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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered BT broadband provision for local businesses.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Ryan. The Minister and I have sparred on many occasions about the state of rural broadband. I have been away from this brief for 18 months, but now I am returning, as a constituency MP, because things have not improved as we had all hoped. I want to bring some stories from my constituency to public attention, because I cannot see how, apart from by doing that, we will exert any real pressure on BT, which I think is becoming more and more complacent.
The first big problem in my constituency was faced by an auctioneer called Addisons, which was located in Barnard Castle. Addisons had been there for decades and increasingly found that auctions needed to be conducted over the internet. It would get better prices if it could conduct auctions over the net, but the connection offered by BT was not fast enough for it to be able to do that, so the firm closed, with the loss of dozens of jobs.
Last autumn, William Smith, a firm that has been working in Barnard Castle since 1832, got in touch. In October 2014, it ordered a short haul data service, at a cost of £30,000 up front, with a subsequent monthly fee of £16,000. Let me explain in more detail the situation of this family-run company in my constituency. It had a place in the middle of town and then it wanted to operate a larger warehouse on the outskirts of Barnard Castle. To do that, it needed a new data link between the two sites. As I said, the firm went to BT in October 2014. It said to BT, “We’re building a new warehouse”—the warehouse cost £2 million—“and we need this data link so that we can use it. Without the data link, we can’t use the new warehouse and our staff can’t work effectively.”
Nine months later, nothing had happened, so the firm got in touch with its Member of Parliament and complained about that, reasonably enough. I thought, “Well, I used to be the shadow Minister. I know all the right people in BT; I know the public affairs people. I’m sure we’ll sort this one out in a trice.” I could not have been more wrong. We got in touch with the public affairs department. My staff were in almost weekly contact. We got in touch with the chairman of BT, Sir Michael Rake. Again, we made absolutely no progress.
I was very concerned because at one point we were not even getting responses from BT, so I asked the Minister to get in touch. The Minister got in touch, and the upshot of that is that the firm now has one of its links established, but it needs more links. The situation is rather complicated. It needs more capacity on the link, so we are still not there completely. The first section was completed on 29 February, 17 months after the firm paid its £30,000 up-front fee. That is not acceptable, and everyone knows that. However, that is not the only ongoing problem in my constituency. There is also a problem in Whorlton.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making an absolutely first-class point. Does she agree that the nub of this is that no priority or even equality of treatment has been given to the business community? In my rural constituency, there are businesses that can get absolutely nothing. We need parity between businesses and others in order to get businesses properly supported in terms of technology, IT support and broadband; otherwise, productivity and the mission to increase productivity become, frankly, a dead duck.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I will detail my next case and then come on to the general issues that she raises, because I agree with her entirely.
In Whorlton, the Danshell Group has a care home for vulnerable people with learning disabilities. It paid an even higher fee, £100,000, for its links, because it is trying to help people to maintain contact with their families through Skype and it is using sophisticated technology in other ways to provide therapies for those people. It still does not have its connection.
When people are paying these very large sums of money and they get in touch with BT months before they want the connection, they should expect a decent level of service. One thing that struck me in the William Smith case was that every time we rang BT, there was a new problem: it had to go under the road; the fibre had to be blown; there needed to be a new duct here; there needed to be a new duct there. It became absolutely clear that at no point had the people in BT sat down and made a plan. They had not looked at what was needed and said, “Okay, if we’re going to achieve this by then, we need to do this on date A, this on date B and this on date C.” There was no plan. It was as if they were complete amateurs and had never done it before.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
To illustrate the hon. Lady’s point, which is about not so much the inability as the unwillingness of BT to acknowledge that it is a joined-up operation, I want to read out an email sent to a constituent of mine in the last couple of weeks by someone in the executive level complaints team at BT. My constituent had complained, not unreasonably, that he could get only 1 megabit. The email reads:
“Our suppliers (Openreach) are in charge of this network and they would not consider any request from the public to move lines or modify serving exchanges, with the view to simply improving broadband speeds.”
I cannot but take that apart. Openreach is not a supplier to BT; Openreach is part of BT. It is dishonest of BT to pretend that somehow Openreach is a separate operation. Also, that allows it to say, “I’m sorry. Just because the public ask for higher broadband speeds, you can’t expect us to provide them.” That is completely unsatisfactory.
Helen Goodman
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and his constituency of Ashford is not even particularly rural; it is not as if the company has to travel dozens or hundreds of miles to make the connections in his constituency. It seems to me that it has a particular problem with the small business sector and it has a problem the minute someone is outside one of the large urban areas. Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), it is obvious that the benefits of good internet access are greater in rural areas than in big urban areas, because, as anyone with a rural or semi-rural constituency knows, vast amounts of resource go into transport and moving stuff and people around.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
I am sure that every hon. Member present is getting a feeling of déjà vu and agreeing with pretty much everything that the hon. Lady is saying. I have a similar case. Stoke by Nayland golf club in my constituency ended up doing a self-dig in March last year. It dug its own line, with the agreement of Openreach, after many months waiting for BT Openreach to come and put down a line. Recently, an engineer finally turned up, offering to put down a line. That company in my constituency had already dug into the ground itself. Does not that prove that there is a massive breakdown in communication between Openreach and whoever the actual supplier is?
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Now, the Minister made a rather good speech yesterday in a similar debate, in which he said that BT was spending far too much time buying sporting rights and not enough dealing with the problems. He is right. BT needs to concentrate on the day job but it is not doing that. This infrastructure is vital to the country’s productivity.
Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
My constituency is located slightly above that of my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), and we have problems across the constituency. To further reinforce what the hon. Lady is saying, some companies in my constituency have now produced their own lines, and doing that cost a company I spoke to this morning, which has had the problem since last May, £6,000. That company can afford it, but that might not necessarily be the case for my small businesses or when there are issues of safety, such as when my farmers are involved.
One local business—this trumped everything I have seen—had its line, let’s just say, “reallocated”. The business line was not identifiable enough so it was reallocated to a homeowner. It took BT five to six weeks to figure out where the business line had gone and that it had redirected it. The gentleman in question was passed back and forth between line and broadband engineers. After a month, his broadband was reinstated. However, his connection speed was reduced by half. For the past three months, he has been forced to drive 25 miles to another office in Ipswich where he can access broadband. He identified the lack of supply and poor customer service as the two main obstacles to resolving his case. I would love to say that that example is isolated but it is not, and it has a real impact. The Minister knows, because I have seen him on many occasions, that the problem really affects my rural constituency.
Helen Goodman
It certainly does. The issue affects the hon. Lady’s constituents and the whole country. Our productivity is not rising as it is in the other G7 countries, and it has not been for eight years. Proper investment in infrastructure is one of the ways that we can get our productivity up, from which we will all benefit. When it works, it is really great.
