Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
20-22)
Dr David Williams, Andy Green and Richard Peckham
8 September 2010
Q20 Graham Stringer: You
have mentioned Galileo a number of times. Can you briefly say
what your responsibilities for Galileo will be, whether it will
have military implications, and what your involvement is with
the ESA facility at Harwell?
Dr Williams: At
Harwell?
Graham Stringer: Yes.
Dr Williams: On
Galileo the Department for Transport currently lead on the policy
for Galileo. The funding in the initial work was jointly through
ESA and EU. That phase has now more or less come to an end. All
future funding will be EU money from the civil side of the house.
The proposal that is with us now is that policy, responsibility
and management responsibility for Galileo, along with the resources
that go with it, transfer across to the space agency from transport
from next April. We work closely together with them, anyway, on
a day to day basis. So that will transfer across. Therefore, it
will be part of the agency. There are some issues to resolve in
there around the cost of Galileo and a shortage of funding and
so on, which we are working on, but that's an issue about how
that cost lands.
Galileo remains a civil programme under civil
use. The debate about who will use it will roll on and on. I think
the commitment is that it is a civil programme; full stop. The
question is, "Would it be improper for a British Army truck
to drive down the M6 using the Galileo navigation reception system?
Where are we with that? Where is the boundary condition that transfers
to really being military? The other side of the coin is, of course,
that the NATO standard is to use GPS for its military systems,
and that will not change. So from my perspective there is no intention
of Galileo moving out of the civil framework—out of the
civil framework in terms of funding, in terms of decision-making,
in terms of authorities and oversight by the EU and from the EU,
the UK and other Parliaments. There is always going to be a grey
area on what you mean by "military use" because of this
transition from the simple one of driving down a road to frontline
troops using it to position themselves. And can you stop it even
if you wanted to? That's the other question.
Graham Stringer: And your
involvement in the Harwell facility?
Dr Williams: The
Harwell facility is, I think, one of the successes of the last
year. What we have managed to do in the last two years is work
with ESA—it is one of the things we took on when I came—to
try and get an ESA facility in the UK. We've agreed that with
them. It is now at Harwell. Alongside that we recognised, as we
have mentioned in this inquiry, the need for a strong national
capability. The first piece of that, the hub, as it were, is the
International Space Innovation Centre at Harwell that has been
funded with £12 million of Government money and a total funding
envelope of some £40 million from other sources over the
period of its early life. That has now been implemented. The building
is in place; it has been fitted out and equipment is moving in.
We are hoping to get an official launch towards the end of this
year at the facility. Associated with that is an incubation centre
for new industries which is jointly funded by ESA and the UK,
because we are trying to drag things out of the space world into
the other world. What is unique about Harwell in the space world
is that it is the first ESA facility that sits in a general research
facility. It is not dedicated to space. So we have broken the
bubble of space. One of the things we want to do with it is transfer
technologies and ideas both ways between what exists at Harwell
through the academic and industry people into space and out of
space. I think that really marks a change. I think the director
general of ESA recognises and appreciates that change in thinking
on that. So we were heavily involved in that.
The facility will not be part of the agency. The
centre will not be part of the agency. That is because the way
the agency operates, we try and stay small as a headquarters group
with resources and place contracts where necessary, so that we
can move things around and we don't get committed to funding a
big facility. The ISIC facility at Harwell will remain with STFC.
We expect it to get money from the agency. We expect it to get
money from ESA. We expect it to get money from industry and become
a real hub that works in a collective sense for UK plc.
Q21 Chair: A final
question, if I may, Dr. Williams. You have mentioned your role
as the Chair of the ESA Council. What impact do you think that
is having on the development of the UK Space Agency at an international
level?
Dr Williams: I
think the fact that they appointed me for the year, is a recognition
that they appreciate the efforts we are making in the UK with
the Agency and they think the UK is now looking a better place
from the outside. In a purely practical sense, it has very little
impact on me. I go to all the meetings, anyway. It does not detract
from the UK position, but it does give me more influence in the
way that ESA operate at Council level in terms of intervention
and direction of the debate and discussions. So I have a much
closer relationship with the director general than I would do
as a head of delegation, but we still have a delegation at the
table to put the UK view across. I think it is a recognition from
Europe, at both an institutional and personal level, of how good
our place is in space.
Q22 Chair: Thank
you for attending, gentlemen. You have raised a number of issues
today that are going to be crossing our paths several times, not
least of which is the CSR. We share joint interests in issues
like exciting the next generation of potential scientists and
engineers in the country, and we would welcome your continued
feeding into the Committee of any information that you think is
relevant not just to this particular investigation but the broader
ones. Thank you for your attendance.
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