Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Antoinette Sandbach

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if there were an opportunity for us to seek some sort of associate membership of Euratom once we have left, we should attempt to do that? That would minimise the cost to the UK taxpayer, unlike having to completely replicate the regime over here. I also echo his thanks to the Secretary of State and his ministerial team for the way in which they have approached this matter.

[Mr Vaizey]

I understand what my hon. Friend is seeking, but the point has already been made that there is in effect no real associate membership of Euratom at the moment. Ukraine and Switzerland have what is described as associate membership, but it is certainly nowhere close to the kind of arrangements that we have with Euratom now. The Government intend to have as close a relationship as possible with Euratom, whether we call it associate membership or anything else, and we will have to put in place our agreements with the other nuclear states with which we currently enjoy a relationship under Euratom—notably Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States of America. That work is under way, although the timing of the implementation of those agreements is unfortunately not in our gift. It is in the gift of other legislatures that might not be as efficient as this august legislature, but I know that we want to replicate those agreements.

I am particularly pleased that the Prime Minister did not follow the example of Watford, the football team of my hon. Friend the Minister, and change the manager unnecessarily in the past two weeks. I am extremely pleased that he remains in his place scoring goals for the nuclear industry, and I look forward to co-operating with him for many years to come.

Broadband Universal Service Obligation

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Antoinette Sandbach

Thursday 15th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important debate. I shall make two or three recommendations, which will I hope be useful to my right hon. Friend the Minister. I do not particularly want to dwell on the past, but after the previous speech it is probably worth putting in context some of the points that have been made. It is worth pointing out, for example, that, in terms of the Labour party’s promise to deliver 2 megabits by 2012, we do not know whether that would have been fulfilled, as it was based on a highly questionable telephone tax, which would have seen a revolt from consumers. In any event, we now have coverage of 99.22% at 2 megabits.

The hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) failed to explain what happened in 2010, which was that the new Government looked at the promise of 2 megabits and understood that it would not be nearly enough. In fact, I suspect that many of our constituencies, which were already getting 2 megabits, complained to us about poor broadband. What they want is a superfast connection of around 24 megabits that allows them to use many of the applications that we now regard as very commonplace.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

While we are talking about accuracy, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is inaccurate to say that the less economically wealthy areas have been disadvantaged, when the constituency of the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) has 95% superfast coverage while mine has just 78%?

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The rural superfast broadband programme has been a great success. It has delivered access to superfast broadband to almost 5 million homes. The money invested by Government will be paid back because of the nature of the contracts. The hon. Member for Wrexham mentioned that he had persuaded Virgin to come to his constituency. Virgin is now investing £3 billion in extending its network, and that is partly inspired by the success of the superfast broadband network.

The point I really want to make is that I am sick and tired of people talking down this country and pretending that we are in some kind of digital desert. The latest culprit—I am astonished that the Government allowed this to happen—is Lord Adonis, a Labour peer—[Interruption.] No longer a Labour peer. Alright, he is an ex-Labour peer, but we know where his sentiments lie. He used the platform of the National Infrastructure Commission to publish a report yesterday claiming that we have worse mobile broadband than Peru. He based that on one set of analysis by Open Signal. I am not denigrating that company, but it relies on people downloading an app and then uploading the speed they are getting. Some 4,500 in Peru use the Open Signal app, and most respectable telecoms analysts would not go near a country unless they had data from at least 25,000 users. One of the mobile companies in Peru does not even provide 4G, but that is not even mentioned in the Open Signal app.

It is much better to look at a company such as Akamai, which points out that we have the fastest download speed in 4G of any country in Europe. It is almost double the next best in the EU five. Its report, which was published this week, says:

“the United Kingdom once again had the fastest average mobile connection speed at 23.7 Mbps (up from 23.1 Mbps in the second quarter)”.

We have between 82% and 93% household coverage for 4G. A total of 76% of mobile subscribers in this country have 4G subscriptions. That is double the next best country, which is Germany, at around 35%. We have companies such as Amazon investing in cloud services. We lead the world in e-commerce. If we are this so-called “digital desert”, as Lord Adonis claimed today to promote his report, how come we lead on all these metrics? I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister to give Lord Adonis a dressing down, and to tell him to check his facts and use a better analysis instead of running around promoting his report, pretending that we somehow live in a digital desert.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Vaizey of Didcot and Antoinette Sandbach

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

I take the issue of access to arts by all our communities very seriously, which is why I support all the schemes that the Arts Council is undertaking. But again, the hon. Gentleman can make a difference. He does not have to feel powerless on the Opposition Benches: he can ring up Labour Lancashire now and ask why it is withdrawing all its funding from all its museums.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

3. What assessment his Department has made of the rate of take-up of broadband grant vouchers by small and medium-sized businesses.

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I am grateful for the chance to address this important issue, and I am delighted that more than 50,000 firms in the UK have taken advantage of our broadband connection vouchers, as well more than 1,000 public buildings.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

My constituents in Eddisbury will have connections below the Cheshire average for superfast broadband. What steps can be taken to ensure that Connecting Cheshire will prioritise better superfast broadband access for rural businesses and residents in Eddisbury?

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend is a fantastic advocate for broadband and for her constituency. I am very pleased that almost half of her constituency will benefit from our superfast broadband roll-out—almost 15,000 homes in her constituency have already been passed, but by the time the project is finished more than 30,000 will have been passed.