There is a quarry in my constituency that has a very good website and, because of its website, it is able to sell stone to Spain because the Spanish people who are building the cathedral in Barcelona—the Sagrada Família—saw that the stone was the right colour. That is fantastic. When it works, it is brilliant, but it is not working often enough. The OECD and the International Monetary Fund say it; everybody says it. I really feel that the issue should take priority over some things, such as HS2, into which public money is about to be poured. If we could get the IT right, we might not need all the investment in transport, which is proving to be so controversial across the country.
Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I understand what the hon. Lady is saying but I am a bit reluctant to pour yet more public money into BT, which is not up to the job of doing this, frankly. The Government, the Scottish Government and many others have poured money into these schemes. It is high time that a multinational company such as BT, which operates a private monopoly, steps up to the plate and invests some funds in this.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman is right. BT is extremely profitable. The industry is, of course, regulated by Ofcom but there must be a question mark about whether it is using its resources as effectively as possible. It is clear that the rural areas are particularly disadvantaged.
Stuart Blair Donaldson (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (SNP)
The hon. Lady is making a fantastic speech. Like all other hon. Members who have contributed, I think we are all in the same boat. In my rural constituency, rural business parks and centres that are looking to expand and already have connections are finding it incredibly difficult just to connect an extra building. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is completely unacceptable that they have to wait months—sometimes going into years—for a simple extension to their existing line?
Helen Goodman
Yes, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and, in a way, that is rather similar to the William Smith example I gave. These are not one-off examples. The Countryside Alliance has pointed out that
“8% of premises in the UK (2.4 million) are connected to lines that are unable to receive broadband speeds above the proposed Universal Service Obligation of 10Mbit/s. Many of these are in rural areas, where about 48% of premises…are unable to receive speeds above 10Mbit/s.”
That is 1.5 million people in the countryside who are unable to receive those speeds.
We all know that the Minister is a very nice man. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] He has helped many of us—faute de mieux—with our particular cases. I agree with what he said yesterday. I think he is right, but I am not wholly sympathetic because he is being forced to intervene as if he were a Minister in a Soviet, centrally-planned economy, on a case-by-case basis. That is because the policy framework set up by this Government, in which I think he had some hand, has not worked properly, and that goes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Angus (Mike Weir).
The Government made the areas for the contracts for the roll-out of broadband too small to be economic for any operators apart from BT to bid for them. That is why BT won all the contracts, maintains a monopoly, faces no competition, feels under no pressure and serves our constituents so badly. Everybody will probably welcome Ofcom’s proposals for changes to the governance of Openreach, particularly better standards of service to small businesses, and compensation when those standards are not met.
As well as keeping the pressure up on BT, which I want the Minister to do, we need him to talk to his colleagues in other Departments because the Government’s policy of digital by default is not serving rural communities very well. I had yet another complacent response from Treasury Ministers, saying that 98% of small and medium-sized enterprises submit their tax online. I bet that is only because they are not doing it at home because they go along to an accountant in a small town some way away and pay that person to do the submission online.
We have the same problem with the Rural Payments Agency. Once again, the Public Accounts Committee has had to look into the problem. I see that the Chair of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is in Westminster Hall this afternoon. He knows that the treatment of farmers by the Rural Payments Agency—expecting them to monitor their cattle movements and supply all the information online—is hopeless. I ask the Minister to go back to his colleagues to get some change of attitude from them.
Jo Churchill
I have been calling broadband access our fourth utility since I joined this place so I was interested last week when my right hon. Friend the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise also called it the fourth utility. As the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) has said, it is interesting that although one Department is pushing for 100% coverage and a fourth utility, perhaps the joined-up thinking across Departments is not there.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
On behalf of the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and as a member of that Committee, which interviewed the chief executive of the Rural Payments Agency yesterday, I hasten to add that although broadband is difficult for our farmers, it is not the only reason why the Rural Payments Agency is not delivering at the moment. I just want that on the record because I would hate the chief executive purely to blame broadband for the delay.
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I have 1,000 sheep farmers in my constituency and I know that to be true.
I want proper service for the small businesses in my constituency, particularly at the Teesdale end, which has been ill-served up to now. There are general lessons to be learned for BT, for Openreach and for the Government, and I hope we can make some progress on those general lessons.
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing the debate. She highlighted an issue of concern to a number of businesses in my constituency. She is right, and there will be a sense of déjà vu, because she could have written my speech for me. As she said, the way in which BT treats its customers sometimes borders on the farcical, to the extent that I sometimes wonder how it survives. To demonstrate my point, I will highlight one case in which I have been involved for many months.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
My hon. Friend asks how BT survives. Does he agree that it does so by having a virtual monopoly? There is no real competition out there, especially in rural areas, so it can treat its customers abysmally.
Gordon Henderson
I could not agree more. My hon. Friend is perfectly right, but even monopolies come a cropper eventually if they do not provide a service.
In my constituency I have a family-run company called Bennett Opie, which manufactures and supplies to the retail trade a range of pickles and preserves. If any hon. Member here likes pickled walnuts, no doubt they will have tried one of Bennett Opie’s products, because it is the only company in this country that makes pickled walnuts. Bennett Opie has two sites in Sittingbourne and, as in the example that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland raised, it wanted to link those sites with an internal computer network. On 21 January 2015, it approached BT to find out the cost of installing a short -haul data services circuit—we both now know what one of those is.
Bennett Opie provided BT with the addresses of its two sites on 26 January 2015, and on 4 February it signed an agreement with BT. It was confirmed on 6 March that a survey for the work had been completed—all was going swimmingly for Bennett Opie. The company was then advised on 9 March that additional civil engineering work was needed at the first site. Bennett Opie signed a contract for that additional work on 13 March, because it was happy to pay. BT confirmed on 19 March that the civil works had been completed and advised of an end of May move between the two sites.
The broadband line was scheduled for installation at the first site on 25 March, but the installation failed. A month later, on 20 April, the broadband line was finally installed successfully at the first site. The full SHDS circuit was predicted to be installed on 22 May, but it failed. The end fibre at the second site was successfully terminated and tested on 26 May, and two days later, on 28 May, the end fibre at the first site was terminated and tested, but it failed. The full completion of the SHDS circuit was due on 29 May, but it failed and a fast track was applied to the order—Bennett Opie hoped that that would speed things up.
