Space Weather

15:59:00

I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of space weather on the UK. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. There are debates in this House that deal with the visible challenges of our time, such as conflict, inflation and public services, and then every so often, there are those that deal with the dangers not yet on our doorstep, but hurtling towards us all the same. This is such a debate. The threat that I raise today does not wear a uniform, cross borders or sail across oceans. It travels from the heart of our solar system, faster than sound, silent and invisible. It is called space weather, and it poses one of the gravest risks to our modern way of life. I will start with a simple truth: the sun, for all its warmth and majesty, can also be a menace. It gives us energy, light and life, but without warning it can unleash waves of electromagnetic fury so powerful and indiscriminate that they can bring nations to a standstill in a matter of minutes. This is not speculation or science fiction; it is based on history and science, and it is an urgent question of national resilience. In 1859, a solar storm known as the Carrington event ignited telegraph wires, shocked operators and lit up the skies from Canada to the Caribbean. In the 21st century, such a storm would do more than send sparks down copper wires. It would knock out GPS, disable satellites, crash the grid, blind radar systems and paralyse entire regions. In 1989, Quebec’s power grid collapsed in under two minutes; schools shut, hospitals faltered and 6 million people were left in the dark. In 2012, a storm of Carrington magnitude missed Earth by just a matter of days. After that, NASA estimated that the global cost would have exceeded $2.6 trillion. In short, we are not speculating about what might happen; we are merely observing what has already happened, just not to us—or at least not yet. In effect, we are living between bullets: one already fired, another having just missed, and a third, we must assume, now chambered. We live in a nation defined by connection. Our power grid, transport system, banks, hospitals and military platforms are all linked, all digital and all dependent on space-borne technology. It is one of the great marvels of modern Britain. But it is also, if we are frank, one of our greatest vulnerabilities. A severe solar storm would not simply inconvenience us; it would disrupt the essential machinery of civilised life. High-frequency radios used by pilots and the armed forces fail. Satellites are disabled. Navigation systems go dark. Power lines are overloaded by geomagnetic surges, and cascading failures begin. The Met Office, supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering, has warned that a major event could leave parts of the UK without electricity for days or even weeks. When the power goes, everything else follows: the supermarket tills, the mobile networks, the ventilators and the pumps that keep our water flowing. The digital backbone of our modern state is silenced. It is not just a problem for astronomers or scientists in their white coats, but a matter of national security, public health, financial stability and strategic foresight. The United Kingdom does not enter this debate empty-handed. In 2021, the Cabinet Office and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy produced the severe space weather preparedness strategy, which was a forward-looking and well-considered document. It identified three pillars: first, assessment to improve forecasting and monitoring; secondly, preparation to support resilience planning in key sectors; and thirdly, response and recovery to co-ordinate emergency action across Government, industry and services. Those are the right foundations, but as we all know, strategies do not defend countries; implementation does, and in that sense we are not yet where we need to be. Let me identify four urgent areas for action. First, preparedness must become mandatory, not voluntary. We rightly legislate to ensure that our infrastructure can cope with floods, so why not do the same for solar storms? We have the regulators—Ofcom, Ofgem and the Civil Aviation Authority—and we need them to require, not merely recommend, that resilience plans are in place. When the warning comes, it will not arrive with some sort of grace period. Secondly, we must harden our defence capability. Our armed forces are increasingly reliant on satellite-enabled systems, whether that is for communication, targeting or navigation. Every major platform, from Type 26 frigates to F-35 jets, integrates space-dependent systems. We must invest in hardened equipment and train to operate in degraded space conditions. We must fund research into back-up navigation systems and sovereign capabilities. The reality is that our adversaries are already preparing for such an environment and we must not be found lagging behind. Thirdly, we must strengthen civil contingency planning. Local resilience forums are charged with keeping our communities safe. They plan for floods, pandemics and cyber-attacks, but in many areas, they do not yet plan for solar storms. They must be given the data, the scenarios and the authority to act. Fourthly, we must lead international co-ordination. This threat does not respect borders; the response must be global. The United Kingdom should press for a framework through NATO, the G7, the UN or the European Space Agency to share data, align early-warning systems and co-ordinate