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The Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure (Julia Lopez)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ali. I hope that my voice holds up today. I have done my test and thankfully I do not have covid. However, I have a very tickly throat, so I hope that I do not have a conference whatever-it-was—2018?—moment. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for securing this incredibly important debate, and I am grateful to other hon. Members for their useful and heartfelt contributions.
Improving digital connectivity for everybody across the UK is a priority for our Government, for all the reasons that have been cited. If we knew before the pandemic that digital services, infrastructure and skills were important, our experience during covid has really deepened that understanding, in ways that I do not think any of us could have imagined. The moving of so much economic activity online, as well as so much of our social lives, and even schooling and healthcare services, in the past 18 months to two years means that the challenges arising from any existing digital divide have been amplified. And just as our eyes are open to the huge opportunities presented by a more digital world, as set out by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), we have to be aware of the risk that people who do not have the confidence, the capability or the tools to access that world could be excluded from those opportunities. So, I am very grateful to hon. Members here in Westminster Hall today for highlighting that risk. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) really brought the issue to life in his contribution; I must say it was an excellent first contribution by him in Westminster Hall.
In my previous role, in the Cabinet Office, I looked closely at how we could improve online Government services for the citizen and tried to put accessibility, inclusion, trust and good customer services at the heart of the system that we are designing for a new Government app. A lot of work has also been going on about how easy it is to fill out forms online and how to streamline things on gov.uk, so I hope that reassures the right hon. Member for East Ham that I will want to apply similar principles to my new role as the Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure. I want to know how our interventions are working on the ground for people. Are we getting people the connectivity they need? Are we equipping them with the right digital skills? Are we creating the right environment for companies to deliver? Are we putting resources in the right places?
There is a lot of work to do here and we are ambitious in what we want to achieve. But as we have discovered here today, there will be challenges along the way, which is why debates like this one are helpful to me as a Minister, because they give me intelligence about what is really going on on the ground, rather than just the official view.
On the pandemic, of course there were challenges, but the superfast infrastructure that was already there has held up pretty well. Huge amounts of work were done between telecom providers and Government on social tariffs and I want to try to build on some of that progress, because there was excellent working between some of the providers—thousands of laptops were provided.
In terms of isolation, when I spoke to some of the charities in my constituency, particularly those for disabled people, I found that they were able to innovate and introduce new ways of connecting with the people whom they were serving with quiz nights, meetings and different kinds of outreach which, for some people, was a new and beneficial addition to their life—notwithstanding all the other problems of isolation that, obviously, the pandemic brought.
Addressing the digital divide means that we make sure that everybody in the UK can access and use digital communication services. That means getting the right infrastructure in place to deliver connectivity for everybody. It means making digital skills training available to everybody who needs it. I will set out what we are doing in each of those areas. Some of those issues are covered by other ministerial colleagues, so I will take away the things that I am unable to cover in this debate. I also assure hon. Members that meetings are taking place between DCMS Ministers and ministerial colleagues in DFE and DWP, because we think there is a lot of overlap here and we need to get this policy right.
On connectivity and infrastructure, we are in the midst of the biggest digital build in UK history in the form of Project Gigabit, which aims for nationwide gigabit coverage. One of my concerns in this area is whether people understand why they should want gigabit speeds over superfast speeds—a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon. It is important to say that Project Gigabit is as much about future-proofing against the needs of tomorrow as it is about giving constituents lightning-fast speeds today. As we start to understand and anticipate a world where more and more applications depend on having reliable digital infrastructure, it is important that we have the highest quality infrastructure in place.
The best way to achieve gigabit coverage and eliminate the digital divide is to create a competition-friendly environment where deployment is commercially viable, and then to focus Government funds on that 20% of the country where we think commercial deployment is unlikely. This approach is working. In January 2019, 6% of premises had access to gigabit-capable networks. That figure is now 58% thanks to our thriving market of 80 providers. We think that will reach 60% by the end of this year, but we are targeting a minimum of 85% gigabit coverage by 2025.