The list goes on and on, so I will pick out one or two more events from the subsequent period. BT notified Bennett Opie on 19 August that civil works, which were due to be completed, would be completed by the end of November, extending the installation almost to the end of 2015. On 14 September, BT advised Bennett Opie that plans for the works drawn up from the August site meeting had been submitted to Kent County Council with no response. Kent highways department, on behalf of Kent County Council, confirmed on 21 September that BT had not supplied it with drawings or plans. On 2 October, Kent highways confirmed misinformation and failings by BT relating to the location of works, the status of permits and the time needed for traffic management. In addition, Kent highways advised that the civil works had been rescheduled for 4 November.
On 18 November, BT provided a revised completion date of 27 November and provided details of the permit reference number for the works. Kent highways confirmed on 20 November that the permit number given to Bennett Opie by BT was for the civil works cancelled on 4 November and that BT had not applied for a replacement permit—I could not make this up.
I will skip a few entries. BT confirmed on 8 December that rod and rope engineers were on site and estimated that the tubing work would be completed by close of play that day—whoopee. On 9 December, BT confirmed that engineers were still working on the rod and rope task and that completion was expected that day. BT told Bennett Opie on 15 December that it could not complete the rod and rope task because traffic management was needed in order to access a manhole.
On 17 December, BT gave a traffic management survey date of 21 December, and on 22 December it provided Bennett Opie with details of four permit numbers for the job and confirmed that it would now take place on 18 January 2016, a year after the original agreement.
On 4 January, BT told Bennett Opie that Kent highways required night work to be done on the permit numbers quoted and that the work would slip to 8 February. Bennett Opie, quite understandably, contacted Kent highways, which confirmed that the permit numbers provided were wrong—two of them related to work due to take place in Brighton, which is some way from Sittingbourne, one did not exist on its system and the last was an incomplete number. On 18 January, workmen were observed working at night on the pavement outside the first site with a large reel of plastic tubing. Despite BT’s claim that two-way traffic signals were needed, the van simply parked on the pathway, a “keep right” sign was erected and a small barrier was put around the manhole. No other traffic management was used.
When Bennett Opie contacted Kent highways on 19 January, it confirmed that BT had requested full traffic light control; that the fibre tubing job was completed and ready for the fibre to be blown; that BT could have proceeded faster with the work due to the lack of traffic management actually needed or used; and that night work would not have been prevented during December, so the work could have been done then.
That comedy of errors is symptomatic of the way in which BT treats business customers, but of course it is no laughing matter for companies such as Bennett Opie, which lost business because of BT’s inefficiency. The good news is that Bennett Opie now has a working connection, 15 months after it signed its agreement with BT. As its chairman, Philip Opie, told me, the Great Eastern laid a transatlantic cable in 1865, and it took just one month. So much for the age of technology.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing such an important debate. Broadband is an essential component of modern business life.
As we are all aware, a connected business is a competitive business. Those who cannot connect are left behind in the global race, and we must not let our excellent local businesses fall into that trap. The hon. Lady’s constituency is in many ways similar to my own. Beautiful rolling countryside and rural communities litter the local area and, like me, she has many excellent rural businesses crying out for better broadband. I am delighted that she mentioned a local firm of auctioneers that is suffering. I spent 20 years in that profession before entering this place, so I sympathise enormously with those auctioneers and understand what they are going through.
As a rural constituency, Brecon and Radnorshire faces many challenges, to which I will return later. However, I feel that it is only right to begin by commending the Government for their commitment to the 10 megabits per second universal service obligation. We are often quick to criticise, but that commitment was welcomed across my constituency and will be a great comfort to local people.
I have spoken in many debates on broadband during my short time here in Parliament—
The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)
So have I.
Chris Davies
And when I have spoken, the Minister has always answered at the end with a cheery smile and a great further commitment to rural broadband. However, I believe he would agree that even though he has always spoken well, there is still much more to do.
There are three main issues involved in providing adequate broadband to our rural businesses. The first is information. It is vital that our businesses have access to all the information they need to make an informed decision about their broadband needs. Many businesses that I speak to in my constituency tell me that they cannot get access to the speeds that they need, yet they are unaware of many of the options available to them. Often, few are aware of the possibility of ethernet connections, and many are put off by the extra costs involved, as might be expected. Others are still oblivious to the promise of satellite and wireless broadband, which could satisfy their requirements.
Businesses face a lot of noise about off-the-shelf products that hides alternative options that might benefit them. I therefore recommend that the Government do all that they can to ensure that our businesses are properly informed of all the options available. BT and other providers offer alternative services that might fulfil the needs of those local businesses.
James Cartlidge
Although information is key, does my hon. Friend not accept that sometimes there are physical reasons? With mobile reception, for instance, in some areas there are dips in the land or other factors that cause a “not spot” where there is no signal. I have good mobile signal where I live, and I use mobile broadband. Does my hon. Friend share my hope that the Minister is doing all he can to encourage further support for mobile phone signal as well as broadband in rural areas?
Chris Davies
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, and I am sure the Minister will pick up that point when he sums up later.
When I have spoken to BT and Openreach about the roll-out of broadband, they have outlined many of the challenges involved in getting broadband to local rural businesses. They have told me of challenges in assessing the infrastructure that they need to roll out superfast and ultrafast broadband, and the costs involved in doing so. Although I applaud the Government’s work in assisting the roll-out of broadband to rural communities, I ask that the same concern be given to the roll-out to rural businesses. I am informed that where it is economically not viable to provide broadband to an area, it is down to the local authorities to decide where to procure services. I therefore ask the Government to do all they can to pressure local councils and the Welsh Assembly Government to give the same consideration to business broadband as they do to local communities.
Finally, following on from my previous point, I ask the Minister to consider how we can bring together broadband provision for communities and businesses. It is not economically viable to provide broadband to large areas, such as those in my constituency in rural Wales and on the Welsh marches. Premises for both habitation and business are spread over vast geographical distances, which can make broadband provision extremely expensive. I therefore commend Openreach’s community fibre broadband partnerships, which offer communities the opportunity to part-fund the roll-out of broadband in their local area. The scheme is aimed at giving give local people and businesses the broadband provision they need. I encourage the Minister to take this opportunity to welcome the scheme, as it would help many of my constituents.
That said, the scheme involves challenges. Local communities and businesses have to fund it themselves, paying half up front when work starts and the remainder on completion. Many of my constituents who are local business owners are not able or willing to pay those costs up front. Costs for installation often run to tens of thousands of pounds, and many business owners are concerned that their cash flow will suffer as a result of extensive implementation costs. Will the Minister meet me to discuss alternative funding options, perhaps including a community loan scheme so that our rural businesses and communities can access the connections that they need while avoiding cash flow issues?
