrumentation, of over £250m during the next 10 years.
I am also pleased to announce that industry will be contributing up to £5m of the cost of the polar platform. This demonstrates in the clearest possible way its support for our decision and its confidence in the longer term commercial prospects.
Having decided to enter Columbus, the Government will not be entering the Canadian RADARSAT project. RADARSAT is a good project and we have spent £4.5m examining it carefully, but it is essentially a one-off project on a smaller scale than Columbus and would not have offered as good a base for commercial exploitation. To pursue both Columbus and RADARSAT would involve expensive parallel development of different platforms. We expect to receive most of the information RADARSAT would provide through our membership of ERS-1 and Columbus.
Over the last 10 months, we have been urged to enter a wide range of space projects which would have cost the taxpayer well over £1bn in total. I believe that I have now made a sensible choice to join those projects which offer the best value for money for the British taxpayer and British industry. We have also appointed a new director general for the British National Space Centre. He is Mr. Arthur Pryor, a senior official in my department. One of his main tasks will be to work closely with industry in order to maximise returns from our new investment in the polar platform.