3 February – UKspace has welcomed the Government’s focus on space industry’s value as part of Article 50 negotiations, as published in the White Paper on the strategy for the Article 50 negotiation.

Referring to the UK as a “A global leader in international collaboration”, the white paper says:

10.12 One of the UK’s key strengths in research is international collaboration: 47.6 per cent of UK articles in 2012 were internationally co-authored – a share that has been increasing. With just 3.2 per cent of global research and development expenditure, the UK accounts for 6.4 per cent of articles and 15.9 per cent of the world’s most highly-cited articles.  The UK also exported over £11 billion of intellectual property globally in 2015.

10.13 The UK has a proud history of leading and supporting cutting-edge research and innovation within the EU. We are an active participant in Horizon 2020, the EU’s main funding instrument for collaboration on research and innovation. In addition, the UK has played a major part in developing the main EU space programmes, Galileo and Copernicus, which have supported the rapid growth of the UK space sector and contributed directly to our prosperity and security. The UK was a founding member of the European Space Agency, to which we recently committed €1.4 billion in cutting edge research and development over the next four years. The UK has also been a driving force behind European and international research on nuclear fusion.

10.14 As we exit the EU, we would welcome agreement to continue to collaborate with our European partners on major science, research and technology initiatives.