Connecting our businesses to broadband is essential in the modern age. Openreach and the Government are working tirelessly to connect our excellent British businesses, but there are significant challenges to provision in rural areas. I implore the Minister and BT not to forget about businesses in rural areas. The risks of doing so are high and detrimental to the rural economy. If rural businesses are forgotten, we could lose a significant portion of our important rural life as businesses seek to move to better-connected cities and towns. That would cost jobs and livelihoods, not to mention deplete our rural communities. My message is simple. I commend the Government for the roll-out thus far, but they must ensure that it happens across not just most of the UK but the whole UK.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Ryan. I thank the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) for introducing this important debate. She has made some important points. It is nice to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies), who made some good points about rural broadband in particular, including that the delivery of the single farm payment is not just about broadband but has a little to do with the Rural Payments Agency as well. It is lovely to see the Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) in his place. I know that he always enjoys my contributions to these debates, so I did not want to disappoint him in this one.
I congratulate the Government and local authorities on all the public money going into delivering broadband into rural areas, but—there is always a “but”—are we getting value for money out of BT? I know that the Minister works hard with BT, but we need to put even more pressure on it to deliver. The problem is that although we may get to 90% or 95%, the last 5% of people, by their very nature, are in the hardest areas to reach, and they are the ones who will put more and more pressure on the system. We see BT doing some areas or part of an area, stymieing anybody else who might come in to deliver broadband there and then not completing the whole area. BT must not only deliver, it must deliver across the whole area.
I also understand from meeting BT recently that it has now decided that it might have access to a satellite. That is marvellous, is it not? That technology has been around for a long time. I welcome the fact that BT is starting to consider different technologies, but BT has a major contract to deliver rural broadband across the country. It should not be thinking only now about rolling out such technologies; they should have been rolled out a long time ago. I have made that point to the Minister many times, and I do not apologise for making it to him again. If BT had more competition, somebody with a red-hot poker behind them—I will not say in what part of their anatomy, because that would be rude —they might actually get on with it. That is the problem that we have.
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
I apologise for cutting off my hon. Friend mid-flow, but as well as having technology and lots of taxpayers’ money, BT needs to get the fundamentals right. I moved offices in the summer, within a BT area in a business park. It was a fairly simple and rudimentary move, and my office went out of its way to ensure that the transfer went seamlessly as far as dates and times went, and got a special licence so we could access the property before we took possession. There were days of disruption to the phone line and the BT service, which inconvenienced my constituents and cost a lot of taxpayers’ money to put right, yet when I wrote a letter to Sir Michael Rake, the chairman of BT, on 5 August, I had no reply. Arrogance and aloofness will not be solved by taxpayers’ money.
Neil Parish
I could not agree with my hon. Friend more, because that is again symptomatic of the fact that although BT does not have a total monopoly, by its very size and scale it has a virtual monopoly. BT has played on that over the years and is still playing on it now. Hopefully the chairman of BT will hear my hon. Friend’s contribution today.
Neil Parish
Hopefully he will reply to my hon. Friend. Was that letter from 5 August?
Neil Parish
That really emphasises my point that competition is necessary.
I am also very disappointed that Openreach has not been detached from BT. BT has so much by having Openreach—it has so much of the cables, the infrastructure, the fibre optics and really everything across the country for delivery of broadband. So, BT holds all the aces. Is it truly giving other companies the opportunity to gain access to its infrastructure? I suspect not. It also has all sorts of fantastic lawyers and wonderful people around the place who make it very difficult for other companies to intervene, and that is the problem.
As the Minister knows, the second contract for delivering broadband across Devon and Somerset was not awarded because it was not value for money. Therefore, we are now going out again with a further contract. I hope there is a real competition for that. Although it is perhaps easier in some respects to deliver broadband across the whole of Devon and Somerset in one contract, if the contract is so big BT will probably be the only company to bid for it again. However, if we have smaller contracts, other companies can come in and deliver broadband across places such as the Blackdown hills and in villages such as Upottery and Ruishton—all those villages across the Blackdown hills and on to Exmoor, which are difficult to reach. So I have still got many more people to be connected.
The point has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire and others that broadband is the fourth utility and we really need it for all our rural businesses, including our farms. All of us in Westminster Hall today who represent constituencies with areas of rurality are amazed—are we not?—when we go around our constituencies and discover the types of businesses that are there. It is not just the farms. There might be businesses manufacturing or designing wings for Airbus, or other such things, where they would be least expected. However, the only way that those businesses can prosper is by ensuring that broadband is there and connected. Broadband is key.
I now turn to what happened recently in an area of my constituency at Dunkeswell and Luppitt—
Helen Goodman
Before the hon. Gentleman gives a specific example, could he enlighten us on the so-called “childish turf war” between the Government Digital Service, the Rural Payments Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which meant the payments to farmers were down from 90% to under 40% at the end of December 2015? He might be able to tell us a little about that.
Neil Parish
I hope I will not be ruled out of order, because that is going a little off the topic of the debate. However, I can enlighten the hon. Lady. We had the head of the RPA in Parliament yesterday, and obviously what happened—to put it in layman’s terms—is that DEFRA created a system that was not entirely compatible with what the RPA was doing. We tried to drill down yesterday on the issue: at what stage did the head of the RPA realise that, and at what stage did he intervene? Was there a breakdown in communication? Was there a clash of personalities? Yes, there was; there is no doubt about that. The trouble is that whatever Department or whatever system was to blame it is the farmers who pay the price, because they are still waiting for that payment.
In fairness to the RPA, it has speeded up its operation. However, what we are mindful of is that we do not want this situation to carry on as things did in 2004, when the payments were bad for 2005, 2006 and 2007, and it took 10 years and more to put matters right. We want to make sure that within one year the situation is absolutely right. There are people farming on the commons, and other farmers. Why should they have to wait so long for their payment when the problems are down to others?
As I say, we had the head of the RPA in yesterday and he was trying to say, “Well, it’s this Department, or that Department or the other Department.” However, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland says, if the farmers are not getting their payment, they are not interested in which Government Department is failing. We must deliver.
Jo Churchill
Before my hon. Friend is asked to come back to the topic of the debate, may I just draw a comparison? No matter who is to blame—whether it is BT, or any other company or persons—the people who suffer are our businesses, and that is the point that we want to address here today. The Government are doing good work. Suffolk County Council is hitting its targets; indeed, it got an extra payment for doing that. But the key word that my hon. Friend used was “communication”. I had a very robust conversation on Monday with BT’s directors—in fact, it was incredibly robust—and I pointed out that if they cannot communicate with their customers, their businesses and so on, they should not call BT a communications company.
Neil Parish
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which brings me back on track. She is right about communication, and I will say a little more about that in a minute.
