10. What his policy is on future space travel and exploration; and if he will make a statement. (66025)

My hon. Friend’s question is very topical: this morning, a statue of Yuri Gagarin is being unveiled just a few hundred yards from here. It commemorates the first human space flight 50 years ago. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will wish to send their best wishes to Yuri Gagarin’s daughter, whom I will meet later today.

In the growth review, we set out our support for innovative forms of space travel, such as Virgin Galactic, that involve British entrepreneurs and British inventors.

I thank the Minister for that. He will remember the exciting HOTOL—horizontal take-off and landing—project in the 1980s, which certainly put a spring in the step of the British space industry. The single-stage-to-orbit Skylon programme looks equally promising today. I hear what the Minister says—and I send my best wishes, too—but I wonder what role an ambitious Government see for the UK in future human space travel.

I have visited the company to which my hon. Friend refers, and he mentions an excellent British technology that is securing a lot of private backing. The future of space travel rests much more with commercial businesses now, but I look forward to the day when Major Tim Peake, the British astronaut, makes it into space; I regularly raise the issue of that programme with the head of the European Space Agency.

Would the Minister expand on how the UK might increase its participation in the European space business development plans?

We have specifically identified the space sector in the growth review, and we are committed to a major role for British business in that. Indeed, only last week we celebrated a £110 million satellite order.