The Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms (Chris Bryant)
As this is the first time that I have seen you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I say how glad I am that you were elected? I voted for you, so there. [Laughter.] It is a secret ballot, so you can’t check.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) on his election; it is good to see him in his place. I think I am right in saying that King’s Norton is part of his patch, but he may not be aware that one of the shields on the wall of this Chamber is for a former Member for King’s Norton who was killed in the second world war: a very brave man who fought for his country and who died making it possible for everybody to evacuate. Ronnie Cartland was his name; he was a Conservative, but his first rebellion was when he was angry that the Government were not doing enough for distressed areas, including in my constituency in south Wales. I feel I have an affinity with my hon. Friend’s constituency, although I hope I have not prompted him to rebel instantly.
I am delighted to have the opportunity to have this debate. I will be very clear: the vast majority of companies operating in this sphere are doing so entirely responsibly. They are doing a great favour for the nation in rolling out broadband of the kind of speed that everybody wants. I note the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) made about other countries in Europe; of course we aspire to that coverage for everybody across the UK.
The vast majority of companies are operating responsibly but, frankly, a few are behaving like cowboys. As a Government and as a Parliament, I think we sometimes need to say to cowboys that they are drinking in the last chance saloon. I have made that abundantly clear to some of the operators. I know that some operators are striving to co-operate with one another and with BT Openreach to ensure that no unnecessary street furniture suddenly appears and that there is full consultation with the local community before a road is dug up for a new duct or a new pole appears. Companies that are abiding by the code of conduct and fulfilling their obligations are almost as fed up as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield and other hon. Friends; indeed, I am sure we could fill the whole Chamber with hon. Members who are equally fed up with the few companies that are bringing the whole system into disrepute.
That matters, because in the end the most important thing is that the wider strategy is right. We want to deliver good-value, very high-speed, more than ultrafast, gigabit-capable broadband based on fibre to the whole UK as fast as possible without having to provide vast amounts of taxpayers’ money. We therefore need to do so on the basis of commercial roll-out. Of course it is right that that should not be on the basis of monopoly and that competition, where possible, should drive choice for consumers and cheaper prices. That part of the strategy is absolutely right.
The part of the strategy that the previous Government were a bit more relaxed about—in fact, Ministers used to say categorically that they were completely relaxed about it—was overbuild. That has meant several companies digging up the road one after another, as has happened in some parts of the country. It has also meant several companies deciding that they need their own set of poles, or poles appearing in an area that had never previously had poles and in which ducts had been laid out but not used.
I am not completely relaxed about overbuild. I am concerned about it, because I know that a lot of constituents up and down the land are concerned. However, I want to make sure that commercial operators that are abiding by the rules and the code of conduct have every opportunity to continue to do so, in order that their commercial investments are not disrupted unnecessarily and we can deliver the infrastructure that we need across the whole United Kingdom. In the end, I want the cheapest possible prices for people and the highest possible capacity across the network for every property in the land. I would issue one slight corrective in this debate. Sometimes people say that this is a battle between urban and rural, but in fact some of the issues in urban areas are completely different from those in rural areas, and some are identical. I am not sure whether that dichotomy is fair.
My preference is for ducts wherever possible. That is not always possible, for a whole series of different logistical reasons in different areas. It is an undeniable fact that providing connectivity via poles is likely to be something like 10 times cheaper than doing it via ducts, so I fully understand why commercial operators want to install poles. I understand that that could mean that there will be poles in areas that have never had them before, and, in some areas, that is something that we will have to live with.
Laurence Turner
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I agree with almost everything that he has said. I also wish to reflect on the moving tribute that he made to a predecessor Member for King’s Norton.
I understand the case that my hon. Friend has made, and I welcome his comments. Does he accept that, when the price of poles is already cheap, there is a risk that some companies will undercut each other on consumer service to reach lower margins? That is at the heart of the issue that we are debating today. It is about those operators and local cases in which standards have not been followed. Good network providers should have nothing to fear from the changes that have been suggested tonight.
Chris Bryant
Yes, I agree with every word that my hon. Friend has just said. He put it extremely well. He probably ought to be the Minister, and perhaps he will be soon. He is right. I also want to say that we should have shared infrastructure wherever that is possible. Legislation already makes provision for some of that to happen. In speaking to the operators, I have laid it down quite firmly that we need to enhance that infrastructure. I can perfectly understand why a commercial operator might say, “Well, I am not sure that I really want to share with my competitor”. That is why a new code of conduct has taken a while. I hope that new code of conduct, which I have discussed with the operators, will be laid out very soon. There is urgency about this, because the roll-out is happening this week, next week and the week after. We need to tackle these issues in short measure, not wait a long period of time.
At the very latest, this code of conduct will be published in the early new year, and I encourage everybody in the sector to abide by the code. I encourage competitors to tell the two or three companies that are not playing by the rules that they are bringing all of them into disrepute. The single most important issue for most of these operators is how they will drive take-up. It is about not just roll-out—that is their investment—but take-up. When we talk about 100 megabits per second—or about gigabits per second—many people have no idea what we are talking about. The truth is that all of our homes and businesses will need much greater broadband capacity in the near future, so we do have to roll this out. We have to make sure that people understand why they need it. The danger is that, if this whole process undermines confidence in the roll-out, it will affect take-up. It is in the commercial interests of everybody to make sure that we come to a better set of solutions in this area.
Let me go through a couple of the specific points that my hon. Friend raised. As he knows, the cabinet siting and pole siting code of practice was issued in November 2016. It sets out guidance on best practice relating to deployment, encouraging operators to site apparatus responsibly and engage proactively with both local authorities and the local community, and he laid out some of the specifics that follow on from that—the 28 days’ notice that needs to be given to local councils and so on.
There are some operators—not the ones my hon. Friend is talking about, but for instance, IX Wireless, which I had in my office earlier this afternoon—that are operating a different model, and a different set of issues relates specifically to them. There, too, I have tried to make it clear what Government expectations are. As I say, following a meeting with the operators, the industry has committed to revising the code of practice, which I think will be much tougher, and the guidance should be published in the new year. However, I am absolutely clear that if voluntary adherence does not work, we reserve the right to change the law. We are in earnest about that, because we are aware of the concerns people have expressed.
My hon. Friend is also right to say that Ofcom has stated that it would investigate any cases where poles are sited in a way that is not consistent with the requirements and guidelines in place, including where they block residents’ drives or where operators systematically fail to engage with local planning authorities’ suggestions. As my hon. Friend has already referred to, Ofcom has opened an investigation into whether Brsk has failed to comply with its obligations. I am keen to have a meeting with Brsk, and I hope that will happen in the next few weeks. I do not want to interfere in the process that Ofcom is engaged in; that is a matter for Ofcom and I would not seek to undermine what is effectively a quasi-judicial operation. However, I want to make sure that Brsk fully understands the concerns not only of many Birmingham MPs—I noted the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) earlier—but of the Government in this field.
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield for getting the debate so early in his time as a Member of Parliament. He is obviously going to be a doughty defender of the rights of his constituents. Madam Deputy Speaker, I noticed that you were nodding along—I know you are not really allowed to do that. You are shaking your head as well—you are not allowed to do that either. None the less, I think you broadly agreed with the thrust of what I was saying, so I feel as if I have united the House. On that note, I bid you farewell.
Question put and agreed to.