The point that my hon. Friend also rightly makes is that broadband is absolutely essential for our businesses. If we have a car, a piece of machinery or anything else that is not working, we can swap that car or that piece of machinery for another make that delivers what we want it to deliver. The problem that our constituents have is that there is no other “make” out there that can necessarily deliver broadband. Again, that is why BT needs more competition and why it has to step up to the plate.
Despite all my rhetoric I am not actually anti-BT, but I want BT to deliver. I know that the Minister is working very hard on this issue. I have urged him before to apply his iron fist to make sure that BT delivers, because it is not our money—it is our taxpayers’ money. It does not matter whether it comes from Government or councils; in the end, it comes from our individual taxpayers, who are often the very same people who are not getting connected to broadband. Therefore, they have paid for broadband but they are not getting it, so they have a double whammy.
We have made that point this afternoon and I know that the Minister must probably think, “Oh, yet another debate on broadband.” But once people are connected to broadband we will not have these debates, because people will not be concerned. While these debates continue, naturally he must respect that.
My final point is about some businesses in Dunkeswell and Luppitt, which are the sites of old aerodromes. They could not access broadband for three weeks, because the exchange went down. Exchanges can go down, but I will now explain the compensation that those businesses have been offered. Many businesses in my constituency have been affected by poor internet and broadband speeds; some of them have had no internet at all for a lengthy time, which is unthinkable from day to day. Companies such as Assinder Turnham Ltd, a property and construction consultancy, Lynch Motor Company Ltd, Dolly Diamond, and Flymoore Aircraft Engineering were all without internet for as long as three weeks. I completely understand that a catastrophic fault at a BT exchange can and will happen from time to time, but when it happens, what is done to compensate and help the businesses that are left on their knees?
I will take Flymoore Aircraft Engineering as an example. It is a local business in my constituency that deals with aircraft respraying and engineering. It lost broadband from 25 January for three weeks. Flymoore could not do its VAT returns, and so spoke to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Flymoore asked BT for evidence to provide to HMRC, but was told that it would cost £10 to get something called a work report. This company was without broadband for three weeks, but it ended up paying BT for the lack of service. It could not pay its staff or order parts or supplies for aircraft, and it did not receive new orders for work and so lost vast amounts of money. Flymoore could not access the European Aviation Safety Authority’s website, which has all the mandatory legal requirements for aircraft safety. Because of that, it could not finish ongoing jobs. It could not access repair information or manuals online. It needed those instructions to physically carry out the maintenance on the aircraft.
At the very least, we would expect substantial compensation for the serious loss of business. Flymoore had a financial buffer to deal with market uncertainty, but virtually all of that has been wiped out, and the business is struggling financially. BT did not initially offer compensation, but Flymoore has since managed to get £25 in compensation and three months’ free internet. What sort of company offers that level of compensation? If there was competition in the marketplace, BT would have to offer proper compensation.
I will not go into all the details of the other businesses affected, but interestingly they have all been offered different amounts of compensation and different lengths of free internet access. There seems to be nothing in place to compensate for the types of losses that the businesses have had. It is not only about delivering broadband in the hardest hit areas, but about ensuring that when the broadband connection is there, it is constant. If it breaks down for a long period, those businesses need adequate compensation. What they have been offered is pathetic.
BT needs to step up to the plate, deliver broadband and compensate people when they do not receive it. My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) gave us a huge catalogue of issues with a company trying for more than a year to get broadband onsite. We want, and we have, a dynamic economy, but we will only improve it further by having good delivery of broadband across the whole country.
Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I am pleased to appear under your chairmanship this afternoon, Ms Ryan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing this important debate.
As others have said, broadband is now an essential tool for business. I represent a mainly rural constituency, and there are two essential aspects to doing business in such an area in the modern world: broadband that allows businesses to reach a much wider market through the use of the internet, and a reliable universal delivery and uplift service. I have spoken in this place on many occasions about my concerns on the latter, given the privatisation of Royal Mail. I will not go into those concerns again, but will concentrate on the provision of broadband and the frankly huge problems that many local businesses have in acquiring and keeping a reliable service.
I should say that this is not an attack on the Government. I fully recognise that the UK Government, the Scottish Government, local authorities and Highlands and Islands Enterprise have put a substantial sum of money into projects to extend broadband coverage to all areas of the UK, but real problems remain, many of which lie at the door of BT, which effectively has a private monopoly on broadband provision in many areas.
I said that my constituency is rural, but it is not remote. The main Dundee to Aberdeen road runs through the heart of Angus. Fibre broadband is being installed in our towns and is making a real difference, but the problem is the urban-rural divide. People do not have to go far out of town to find that they are not getting any sort of reliable broadband, or indeed any service at all. Among the reasons for that are the antiquated nature of the infrastructure, the inability of small exchanges to cope with the demand for lines, the old copper lines that are still in use and the distance of customers from the exchanges. Broadband now needs to be seen as a universal obligation and, as the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) called it, the fourth utility. BT has a private monopoly. It is a huge multinational company that is in the process of taking over one of the major mobile companies—there is another story there about the “not spots” in many of our constituencies—but it must step up to the plate and ensure that it provides broadband service to our constituents.
The UK Government have brought in the universal service obligation, but that only commits to raising the internet speed to 10 megabits per second by the end of this Parliament, and that is not sufficient. There is also a concern in many areas of Scotland that the commitment promises only 95% coverage by population. Much of the remaining 5% will inevitably be in rural areas and, in particular, such areas as the highlands and islands of Scotland. Those are inevitably the most difficult areas to reach with broadband services.
As other Members have, I would like to illustrate the problems faced by local businesses with an example. My constituent Stephen Appleton has a business, Angus Horticulture Ltd, which is based in Guthrie. That is a rural part of my constituency, but it is not remote; it is situated between the main towns of Arbroath and Forfar. I was first contacted by Mr Appleton at the end of July last year. At that point he had been in the unsustainable position of trying to run his business without the ability to take and process incoming calls since 1 June, following the completion by BT Openreach of the contracted works at his premises.
Before contacting my office, Mr Appleton had tried to deal with the matter himself by taking it to the highest level in BT. He had been told that there were
“multiple sections of underground cable which are faulty and Traffic Management will be required to re attend to the fault further”.
It turned out, however, that despite the fact that there were multiple failures, the traffic management had been booked for only one day. It will come as no surprise to Members that that did not deal with the multiple faults that BT knew existed. He was then told that the site had to be re-surveyed by Lux, the company that hires out temporary traffic lights, because traffic management was required in different locations. I do not know about you, Ms Ryan, but I would have assumed that if BT knew there were multiple faults, it could have joined the dots and worked out that it would need to work at multiple locations, but apparently that was beyond BT.