national preparedness. We have led the world in tackling threats before. Let us now do the same in the case of space weather. This is not a matter of national pride; it is a matter of global necessity. Let me bring the reality home to this House. Imagine that it is mid-January. The temperatures are freezing and the skies are dark. The sun erupts and a geomagnetic storm is en route. Local hospitals are now running on back-up power, ambulances are offline, phones are down and the grid is being rationed. Supermarkets are unable to take card payments, petrol pumps do not work, water pressure drops and air traffic is grounded. Our farmers cannot access the satellite data they need, small businesses grind to a halt, trains are suspended and mobile coverage is patchy or lost. The elderly, who are already vulnerable, are now cut off, isolated and invariably frightened. That is not fiction or dramatic exaggeration; it is foreseeable and preventable. All of that happens not because we lack the knowledge, but because we failed to act on it. Governments are judged not only on whether they see crises coming, but on how they respond to them. There are threats we cannot foresee, but there are others, like this one, where the science is established, the risk is understood and the warning is clear. This is precisely the kind of threat that distinguishes those Governments that react from those that prepare. The storm may come next year or not for a generation but, when it does, it will be too late to start preparing then. This is not the moment for drift or delay; it is the moment for decisive leadership. With that in mind, I ask the Minister to address six critical questions; they are not intended to catch anyone out but to encourage action. First, will the Government publish a delivery plan with clear targets and funding to give force to the 2021 strategy? Secondly, will Ministers bring forward statutory requirements for critical infrastructure operators to mitigate this risk? Thirdly, are the Government satisfied that our armed forces are equipped and trained to operate in the event of a space weather blackout? Fourthly, what investment is being made in forecasting capabilities, including support of the ESA Vigil mission and co-ordination with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and others? Fifthly, will the Cabinet Office require local resilience forums to prepare for this threat, as they do for other category 1 emergencies? Finally, will Britain now lead efforts to build an international framework for preparedness, starting with NATO or the G7? The case is clear, the risk is real and the time to act is now. Let us not be the generation that read the reports, saw the warnings, nodded thoughtfully and then did nothing. Let us instead be the generation that looked beyond the horizon, recognised the scale of the threat and acted with the seriousness it demands. The sun may well be 93 million miles away, but its reach is far closer than we think. When the next storm comes, let it not find us asleep at the wheel. Let it find us ready and prepared. Let it find a country that saw the storm and stood firm in the face of it.

16:10:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner, and I thank the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst) for securing this important debate. Space weather has profound effects on our planet, particularly now that we rely so heavily on technology that can be affected by radiation or changes to the magnetosphere. What is space weather? Basically, it is the sun chucking out gas and particles into space. It varies over time, and has peaks and troughs. We are currently just past the highest peak, but we are still in a very active period. Three main types of solar weather events affect us on Earth: solar flares, solar energetic particles and coronal mass ejections. Those travel at different speeds, have different make-ups and have different impacts. Essentially, they all sneak past our normal protections—the magnetosphere and our atmosphere—and cause problems for us on Earth. The extra radiation and geomagnetic storms from the events can cause high-frequency radio blackouts and affect all sorts of electronic systems, both in space and on the ground. I also wanted to discuss the Carrington event in 1859, but time is short, so those watching at home will have to google it. What can we do about the risks of space weather? First, I support the calls of the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley. I asked my friend, astrophysicist Dr Alfredo Carpineti—I always keep a tame astrophysicist on hand—what he thought Parliament needed to know about space weather. He agreed with me that we must continue to invest in the Met Office space weather operations centre, which monitors and forecasts space weather, and promote its work. It has done a great job in reaching the public with its aurora forecasts, and I would love people to know more about the rest of its work. I have very much enjoyed educating my colleagues about space weather this week. Dr Carpineti told me that we need more research on how the UK would cope with a Carrington-level event and work out how to mitigate the potential impact. Another key research topic is around the degradation of technologies from the continuous stream of particles from space. I am told that that is particularly relevant for British territories and facilities at higher latitudes. I am very pleased that this debate is taking place, and pleased that I could contribute.

