Last week I visited the national ‘test pilot’ base at RAF Boscombe Down to fly on-board the first plane in the world to trial commercial quantum inertial navigation technology at over a mile high.
From passenger flights to shipping, we all depend on navigation systems that are accurate, safe and secure. A 24-hour outage of our traditional, GPS based satellite navigation systems could result in a billion-pound hit to the UK economy – and have a huge human impact. The scientific research we are supporting on quantum technology that takes advantage of tiny changes at the atomic scale could well provide the resilience to protect our interests.
The Government has a £2.5bn, 10-year National Quantum Strategy – a decisive plan of action to invest in world-leading skills and talent, promote pro-innovation regulation and drive up the adoption of quantum technologies to ensure the UK remains a world leading nation in this exciting area of innovation.
Like many of us, I was thrilled to see the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, at home in Sussex at the weekend. As founder of a cross party Parliamentary Group on this, I worked with the Astronomer Royal and others to embody rules against light pollution in our planning frameworks. It is thanks to the protection of our South Downs from rural overdevelopment and our dark skies that we could all enjoy it. That is one reason why it is firmly my view that London, and other urban centres with good transport networks such as urban Brighton, should accommodate their fair share of new houses – not in the South Downs
I would also like to pass my congratulations to Fittleworth Community Stores who were awarded ‘Village Shop and Post Office of the Year’ in the whole of the South East by the Countryside Alliance in the ‘rural oscars’. The Stores are a fantastic community enterprise, and the whole team deserve to be proud of their achievement.