Even before consulting my office, Mr Appleton had been dealing with the chairman and CEO of business at BT, who had previously prompted the well-named dig and auxiliary team. Mr Appleton believed that the complaint had been escalated to the highest level, but it appeared to have little effect. I took up the case with BT, but still the matter ground on. By 7 August, Mr Appleton reported that he was “haemorrhaging business”. Openreach had by this time acknowledged an entitlement to compensation, but Mr Appleton was in the surreal positon of being told that nothing could be done until service had been restored. One could have forgiven him for thinking he had strayed into a Kafka novel or a “Monty Python” sketch.
The delay in effecting repairs, despite the involvement of cohorts of BT and Openreach staff and engineers, was apparently down to the fact that the problem required traffic management. By early August, that had taken 10 weeks to organise, during the course of which BT had apparently lost the form, which caused huge delays. It appeared to be beyond the wit of BT Openreach to get engineers and traffic management in place simultaneously. A divert set up as a temporary measure also failed.
Finally, on 17 August, BT Openreach managed to get everyone together and fix the lines. Hallelujah! Three weeks later, the system was down again. That happened again in January, which apparently was a fault “further into the network”. That incident required another escalation to the director’s office before a repair was effected. On 1 March, Mr Appleton again contacted my office to say that the service had gone off. It came back on the next day, but was incredibly slow to non-existent.
As Members can tell from that timeline, the problem has been ongoing for nine months. That is a complete and utter scandal in an age when broadband is a vital component of the business environment, especially in rural areas.
As other Members have said, broadband should be a true universal obligation. BT Openreach is effectively a private monopoly; the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) called it a virtual monopoly. There might be competition in major urban areas, but there is none in rural areas. There is nowhere else for people to go to get the service, so BT can treat customers as it likes. As Members on both sides of the Chamber have described, BT cares little for the effects on business of its complete incompetence in dealing speedily with repairs, and we have heard—this is true for my constituents, too—how BT blames the local authority and everybody else without taking on any blame itself.
The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland and others spoke about more money being put in, but the taxpayer has already paid BT Openreach a fortune for the broadband network. We should not be looking to punt in yet more taxpayers’ money; we should be telling BT that it has to earn the right to run the roll-out. It has an effective monopoly, so it must put in some of its own money. BT must step up to the plate and do what is necessary to ensure a reliable system for all consumers in the United Kingdom.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing yet another debate on broadband. I am sure that the Minister needs no notes to respond to these debates.
We heard from a number of Members about the problems in their constituencies. In an intervention, the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) read out a response that suggested BT was trying to distance itself from Openreach, which is incredible. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) said that his constituents had dug their own channel in an effort to expedite the situation themselves. That is taking things to an extraordinary degree, but it shows the lack of service, particularly for people in rural areas, although I stress that the problems are not just in rural areas.
The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) illustrated very eloquently the chaos suffered by one business in her constituency. When the line was reallocated, the business lost its BT broadband connection. When it came back, the speed was reduced and the gentleman was forced to travel 25 miles to another office. The impact of something like that on a small business is difficult to measure.
The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) read out a catalogue of failures over a long timeline. It is difficult to understand how BT can be so incompetent and fail in its duties so frequently. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies) highlighted the problems for rural people and called for a truly national roll-out. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) said that by definition the hardest-to-reach areas are rural, and underlined that by discussing the ignominy of companies having to pay BT to get an explanation of BT’s failure so that they can get compensation. That is hard to stomach for small businesses.
The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) intervened to underline how arrogant and aloof BT is when it comes to the needs of people who are not receiving broadband, especially to businesses. That was also underlined by the hon. Member for Angus (Mike Weir), who discussed BT’s failure to carry out repairs. Because BT has a monopoly in his area, it does not respond readily to his constituents’ concerns.
The Federation of Small Businesses has referred to broadband as the fourth utility, as have many Members today. As broadband becomes ubiquitous and ever more vital for doing business, it becomes more important that businesses can access broadband. It is vital for all businesses, not just those in the digital economy. It is ludicrous that the Government have not been able to provide what has become the fourth utility for so many people.
The Government’s own broadband impact assessment states:
“It is now widely accepted that the availability and adoption of affordable broadband plays an important role in increasing productivity”,
and that access to faster broadband is worth £17 billion to the economy. It goes on to explain how better infrastructure increases productivity by
“supporting the development of new, more efficient, business models, enabling business process re-engineering to improve the efficiency and management of labour intensive jobs, and enabling increased international trade and collaborative innovation”.
Broadband also allows more people to work, or to work in different ways.
The failure to roll out broadband is increasing the problems for inner cities in the face of demands for public services and more infrastructure. A fully rolled out broadband infrastructure would mean that businesses could relocate, or more readily remain in rural areas to conduct their business. If, as the impact assessment shows, something is worth £17 billion to the economy, surely it is a false economy for the Government not to ensure that it is rolled out properly.
The European Commission set a target of universal broadband by 2013, yet we are still not there. When the Labour Government left office in 2010, they left behind a fully funded plan for basic broadband to be delivered to all within two years, and superfast broadband to 90% by 2017. The remaining 10% would have been covered by mobile broadband. We are falling further and further behind our competitors. Australia, a huge landmass, is aiming for 100 megabits per second for 93% of premises by 2021; South Korea will have 1 gigabit by 2017; and Ireland has recently increased its average broadband speed by 10%. Yet in the last quarter, the average speed in the UK has fallen by 3.7%.
The coalition Government designed a fragmented and monopolistic superfast broadband roll-out that handed £1.7 billion of taxpayers’ money to one company to roll out broadband: BT. Four years later, many homes are still waiting. Incredibly, the Government have missed their targets on several occasions. In a Westminster Hall debate yesterday, the Minister raised several of his own frustrations with the service. We have debated broadband on 45 occasions in the past five years. The Minister has answered questions on the subject at every Culture, Media and Sport questions I can recall—a total of 63 times in the past five years. There has been a constant barrage of attacks from Members on both sides of the House about the quality of the service.
The Minister said in yesterday’s debate: “Openreach must do better.”
Clive Efford
He continued:
“As the Minister responsible, I find it particularly frustrating that I have to step in to sort out these problems.”
Clive Efford
Well, there must be an enormous number of problems because quite a few have been mentioned today that he has not got around to. He went on:
“Why has Openreach not put in place a hit squad to deal with some of the more prominent complaints that come from MPs?”—
Joan Ryan (in the Chair)
Order. Minister, will you address these points in a few moments when the hon. Gentleman sits down?
Clive Efford
I shall just finish my point. The Minister has been in post for nearly six years. Why, when he is answering a debate that he has responded to on 45 previous occasions, is he still asking why Openreach has not put in place a hit squad to deal with MPs’ complaints? Perhaps the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds is going to tell us.