16:12:00

It is a delight to see you in your place, Mr Turner, and to take part in this debate. Given the weather we have been having, it is somewhat ironic that we are worrying about space weather. People sometimes think the sun is a wonderful thing and a delight when it comes out in the UK. It also helps ice cream sales, with the best ice cream in Britain coming from Subzero, made in the Rhondda—I note no contest on that. But having suffered from stage 4 melanoma, I am also conscious that the sun can cause enormous damage through normal exposure. One of the fastest growing forms of cancer in the UK is skin cancer, as a direct result of people being over-exposed to the sun. My advice is that people should avoid the sun between 10 o’clock and 3 o’clock and, if they are out in the sun, that they should cover up or use high-quality sunscreen. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley (Dr Shastri-Hurst) for securing the debate, which relates to an important part of the resilience we need in this country. Of course, it is something we need to do not on our own but with our allies. As he said, we are intimately involved with the European Space Agency, and we will address some of these issues with allies in other countries. The hon. Member is right to highlight the importance of space weather. He referred to the 1989 Quebec incident, and there are many others, although some have not been quite as severe. He did not mention what happened in May 2024 when, to the great delight of many people, the aurora borealis was visible all the way down to Kent, which antagonised my husband, who has on many occasions gone to Norway, Iceland and all sorts of other places, where he has sat in car parks to try to watch it without ever seeing it. At the same time, 5,000 Starlink satellites had to perform autocorrection manoeuvres to make sure they were safe. The system survived, but it shows that severe space weather can have a profound effect on our satellites. The Royal Academy of Engineering has reported on some of the potential impacts if we were to have a repeat of the Carrington event. We might be talking about the grid carrying 13 times its normal voltage, which would damage transformers. Two coastal nodes could experience disconnection. Blackouts of a few hours could occur in major urban areas across the United Kingdom. As for our satellites, 10% of the operational fleet could experience temporary outages lasting hours to days, and all satellites would experience rapid ageing due to damage to their solar arrays. There would be an effect on space-based PNT—positioning, navigation and timing—and a loss of lower-frequency Satcom and HF radio communications for between one and three days. People often think that space does not really matter to how we live our lives, but I would defy anybody in this country to live a whole day without engaging with something that is affected by satellites or by space, whether it is going shopping, navigating by car or on foot—exiting a tube station and knowing whether to go left or right—using the internet or knowing that the supermarket is ordering the right things. So many aspects of our lives are determined by such things, including forecasting the weather so we know whether to take an umbrella to Wimbledon. All those things are affected by space, which is why it is all the more important that we take it extremely seriously. The UK is a world leader in forecasting space weather. The Met Office space weather operations centre in Exeter, which my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) mentioned, makes a high-quality contribution not just to our own country but to other countries across the world. The Met Office is currently evaluating a five-year £20 million research programme sponsored by UK Research and Innovation. The hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley was right to mention monitoring and observation of the sun, which is essential to understanding and predicting space weather. That is why we are the leading funder of the European Space Agency’s Vigil mission, which he referred to. This will be Europe’s first dedicated space weather mission, it will provide data and imagery 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and it is expected to launch in 2031. Vigil will work in tandem with United States spacecraft to improve the provision of solar observations. These will provide critical data, enabling forecasters to predict when solar eruptions will impact the Earth. The mission demonstrates that the UK and Europe are committed to space weather monitoring, and it holds equal importance for the US, the UK and European partners. That combination is important for all of us. The hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley was also right to mention the issues that apply to the Ministry of Defence, as this is not just about space weather; it is about potential damage to satellite constellations. It is a simple fact that if we wanted to dominate a terrain or a domain on the Earth in a conflict situation, we would want to dominate the satellites in space as well. That is why, if there were to be any kind of major conflict, it would almost certainly start in space before it started