To address the right hon. Member for East Ham on our targets, we have been transparent that delivering nationwide gigabit coverage by 2025 will be challenging. There are various different issues, including skills, where some of the commercial roll-out means that there is a challenge in trying to incentivise providers to want to provide for the very difficult, hard-to-reach areas. Our manifesto explicitly acknowledged how difficult it will be, but 85% coverage would still be a huge jump on 2019, when the coverage was 6%. That is not the limit of our ambitions and we want to keep going so that we get as close to 100% as possible by 2025. The Prime Minister is extremely passionate about that target and we want to make sure that he is not disappointed.
By listening to industry and working closely with Ofcom, we have made a number of policy and regulatory changes to stimulate the market, including instructing Ofcom to create a pro-investment, pro-competition regulatory system for telecoms. We are introducing a 130% super deduction on qualifying plants and machinery investments, which means that millions more homes are expected to receive coverage without any Government subsidy.
We want to change the law to make it easier to connect premises and blocks of flats. We are piloting innovative new approaches to streetworks, which we think will speed up build by 10% to 40%. We are working with industry to set up a gigabit take-up advisory group with the Confederation of British Industry and the Federation of Small Businesses, so that we can increase consumer demand for gigabit and incentivise further investment from the private sector.
Stephen Timms
I am listening with great interest to what the Minister is saying. She has explained a little about why the target was downgraded from, I think, initially 100% fibre by 2025 to 85% now. Surely it would be possible to do better if more of the funding was available earlier, rather than much of the £5 billion being postponed until after 2025. Could it not be brought forward again?
Julia Lopez
It is all part of the Treasury gating process. The money is available, but there needs to be confidence of success. We will have to iron out some difficulties in the way that we procure contracts, and learn some of the lessons that my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon referred to in relation to the superfast roll-out and other parts of the gigabit coverage. There will be a bit of testing to see what works best before the Treasury is confident to release the next funds. However, the funds are available. I am happy to explore that further with the right hon. Gentleman if he would like more details.
Since 2018, we have provided gigabit coverage to more than 600,000 rural premises, so that the same commercial and other opportunities reliant on connectivity can be provided for those living in the countryside as those living in towns.
Chi Onwurah
On the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) about the holding factors in rolling out superfast broadband, the Minister mentioned skills. I understand that the skills necessary to dig up so many roles may be limited at the moment. What is she doing to increase the number of skilled engineers needed for the roll-out?
Julia Lopez
That is one of the issues that we are talking to the DWP about. We are also working very closely with the likes of Openreach and others to try and get that skills pipeline going, because it will be critical to the success of the roll-out.
Those 600,000 rural premises are just the start. In Devon and Somerset, 66,000 further premises now have gigabit coverage through the gigabit-capable delivery as part of the superfast broadband programme. I have been pressing officials on some of the previous challenges of that programme further to discussions that I have had in the Lobby with my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon.
We have a number of interventions to address the part of the build that we think the market will not cover, including broadband vouchers. We are funding full-fibre networks at 1,084 schools that were previously stuck in the digital slow lane, and we want to connect 6,800 public buildings by the end of the year, including hospitals, GP surgeries and fire stations. That was another important point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon.
We are also bringing forward procurements to provide coverage to as many of the remaining premises as possible. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West raised some incredibly important points about some of the issues that the Public Accounts Committee looked at in relation to procurement, which are very much on my mind. I want to make sure we get this right, but there will be challenges.
The first procurement for Cumbria got under way last month, and further procurements will begin shortly for areas including Cambridgeshire, Durham, Northumberland and parts of Dorset. We will then continue with the pipeline of procurements to cover the rest of the UK as quickly as possible. I note the points raised by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) about Scotland. I am exploring BDUK’s relationship with the Scottish Government and what more we can do to help people in the devolved nations. I am talking to my officials about that.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. I want to make sure I have understood the point she is making. Is she saying that the constraint is the industry’s capacity to deliver the infrastructure?