Jo Churchill
No, I am not going to tell the hon. Gentleman. I put that and another question to BT on Monday, and it replied that it now no longer uses agency workers to do the difficult work; it now uses its own people to do the work that needs programming, which should sort out the fact that it cannot programme that work to sort it out for the customers. It strikes me that a company of its size, which consistently fails and, by its own admission to me, has the wrong people doing the wrong job at the wrong time, needs some assistance in the rear end department.
Clive Efford
Again, the hon. Lady very eloquently illustrates one of the problems that we have with Openreach.
The Minister gave his own example:
“I dealt with a factory that had been built to be ready to open specifically on the basis of when Openreach was going to connect it, but Openreach was already a year behind schedule. That cost that factory many tens of thousands of pounds. It continues to baffle me why it cannot get its act together and sort out these prominent problems.”
It is beginning to baffle us why he cannot sort out these problems with Openreach.
“I had to intervene on new builds. When a housing development is being put together, one would have thought it was the most obvious thing in the world that the people buying the houses are likely to be relatively young and likely to have children, and therefore likely to want, in this day and age, fast broadband connections. However, it took me a year to 18 months to bang together the heads of BT and the house builders to get an agreement.”
Clive Efford
I sincerely hope you will. If it takes the Minister 18 months, imagine what it is like for constituency MPs.
The Minister was obviously in full flow, because he threw in one or two other items:
“I, for one, would love them to get rid of this landline rental charge that they put on our bills. They put on their adverts a nice, big, juicy low price for broadband, and then an asterisk and a line saying, ‘By the way, you’ll have to pay £25 a month for landline rental.’”
Is that a statement of policy, or just the Minister throwing something into the air?
Mr Vaizey
Ms Ryan, you quite rightly admonished me for trying to respond to the Opposition spokesman from a sedentary position, but it is frustrating. Yesterday, I joked that, because of the lack of an Opposition policy, I would give an Opposition speech, but I did not expect the Opposition spokesman literally to read it out word for word the next day. Can we perhaps hear what the Opposition propose?
Clive Efford
The hon. Gentleman is the Minister. If he wants to dodge the arguments by posing as an Opposition Member, fine, but that is to run up the white flag and admit defeat.
The Minister said:
“I hope that the Advertising Standards Authority will crack down on how providers advertise their speeds. At the moment, if only 10% of customers are receiving the advertised speed, in the eyes of the ASA that is supposed to be okay. I totally accept that the ASA does a good job—it is a great example of self-regulation—but it really needs to go further on that. In my humble opinion, at least 75% of people should be getting the speeds that the broadband providers are advertising.”—[Official Report, 9 March 2016; Vol. 607, c. 139-140WH.]
Is that another policy statement? He is the Minister, so he really should not put such things into speeches if he does not intend to deliver them.
The Minister derided the previous Labour Government’s commitment to provide 2 megabits per second by 2012, but the Government are not delivering that minimum standard. Superfast broadband is 24 megabits per second, but the Government have moved the goalposts several times on it. It was 90% by the end of 2015; then it was 90% by the end of 2016; then it was 95% by the end of 2016; and now it is 95% by the end of 2017. When the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was conducting an investigation into rural broadband, BT told it:
“it is there or thereabouts. It may end up being in 2018”.
The Committee pointed out in its 2015 report on rural broadband that it is by no means certain that the Government will even meet the phase 2 target. BT let the cat out of the bag: the Government are really behind the times.
Let me finish by asking the Minister a few questions. Two weeks ago, we cautiously welcomed Ofcom’s strategic review of digital communications—a plan for sorting out the mess created by six years of failed policy—as a step in the right direction. It mainly proposed two things: allowing rivals to access BT’s ducts and poles to increase competition, and addressing the issues relating to service standards. Ofcom will introduce automatic compensation for customers and businesses when things go wrong. It is good news that broadband, landline and mobile customers will automatically receive refunds for any loss or reduction in service, which hon. Members have spoken about today. Openreach will be subject to tougher minimum requirements to repair those faults and install new lines more quickly. As hon. Members indicated, that is very welcome indeed.
What will the Minister do if those proposals are not met? How will he ensure that those targets are achieved? For example, Openreach might decide to fix easier and quicker faults at the expense of some of the ones that have been described today. Ofcom will introduce performance tables on quality of service to identify the best and worst operators on a range of performance measures so customers can shop around in confidence. Will the Minister tell us how he intends to ensure that that is achieved? How long does he think it will take for the market to become more competitive? What will he do if it does not work? Are all the measures still subject to further consultation and debate? Ofcom will need the Government’s political cover to make that happen, but the Secretary of State’s mind is currently elsewhere. Will the Minister assure us that addressing the issues that hon. Members raised this afternoon is a priority for him and his Department?
The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)
I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to this important debate under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I thank the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) for securing it.
Halfway through the debate, I began to wonder whether we were taking part in a kind of Sport Relief charity function, because we had exactly the same debate yesterday. To deal with all hon. Members’ complaints about Openreach, I propose a 24-hour debateathon. I am particularly pleased that I am the last man standing.
Yesterday, we had the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Calum Kerr), who is not the Scottish National party’s Culture, Media and Sport spokesman, but its Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesman: he worked for a telecoms company for 20 years so the SNP sent him along. He has not made it today. We also had the official Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). She has not made it today; she sent the sports spokesman instead. But I am still here, still standing and happy to take questions.
This may not be a Sport Relief event, but it is a mass therapy session. Many hon. Friends and hon. Members came here to relieve themselves of the sheer frustration of having to deal with Openreach on behalf of their constituents. As I have said on many occasions—well, certainly yesterday—as a constituency MP, I also have to deal with that frustration.
The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) mentioned the example of a factory that I cited. I was, in fact, talking about a factory in the constituency of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland—I had forgotten that she would be leading this debate. As she knows full well, I have been closely involved in trying to sort out that problem. There is no defending what happened to that factory. I am not here to defend it, because I do not work for Openreach. It is absolutely astonishing that a business would spend £30,000 up front with a supplier such as Openreach, build its warehouse based entirely on the belief that it was dealing with a reputable company that would deliver what had been contracted for, and then find—
Mr Vaizey
No, I will not give way. My hon. Friend spoke at length on the issues and I am not giving way to him.
The company built a factory based entirely on the expectation that the service would be delivered, only to find that it was not delivered—Openreach said that it had a problem with blocked ducts. If people are paid £30,000 to deliver a business line, the least they can do is to get out there and look at the ducts, in particular if the order has come in six months before they are meant to deliver it. There is no defence.