on Earth. That is why it is so important that the UK has a joint operation between the civil side, through the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the military side, through the Ministry of Defence, to track everything that is happening in the several layers of space so that we know the potential dangers. Some of those dangers might be a result of space weather, but they might also be a result of the amount of debris up there. I am glad to say that the UK has some of the leading companies in developing space debris removal to make space sustainable. A chunk of a satellite inadvertently crashing into another is problematic, and a hostile state actor taking out UK satellites, or satellites on which we rely, would be equally significant. That is why I am proud that, for the last year, we have had a joint team working in High Wycombe—which I visited a couple of weeks ago with the Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, my right hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Garston (Maria Eagle)—to make sure that everything in space on which we rely here on Earth is secure. The hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley is right that we must not lag behind, but I would argue that we are ahead. We know there are potential hostile actors. The obvious two that have been mentioned in previous public debates are Russia and China. He is absolutely right, so we need to make sure we are at the forefront of securing our defence operations. The previous Government published the UK’s first severe space weather preparedness strategy in 2015. The current strategy was published in 2021 and supports the aims of the national space strategy. It ensures that severe space weather is appropriately managed, enabling the UK to pursue its wider ambitions in space, and sets out a five-year road map to improve the UK’s preparedness for a severe space weather event. Anybody who can add up will have noticed that five years after 2021 is 2026. I am confident that, now DSIT and the MOD have their spending review settlements, we will publish a full space strategy and lay it before the House. Part of that will undoubtedly respond to some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Solihull West and Shirley today. The hon. Gentleman asked me six questions, but he asked them so quickly that the first point in my notes is just “a plan”—I was not writing fast enough. I am absolutely certain that we will produce a plan, because we will produce a plan for the whole sector, and this issue will undoubtedly be part of it. Secondly, he asked whether we will introduce statutory requirements. We will obviously have to keep that under review to see whether it is necessary, and it is part of what we would include in a plan. If we were to do that, we would have to consult, which takes time. The hon. Gentleman also asked about armed forces preparedness, which I assure him we take very seriously. One of our recent innovations is to gather all the Ministers with responsibility for space-related issues in different Departments—the MOD, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Transport, the Foreign Office, other parts of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero—because we need to make sure that we act as a whole Government in this area. The next meeting is next Monday. I am very hopeful that we can spot areas where we can secure efficiencies because we are working as a whole Government. We can also make sure that none of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised are forgotten. I think the hon. Gentleman’s fourth question was about broadcasting. In my mind, we have Mr Schafernaker giving us a televised weekly update on space weather. My message to the broadcasters is that it would be good if they gave people in the UK a better understanding of the significance of space and the space sector—not just that it is an industrial powerhouse, which we are good at, but of our engagement and involvement in space and how important it is to us. We also need more people in the UK to think of it as a potential career, so perhaps Mr Schafernaker should produce a regular space weather broadcast. I cannot remember whether the hon. Member asked five or six questions, but I wrote down five, the fifth of which concerned whether the Cabinet Office should require local authorities and others to have measures in place to deal with potential space weather threats. Some of these issues are for DESNZ. We must ensure the security and resilience of our energy and telecoms, as without a functioning power grid, mobile and other telecoms operations are unlikely to function, and they are absolutely essential to public services, particularly the emergency services. We must weave all of that into our resilience measures, which is why this issue has been on the national risk register since 2012. If I have got any of the hon. Gentleman’s questions wrong, I am happy to write to him. I thank him for the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale on having a tame astrophysicist. I am not sure whether we have any in the Department, but I am sure we can have access to her tame astrophysicist when necessary. Question put and agreed to.

16:26:00