Superfast Fibre Broadband

Debate between Baroness Scott of Needham Market and Lord Foster of Bath

Thursday 27th October 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, I shall focus on the question of rural broadband services and, like my noble friend Lord Foster, I am doing that from the perspective of someone who lives in Suffolk.

[Lord Foster of Bath]

Overrepresentation.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market]

Overrepresentation of our lovely county, indeed. I live in a very small village, and it is a mark of how village life has changed that when we come together for our social events one of the main topics of conversation is how bad the broadband is and how it has taken all night to download a two-minute YouTube video. I accept that the joint efforts of BT and the Government have taken us to a position where almost all households now have access to basic broadband, but I also agree with the proposition that in today’s world that simply is not enough. I note that the Countryside Alliance estimates that 48% of rural premises are not able to reach the speed envisaged in the USO.

Rapid digitalisation has meant that a whole range of rural services now require a good broadband link. As the percentage of households covered by superfast broadband increases, so that digitalisation gains pace. That means that a small minority of households run the risk of being left behind. I also observe that, as the assumption is made that households have superfast broadband, the functionality of the websites themselves has changed. What looks like an exciting and thrilling website to some people is actually a nightmare if you are trying to use it in a rural area with poor speeds.

The purely commercial case would have taken superfast broadband in Suffolk to around 50%. I pay tribute to the local authority in Suffolk, which, at a time when so many local authorities are strapped for cash, has invested heavily to meet around half the extension costs. However, around 3% of people in Suffolk—I think it is about 5% in the whole UK—remain outside any funded policy commitment, so as it stands there is a real danger of a big divide for them. There has been some speculation that this will be dealt with on a demand-led basis. To my mind, that is very much a suboptimal solution. The problem is that as we near the high 90s, the cost per premises increases dramatically as the civil engineering works and the distances become more complex and therefore the value-for-money question for those last few households becomes more and more difficult. We need to think about the cost per premises across the whole venture, not an ever-reducing number of houses.

I have other concerns about a demand-led USO. What if one house wants it now and then the neighbour wants it in two years’ time? That is simply not a practical or economical way of doing business. If someone who does not want it now sells their house, the new people coming in may want it; so the demand-led model has real problems.

The BT community fibre grant scheme is very welcome but it is limited to communities with schools and, of course, many small villages no longer have schools. When I think about my very small village, there are a number of older people who are not interested in broadband, but we also have young families with small children and, as they get older, I worry about whether they will stay in the village if they do not have the access they need in terms of schooling and social media. Rural services, not only in villages but even in market towns, are declining rapidly as banks close and government and council offices shut their doors; for example, when the Ipswich tax office closes in a few years’ time our nearest tax office will be in Stratford, east London, so digital services are key. Of course, to add to the problem in many rural areas we have poor mobile phone coverage as well: 4G is pretty much non-existent where I live, so we do not have the benefit of that either.

Until May I was chair of your Lordships’ EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, which included agriculture. The last inquiry we carried out was about increasing resilience. Access to new information and innovation is key to helping farmers. Some of the most exciting innovators we saw told us how they were working from YouTube videos from around the world and how they use Skype, but very few farmers are far-sighted enough to make the investment; one farmer had invested in satellite. If farmers are to thrive in the new world to which the noble Baroness just referred, they need this, too.

Another problem is understanding what your speed actually is. It is usually given to you in terms of your postcode, but of course in rural postcode areas the distances are enormous, so these can be pretty meaningless and there is an issue about the masking of huge variations. We need to keep rural communities viable, not just in Suffolk or Devon but everywhere. Digital infrastructure is now as important to that as water, gas, electricity and roads.