I freely admit that it is frustrating to deal with such issues. I wonder sometimes how I could distract attention from them. In fact, I asked the Prime Minister the other day, “Can we have a referendum on something? I am suffering all these attacks from my colleagues, please can we have a referendum on something like our European membership as that might distract them for a few months before they come back to the issue?” But it has not distracted them—we are still debating Openreach’s failures.
The Opposition have contributed a great deal to telecoms and telecoms policy. I read this morning that one Opposition Member was fined £5,000 by the Information Commissioner for making 35,000 recorded calls urging people to nominate him as the London mayoral candidate, which he failed to achieve. But he has added to BT’s coffers!
We are still waiting for a broadband roll-out policy from Labour, but I am grateful to the hon. Member for Eltham for reminding us that Labour’s target was 90% superfast broadband by 2017, which we achieved by the end of 2015. So we are two years ahead of what Labour promised with its unfunded commitment when it was in government and before it left us with a wrecked economy and such long-term plans. I sometimes dream that Labour won the 2010 general election and that a Labour MP might now be having to stand in my place and explain why his Government had still not got to 90% and why they were still going to wait for two years to do so. We have never changed our targets; we will reach 95% by the end of 2017.
I sometimes dream, too, of the SNP being the official Opposition—I know I should not say that, because it is almost blasphemous, but the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk yesterday was entirely reasonable in pointing out the complexities and difficulties of the programme. I also commend the hon. Member for Angus (Mike Weir) for the reasonable points he made today about the problem not necessarily being wholly a Government one.
I want to revise slightly what I said yesterday, because it is important to make two points. First, when I complain about Openreach’s customer service, I should also praise the thousands of people who work for Openreach. They do an extremely good job in difficult circumstances. They are probably dealing with quite antiquated systems, which have not been modernised, and certainly the engineers who do the work on the ground are formidable people—I have met a few of them, when they have been enabling cabinets in my constituency. They work in all weathers and often unpleasant conditions. I want to put on record my gratitude to the thousands of men and women who work for Openreach in delivering roll-out.
Secondly, there is a distinction between poor customer service by Openreach and the roll-out of superfast broadband. The roll-out is an engineering project. We like to give Openreach a hard time, but it was the only one that stepped up to the plate to bid properly for the contracts—it might well be thinking that it made a rod for its own back—and, in terms of the roll-out, Openreach has hit every target. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) wondered earlier whether it was value for money: as he well knows, thanks to the clawback mechanisms in the contract, we have achieved £130 million. In fact, there is considerable underspend on the contract as well, so we will probably be able to use existing money to go further than 95%.
As far as I am concerned, Openreach is full of very good people doing a very good job, and the roll-out of infrastructure is going extremely well. In this debate, we are dealing with issues that I will not say are beyond my control, but that should be laid squarely at the door of Openreach. In yesterday’s debate I said that Openreach has the lowest levels of customer satisfaction, just below TalkTalk, according to Ofcom surveys. It is important to remember that no communications provider is perfect. I am sure that if we looked in our inboxes we would all find complaints from our constituents possibly about TalkTalk, Virgin, Sky or even some smaller companies providing business broadband. No company is perfect.
James Cartlidge
BT has a monopoly on that front. I have never had a complaint about any other company apart from BT.
Mr Vaizey
Well, I have, but perhaps I live in a different world.
Having said that, I find it frustrating that I am sometimes doing the job of the chief executive or directors of Openreach. I find it frustrating that I have to broker a deal between Openreach and house builders to provide what should be provided in any common sense view—when building a brand-new housing development, surely that is the time to lay brand-new technology that people will expect over the next 20 years. I find it frustrating that I have to deal with a legion of complaints that are the result, frankly, of bad management and bad customer service. I sometimes feel that someone in Openreach loathes me so much that they sent out a memo saying, “Please give me the address of every single MP’s office, so we can make sure that every time they try to get a phone line, it will take three months.” At least four MPs have complained about that to me.
Clive Efford
Given that the Government have provided so much money to BT Openreach, will the Minister accept that the proper checks and balances were not put in place to ensure that it delivered on its contractual obligations?
Mr Vaizey
No, I will not accept that, because the hon. Gentleman is missing the point I made earlier about the distinction to be made. The physical roll-out of infrastructure is going well, and more than 4 million homes that would not otherwise have got superfast broadband now have it. That job has been done extremely well. What frustrates me is the poor customer service, which I hear about again and again from my colleagues. That is why we have had two debates in two days. I am really trying to get the message to Openreach to sort that out.
Damian Green
I spent several years as the front person for the UK Border Agency, so I have every sympathy with the Minister having to be the front person for Openreach. Has he reflected on the policy implication? Even though the roll-out, in effect, of fibre to the cabinet has been a success—as he said—that is still not providing an adequate service for millions of households and businesses throughout the country. Therefore, at some stage, a Government will have to bite the bullet and say, “We actually need fibre to the premises, however expensive it will be.”
Mr Vaizey
My right hon. Friend is moving me on to the next stage of infrastructure roll-out of broadband, but I agree, whether that is fibre to premises or new technology such as G.fast. I have talked about the need for a gigabit Britain and, as far as I am concerned, we are reaching the end of the superfast broadband roll-out programme and now we need to look ahead. We are not complacent: we need to go for a gigabit Britain.
To make things easier for people to build such networks, we will reform the electronic communications code, so that laying fibre across land becomes cheaper; we will reform planning so that mobile operators—as mentioned by one of my hon. Friends—may build bigger masts to get better signals; and we will work with Ofcom on a digital communications review, which will open up BT’s poles and ducts. I completely agree with those who say that it is important to follow up and to ensure that the practical implementation of the regulations actually happens. The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills also announced a review of business broadband, which is at the very heart of what colleagues have been talking about.
Jo Churchill
Will the Minister bring domestic and business sides together, where possible? As he knows, the Home Builders Federation rolled out its programme in my constituency, in Woolpit. Businesses in that village cannot get adequate supply, which is crazy.
Mr Vaizey
I agree with my hon. Friend. That should form part of our business broadband review—that we need to put in place proper procedures to ensure, in particular when business parks are being built or extended, that communications providers know that and therefore use the opportunity to put in place the new technology that everyone wants to see. The infrastructure programme, however, is going well.
I should also mention that, in the digital communications review, Ofcom has proposals for automatic compensation to householders and businesses where communications providers fall down in what they are providing. I am extremely keen to see that implemented as soon as possible. So we will make it easier to build infrastructure and to use Openreach’s network, and we will bring in provisions to ensure that when Openreach and other communications providers fall down with consumers, consumers get compensated.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered BT broadband provision for local businesses.