Oral Answers to Questions

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

I would ask Ealing Council, as with other councils, to look at local authorities that are investing in libraries. Local authorities around the country of every political hue are opening, expanding and developing libraries. The first reaction to those facing budgetary challenges ought not to be to cut cultural items, but to provide support for them, and other local authorities have proven that they can do it.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Jeremy Wright)]

I congratulate the four English football teams, one of whom I know you take a particular interest in, Mr Speaker, who have qualified for the European finals. It is the first time that one nation has ever provided all the major European finalists in a single season. We have seen success elsewhere in my Department’s portfolio, too, with the Tech Nation report showing that our digital economy is leading the way in Europe, with 35% of Europe and Israel’s tech unicorns being created here in the UK. We have the cricket world cup to look forward to, with the opening match at the Oval next week. I am sure the House will join me in welcoming the nine visiting teams and in wishing our cricketers the very best of luck. Perhaps I also ought to congratulate the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson), the shadow Secretary of State, on climbing Snowdon, which he recently achieved. All of us in the House are used to uphill struggles; I am pleased that he has completed that one successfully.

[Bim Afolami]

The access to cash review recently published a report setting out that 17% of the adult population—about 8 million adults—would struggle to manage in a cashless society, with the majority of those people in rural areas. Will the Minister explain what the Department is doing to improve the situation for those in rural areas to bring the standard up to that in more urban areas?

[Jeremy Wright]

My hon. Friend is right that we face two challenges: one is skills and the other is access to broadband. On broadband, he will know that we have succeeded in achieving our initial objective of 95% of the country being covered by superfast broadband, and in fact, exceeding that somewhat, but we now need to move on to rolling out full fibre. When we do that, it is important that we focus on those areas that the market will not reach unaided—an outside-in approach, as we have described it. I believe that will benefit rural areas predominantly.

TV Licences for Over-75s

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. As the Minister pointed out, I was the Secretary of State at the time when the licence fee settlement was agreed with the BBC, so I would like to set out some of the reasons why those decisions were reached.

As the Opposition spokesman said, the concessionary TV licence for over-75s is not a fundamental pillar of the welfare state—it was actually introduced by the previous Labour Government. It was introduced to address an anomaly that elderly people living in sheltered housing did not have to pay the full licence fee whereas others did. However, the Labour Government did not introduce free TV licences for all pensioners, on the basis that it was far too expensive to do so—they restricted it to those aged over 75 at a cost, at that time, of £365 million. It is important to realise that that money was not removed from the BBC—it was given to the BBC by the Department for Work and Pensions. It has always been the case, since then, that the cost of exemption from the TV licence is met out of the Government’s budget. The cost to the Government of doing so has risen steadily, so that by last year it had already reached £660 million.

I had the task of negotiating both the new BBC charter and the licence fee settlement. Personally, I would have much preferred that the licence fee had been included within the charter negotiations, since the licence fee settlement, to some extent, pre-empted decisions that we took as a result of the charter review process. However, as the Minister rightly pointed out, we were in very difficult financial circumstances thanks to the profligacy of the previous Labour Government, and we had to take a lot of very difficult decisions. The then Chancellor was clear that we should seek to achieve savings from the BBC, as a publicly owned institution funded by the Government, in the same way that all other public institutions were being asked to find savings. So we agreed with the BBC that it would take over the cost of funding the licence fee concession. However, we were also clear that we had given a pledge that the concession would be maintained until 2020, and therefore the agreement with the BBC was that it would take it over in 2020.

