Richard Lochhead: ‘The space sector is incredibly important for Scotland's future’

Over the course of a ten-minute interview with Richard Lochhead, it’s clear that Scotland’s business minister loves space.  

It's evident in the way he hesitates slightly before answering questions about the sector, collecting his thoughts and answering with a level of knowledge that only comes with an interest that goes beyond the politics.

Holyrood caught up with Lochhead at the Space-Comm expo in Glasgow, where he spent the day looking at everything from Scottish-built rockets to specialist cables used on the international space station and the next generation of quantum-enabled satellites.  

“It's pretty breathtaking given that we have this major space event taking place in Glasgow, which only a few years ago would have been unimaginable,” says Lochhead. “I guess that just illustrates the pace of growth in the space economy in Scotland. Even using that phrase brings it home to you just how quickly things are changing.”  

Lochhead isn’t exaggerating the scale and pace of growth in the Scottish space economy over the last decade. Since 2016 the number of Scottish space firms has nearly doubled, jumping from 132 to 246 by 2023, with the sector employing over 8,000 people.

“The space sector is incredibly important for Scotland's future. In economic terms, [we’re] talking about a highly innovative, deep tech sector that employs people on really good wages and has a lot of potential to grow exponentially in the decades ahead. Clearly as a growing economic sector, that brings huge benefits to Scotland as a country,” says Lochhead.  

“But there is also the outcome of space technologies and what that means for people. So that's everything from observation data from satellites that can spot wildfires or diseases in our forests, to communications and improving that capability for the rural communities and a whole host of other areas that can lead to a better quality of life for people, as well as protecting our environment.”

In 2021, the Scottish Government launched a space strategy that had a particular focus on the development of small satellite manufacturing capability. The manufacturing of these small satellites, which can be used in everything from weather tracking to communications, is a particular strength of Scotland’s space economy, with Glasgow producing more of them than anywhere else in Europe.  

At the conference, Lochhead announced a review of this strategy, which will outline plans to “point the way forward” for the sector over the next decades, to ensure that Scotland is “fit for purpose” as the space industry evolves.  

“We've moved from space being about exploration and striving, big nations competing to put a man on the moon, to then telecommunications and everything that means for our modern day lives,” says Lochhead. “Now the next stage of that is the evolution towards not only for further space exploration to new planets, but also to space science, to security and defence issues and sovereignty and in terms of having your own launch capabilities as individual countries or blocs of countries like Europe.”

The ability to launch rockets carrying satellites from a sovereign launch point is something that could become a crucial factor in the UK’s future security. In October, Major General Paul Tedman, the head of UK Space Command, said that UK military satellites were being targeted by Russian interference on a weekly basis. The UK spends around one per cent of its defence budget on space, even though Tedman says that around £450bn of the UK economy is dependent on it.  

The potential for sovereign launch capability in Scotland is high, due to the availability of clear northbound flight trajectories that avoid densely populated sites from areas like the Shetland Islands. Scotland is also home to five of the seven private spaceports being developed across the UK, with SaxaVord on Unst holding the only active launch license in the UK.  

Earlier this year, Scottish-based rocket company Skyrora was granted a licence which allows it to launch its latest suborbital rocket, the Skylark L, from a UK site. Despite this, a launch is yet to take place, leading some in the industry to publicly question why the UK has not invested in state-owned launch infrastructure.

“The debate over launch capability is moving very fast,” says Lochhead. “Countries are once again looking at what space means for defence and security, and that means that there's going to be a lot more state intervention now, and state investment. Space is now essentially a mixed economy, with all the commercial opportunities, but also because of what's happened with the shifting sands of geopolitics is state intervention and state investment. Together that means trillions of dollars is going to be spent in space.”

Last week the UK Space Agency (UKSA) announced an investment of £3.8m into the space sector in Scotland. Three Scottish universities will benefit from the funding designed to “accelerate breakthrough technologies and boost commercialisation” in the sector. The UKSA also announced an additional £1.1m in funding for space clusters in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. According to the UKSA, the funding will support each of the UK’s devolved administrations to make the decisions needed to grow their own space sectors.

In comparison, the US invests around $25bn (£19bn) annually in Nasa and the German government has pledged to invest €35bn (£30.5bn) into its military space capabilities by 2030. This disparity in funding is something that attendees at Space-Comm highlighted as a particular point of frustration for them.

“Really significant investment has now been directed towards space technologies and space economy in many countries around the world and there is a danger the UK will fall behind if that is not matched,” says Lochhead. 

“There's a role for the Scottish Government in that; there's the work Scottish Enterprise does and the Scottish National Investment Bank and so on. But clearly the massive purse strings are held by the UK government and space is largely reserved to the UK Government. They've got the purse strings and that's why I think it's really important that the UK Government do step up to the plate and recognise that yes, we're taking a step forward with more money going into space, but compared to other countries, there's still some way to go.”