Julia Lopez
I think there are challenges with that; yes. As I say, it is something that I am discussing closely with industry. There are some questions about where we want to target resource because, looking at the final percentages, those will be the hardest to reach. It will require a different kind of manpower and skill, and it will require much more resource and time. We have to decide whether to go for the hardest-to-reach areas or to focus resource on getting as many people covered as possible. Those are some of the tricky choices that have to be made. I am fairly new to this brief, so I am trying to work my way through all these questions with officials.
Stephen Timms
If the industry comes forward with proposals with capacity to deliver this more quickly than achieving 85% coverage by 2025—and the funding could be brought forward, as the Minister said—would she be open to looking at possibilities along those lines?
Julia Lopez
Yes, we certainly would. I appreciate the point that the right hon. Gentleman is making.
Since the launch of the broadband universal service obligation, which has been raised by a number of Members, BT has already delivered USO connections covering more than 3,700 homes, and it is in the process of building more than 2,500 more. Ofcom now estimates that just 134,000 premises—or 0.4%—do not have access to a decent broadband service and they may therefore be eligible for a USO connection. However, to address the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns, we know that some premises have received very high quotes and may therefore be very hard to reach, potentially requiring a different approach to deliver cost-effective upgrades. That is why, in March, we published a call for evidence on delivering improved broadband to very hard-to-reach premises.
In addition, Ofcom announced in July that as a result of its investigation, BT has provided assurances that it would use Ofcom’s approach to calculating excess cost quotes. I therefore encourage anybody who had previously been given a universal service obligation quote to speak to BT, if they have not already been contacted.
The progress that we are making with gigabit builds on the earlier success of our superfast broadband programme. The final independent evaluation of superfast by Ipsos MORI concluded that the programme met its objectives to reduce the digital divide and have significant local economic impact, including through the creation of 17,000 jobs and an increase in the annual turnover of local businesses by approximately £1.9 billion, which underlines the importance of connectivity.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon mentioned the telecom industry’s plans to look at a landline upgrade by 2025. I appreciate the importance of landlines, particularly to older people. I want to be clear that nobody is having their landline taken away or removed. The way that landlines work in the UK is changing. Providers are moving from the old public switched telephone network to the new voice over internet protocol technology.
The PSTN is a privately-owned telecoms network and the decision to upgrade it was taken by the telecoms industry. What people often miss about the issue is that the industry’s decision to upgrade the PSTN is due to necessity, because that network is increasingly unreliable and prone to failure, with some telecoms companies finding it very hard to source certain replacements or spare parts to maintain or repair connections. That makes it very unreliable for consumers long into the future.
The VOIP technology is expected to offer consumers clearer and better-quality phone calls, but I assure hon. Members that we are working extensively with Ofcom, the emergency services and others to ensure that all consumers and sectors are fully prepared for the migration in 2025.
Chi Onwurah
I thank the Minister for giving way and making such efforts to communicate with us. With regard to her comments about the public switched telephone network, while it is true that they will not be ripping the lines out of people’s homes, as I hope she knows well one of the features of the PSTN is that it carries power down the lines, which is not a feature of VOIP. People will find that some aspects of the reliability of their telephones will change—if there is a power outage, for example. What proportion of people are aware that the PSTN will be switched off?
Julia Lopez
I will be looking closely at that issue. I am fairly new to my brief, so I have not explored it in as much detail as I would like, but I will take away the hon. Lady’s points and get back to her. She is a telecoms engineer herself, so her expertise far outweighs mine in that field.
We have an ambition to look at 5G signal and ensure that the majority of the population have access to it by 2017, because that can also help with bridging the digital divide and dealing with some of the issues of connectivity for those who are slightly behind on the gigabit roll-out. I am pleased that all four network providers have now launched 5G services and that 5G service availability has risen tenfold since December 2019; but there is still a long way to go.