I have to say to the House that the negotiations with the BBC over that were indeed robust. I remember sitting down with the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, with George Osborne and with Lord Hall, the director-general of the BBC, and we had some good discussions in which Lord Hall argued forcibly that this would have a detrimental impact on the BBC. Therefore, in recognition of that, we also included, as part of the licence fee settlement, agreement to address some of the things the BBC raised as its principal concerns. One was the freeze in the licence fee. The licence fee had not gone up at all for a number of years, and therefore the BBC was looking at a real-terms reduction every year. We agreed that the licence fee should be unfrozen. Secondly, a growing number of people were avoiding paying the licence fee by watching the BBC on catch-up, through the iPlayer. Under the law as it then stood, if someone watched the BBC a mere two minutes after the live transmission, they did not have to pay the licence fee. The licence fee was therefore extended to close what was called the iPlayer loophole.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree with the director-general of the BBC, Lord Hall, that the funding arrangements put in place with the BBC by my right hon. Friend and the previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, represented a fair deal?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, because he allows me to quote the director-general. As I say, our negotiations were robust, but we emerged from them with the director-general issuing a public statement saying that it was

“the right deal… in difficult economic circumstances”.

He went on to say:

“Far from being a cut, the way this financial settlement is shaped gives us, effectively, flat licence fee income across the first five years of the next charter.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I will certainly join the hon. Gentleman in wishing the teams well, and congratulate them on reaching this point. The fundraising question was an ingenious budget bid, but not one that I should answer now.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

T6. Residents in my constituency who live in Gustard Wood near the village of Wheathampstead have continually complained to me about the lack of mobile and broadband access. What can the Minister say from the Dispatch Box that I can take back to them to let them know that this problem will improve very soon?

[Margot James]

I assure my hon. Friend that many measures are being taken. The forthcoming universal service obligation should ensure that households that have a speed below 2 megabits per second have the right to request high-speed broadband of at least 10 megabits per second. That will come into effect in 2020. There is more to be done through Broadband Delivery UK—there are numerous voucher schemes. If my hon. Friend wants further information, I am happy to meet him to discuss the options available to him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bim Afolami Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor General]

I know that the hon. Lady has a keen local interest in the issue, which affects Croydon as much as other parts of our country. I do not think that there is a direct correlation. We have seen a rise in knife crime since early 2016, and it is right that we have approached the issue of possession in a more serious way. However, I take her points about causation on board. I recently visited the Ben Kinsella Trust in north London, with which I know she is familiar. I am deeply impressed by the trust’s work with young people, and it is that sort of interventionist approach at an early stage that can help to deal with this problem.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

What conversations have the Solicitor General or the Attorney General had across Government and with retailers about cutting down on the online sale of knives?

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Bill

Bim Afolami Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 10th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

The words will ring in my ears: filibuster never, inform the nation always. That is a lesson for us all.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I will give you an extra lesson—[Interruption.] You will have to take your seat for a second, though. You might be informing the nation, but it has to be on the subject we are discussing, otherwise you are out of order.

[Bim Afolami]

Of course, Mr Deputy Speaker. Thank you very much for that kind reminder.

This Bill matters. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), the former Minister, mentioned, it is not necessarily the most thrilling Bill. It is relatively short, with six clauses; as a former lawyer, I can appreciate that brevity is often harder than writing something very long, so I admire the draftsmen’s ability in putting together something so succinct. The Bill should have strong support not just from the Government but from all parties, as has already been suggested by Opposition speakers.

My constituents in Hitchin and Harpenden, only 30 to 40 miles from central London, face patchy broadband coverage in many areas. I appreciate the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage—it is often harder to get broadband in spread out villages and rural areas than in tower blocks and urban areas. It is physically harder; I appreciate that, but the village of Kimpton, slap-bang in the middle of my constituency, has pretty terrible broadband.

Let me give the House some statistics to back my point up. In Kimpton, no residence or business receives superfast broadband. We are in the bottom 7% in the country for average download speed and in the bottom 0.5% for connections of more than 30 megabits per second. There is still a job to do and, with due deference as a new Member of the House, I say to the Government that we still have a job to do connecting up rural areas in our country. We should not forget that.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend knows, my 92-year-old aunt lives in Kimpton, and he is speaking eloquently on her behalf. Does he agree that it is most important, particularly in rural areas, that older people living in the community should have access that keeps them engaged with their friends and family?

[Bim Afolami]

I agree. It is important for people to be connected to friends and family; the converse situation is one of loneliness in many respects. We live in a society that is increasingly atomised, so it is helpful to ensure that older members of society have full digital connectivity. That is another reason why the Bill is important.

