Dawn O’Porter

And the UK was a really active member of that European community.

And it was quite a sought after partner.

In the area of satellite technology, there were two different major programmes.

One was called Galileo.

And the UK was part of this consortium with the European Union to develop Europe's own equivalent of the GPS satellite system.

And the UK had invested and given a lot of the science and research towards the equipment on the satellites.

But once we had decided to leave the EU, the UK was no longer able to be part of that system.

And we're still not.

And it's because of reasons of security.

So that's something that is a really...

clear change that we were going to be part of this GPS system and we're now not.

There was another Earth observation system called Copernicus, which we were able to negotiate to still be part of.

And that uses satellites to look at the Earth's

and monitor all sorts of aspects of the Earth's health.

And there we have been able to join.

So, you know, there were some examples of things which, you know, we now are no longer part of.

When it looked like there might be a no-deal Brexit, the UK government was trying to develop its own version of those big European framework programmes so that we could build our own capability alongside.

So a huge amount of work was done, actually, to look at all those possibilities.

Personally, I think a really strong example of that was the development of the Covid vaccine in the UK, where I think

you know, our regulatory bodies showed themselves in their best light in terms of being quite fleet of foot, but maintaining the highest standards of safety and oversight.