While the vast majority of investment in the roll-out is being made by the private sector, my Department has launched the £200 million 5G testbeds and trials programme to prove that demand for 5G service is a reality. Once we have established the demand, we need to move into the next phase, which is driving the roll-out and adoption of 5G to level up and boost the economy across the Union.
A number of hon. Members have raised the shared rural network, which is incredibly important and tries to deal with the issue of notspots. The agreement on the shared rural network will see the Government and industry jointly invest over £1 billion to increase 4G mobile coverage throughout the UK, to 95% geographic coverage by the end of the programme.
The electronic communications code plays an integral part in delivering our digital networks, and we reformed it in 2017 to make the roll-out faster and more cost-efficient, but we recognise that further changes need to be made. We are looking at some reforms, which we will be bringing forward shortly.
Before I finish, I want to talk about some of the digital skills inclusion issues that have been discussed today. DCMS works closely with the rest of Government to ensure that all Departments are considering the needs of digitally-excluded people when making policy. I talked earlier about the nascent one log-in for Government project and the funding for that. When I was in the Cabinet Office, we made sure that included digitising the Home Office’s births, deaths and marriages register, so that people with a smaller footprint do not find themselves digitally excluded as more and more services move online. I want to apply some of the principles of the work that I did in the Cabinet Office to my new role, particularly when it comes to digital identity and ensuring that people are not excluded as digital identity becomes more of an everyday part of their lives.
The pandemic has highlighted the importance of digital access and digital capability for connecting with family and accessing vital services online. Digital skills are required across all sectors of the economy, but are now more important than ever. Our tech industry is also continuing to grow and create a vast amount of jobs, so we do not want people to be excluded from those.
Chi Onwurah
I thank the Minister for giving way again. I hope that she will not finish without addressing my question about a digital inclusion strategy. The vast majority of her speech has been on infrastructure but, as we know very well, skills and confidence are going to drive the take-up of digital services and digital inclusion.
Julia Lopez
As I said, I am working with Ministers in DWP and DFE to look at some of those issues of digital inclusion, but I will take away the hon. Lady’s specific point.
Over the past three years DCMS has supported the development of seven local digital skills partnerships, in Lancashire, the heart of the south-west, the west midlands, the south-east, Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly and, more recently, West Yorkshire. We are going to launch the eighth in Hull and East Yorkshire in mid-December. Those partnerships bring together large employers, regional academia, the local public sector and training providers from the region to collaborate and develop digital skills programmes that help build capability in the regions and reduce the digital divide. That was very evident in the early stages of the pandemic lockdown, when all seven regions worked with multiple stakeholders to ensure that the most vulnerable in our communities had access to the internet and were supported with relevant digital skills training to get online.
We have also funded the fast track digital workforce fund, a £3 million digital bootcamp based in Greater Manchester and Lancashire. The fund aims to move those in low-skilled and low-paid jobs into better-quality digital roles that meet the needs of the local economy.
In response to covid, and in partnership with social change charity the Good Things Foundation, we also launched the digital lifeline in February 2021. That is a £2.5 million fund that aims to reduce the digital exclusion of people with learning disabilities in particular, by providing free devices, data and digital support to over 5,000 people with learning difficulties who cannot afford to get online. In September, we also partnered with industry leaders to launch the digital inclusion impact group to tackle digital exclusion. One of the pilot programmes, Dell donate to educate, will support children with the right access to technology at school and at home. As I said, progress of all of those items will require a lot of cross-Government work with colleagues in other Departments.
Once again, I thank right hon. and hon. Members for securing the debate, and also the all-party parliamentary group on broadband and digital communication for its work. As everyone recognises, improving digital connectivity for everybody across the UK is a priority. We are working with energy to deliver fantastic digital infrastructure across the country. We are trying to design accessible online Government services. We are investing in digital skills. Those are big tasks, and we will of course encounter challenges along the way. The pandemic has made the online world ever more integrated with the offline one, and I hope that hon. Members will work with me to ensure that every citizen can be taken along on this journey, so that people from every part of our country and from all walks of life feel that technology is ultimately an empowering force.