At a recent meeting of a local business club in my constituency, a business owner whose business is situated in a rural area just north of Harpenden told me that it takes three days to back up her server, such is the slow download speed. Business rates relief for the installation of full-fibre broadband infrastructure will provide a huge incentive for operators to invest in the broadband network with the latest technology—a point made admirably by several of my hon. Friends, not least my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena).

It is important to consider why, in the broader sense, it is important to have world-leading digital infrastructure. Why are we all here? I shall offer a few observations. We are effectively going through a new industrial revolution. Technology, powered largely by the internet, is driving a global future. This country needs to be at the heart of that, and rolling out full-fibre broadband is central to the challenge. The Bill will make it easier, enabling small businesses in rural areas such as mine to access the superfast broadband they need. As the Minister said, the Bill will break down barriers to business, which everybody wants—at least on our side of the House.

The Bill shows that the Government can, in limited ways and when the time is right, provide innovative solutions to help to solve some of the biggest problems choking up areas of the economy. We need strongly to support the free market and free enterprise with little Government intervention, unless necessary. The Bill and the Government’s actions are bold. We need to be bold enough to use the tools of government to allow the private sector to work more efficiently and incentivise it to provide better results for our constituents, who send us to this place on their behalf, after all.

Business rates relief is welcome, as many hon. Members have said, but I urge the Government to ensure that we do not lose sight of our manifesto commitment to a full review of business rates, and to produce a system that is more fit for purpose. In certain ways, the current system has shown itself to be capricious, cumbersome and, in some senses, frankly unfair.

When discussing a Bill on digital infrastructure, it is appropriate to point out the fundamental asymmetry and unfairness for bricks-and-mortar businesses paying the levy in comparison to the digital technology-based businesses with which they often compete on a day-to-day basis. We all know businesses on our high streets that have this problem. It is important for the House to recognise that many international taxation treaties inhibit the United Kingdom from taking unilateral action on the taxation of global technology businesses because their nature is, indeed, global rather than domestic. Everybody can appreciate the difficulties with that. I urge the Government to look for more international agreement on the issue so that we can start to address the balance of the business rates paid by physical, bricks-and-mortar businesses compared with those paid by their digital cousins and friends.

In staying true to the detail and narrow nature of the Bill, it is incumbent on me briefly to talk about 5G mobile broadband, following on from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire. Now, this may seem like a dull topic, but I assure Members that it is not—it can be very dull. The reason is that 5G, like 4G or 3G, is something we take for granted; it is just there. We do not think enough about where it comes from or the work that goes into it. However, 5G will be the enabler for so much technological development in this country.

O2 estimated in a report that 5G infrastructure will be just as pivotal as broadband to the wider economy over the next five to 10 years and will greatly boost British productivity, which all Members of this House should wish to see. The benefits are manifold, from telecare health apps, to smarter cities, to more seamless public services. Those are some of the many benefits that 5G mobile broadband can help to bring about, and I urge Members to support the Bill, which provides some of the digital plumbing that will enable us to bring tangible benefits to our constituents.

To take up a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire about 3G and 4G, it is important to note that some areas, especially rural areas, are still not on 3G or 4G—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

[Bim Afolami]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am coming to a conclusion.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

No, it is not that. I am trying to be helpful. I am bothered about time. I would like us to discuss broadband infrastructure to houses, rather than 3G, 4G and 5G, which is mobile phones. If we were having a debate on mobile telecommunications, it would be brilliant, but we are not. I have allowed a bit of freedom, but I do not want the debate to concentrate on that issue. The hon. Member for North East Hampshire should know better than to lead you on into discussing something I have told him off for.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I will make the rulings. You can listen to my rulings, and we can have a discussion later if we need to, because I want to hear you speak in a little while.

[Bim Afolami]

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker.

In closing, I should say that the Bill is a significant step forward. It helps our country to lead the world in a new industrial revolution based on digital technology. It also shows that this Government, and indeed any Government using their powers effectively, can make truly positive impacts on people’s lives when acting in the right way—in this case, to enable superfast broadband to reach more people more quickly.