Superfast Broadband: Rural Communities

Debate between James Heappey and Albert Owen

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Albert Owen]

The hon. Lady is contradicting herself. She was saying how poor it was earlier. She is almost leading the way with the Liberal council and the European Union. The Welsh Government work in partnership with the European Union, which specifies certain criteria, including the number of households, which work against some rural communities. However, the Welsh Government have their own policies for those rural communities.

My point is that we need to work together and take a strategic approach. I support the Digital Economy Bill, and I believe that this is a golden opportunity for the Government to work towards helping the last 5% to get broadband at a decent level that can then be improved in future.

[James Heappey]

The point that the hon. Gentleman is making is exactly right. We are talking about the roll-out of superfast broadband, but before the Government race off and start delivering ultrafast, let us make it a priority to ensure that a minimum service of at least 10 megabits per second is available everywhere. We can start doing that now, rather than waiting until the end of the second phase of the Broadband Delivery UK roll-out.

[Albert Owen]

That is absolutely right. The hon. Gentleman has now reinforced that point, and I agree totally. This is the second debate on the trot in which we have agreed. I want the Minister to know that there is no partisanship. I give the Welsh Government the same concerns that I give the UK Government, because we need to work together. I am not knocking BT Openreach either, because I have been out with their staff and seen some of the engineering difficulties they have to deal with.

The people suffering in the 5% are often not on the gas mains and pay more for their fuel. They pay exactly the same price for their broadband and mobile communications as people in inner cities, and they deserve Governments’—plural—time and effort on their behalf. That is the plea I make to the Minister, who is checking my constituency ratings as we speak. If they are high, I will take credit; if they are low, I will blame others. The 5% need to be considered as a priority. The Government and the Prime Minister have talked about an industrial strategy. Broadband should be part of it. We should be talking about giving businesses across the United Kingdom 21st-century communications to allow them to compete on a level playing field with those in other parts of the country.

I did not intend to speak because I thought that this debate would be over-subscribed. I have pushed my luck in coming here and speaking, but I speak for different parts of the United Kingdom, which are coming together to join me in the 5% club so that we can deliver 100% broadband coverage and better mobile telecommunications across the United Kingdom.

Bank Branch Closures

Debate between James Heappey and Albert Owen

Thursday 30th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

To be fair to the banks, they did write to notify me of their decision, and the more noise I made in the media, the more willing they were to meet me here to discuss it. However, the right hon. Gentleman would be right to suggest—and I would agree—that it was not exactly a process whereby the local Member of Parliament was encouraged, as a representative of the community, to take soundings on what was actually of value to that community. It was more about assuaging my fears and trying to persuade me that various steps were being taken in mitigation.

I was talking about the vulnerable and the isolated. There are certain things that draw the elderly, in particular, out of their homes over the course of a week, such as going into town to do their banking and to visit the market and the library. When banks are removed from towns and people are told, “We will teach you to be better at using a computer”, that is all well and good, but it does not alter the fact that, for some, that journey into town will have been their interaction with the outside world for that week.

Moreover, digital exclusion is a real problem, in two respects. First, there is the issue of competence. There are people who are just not very good at handling their affairs over the internet. There are people who have been doing things in the same way for a lifetime, and who do not trust the process of putting their financial affairs in the hands of electrons on a screen. They want to give their money to a person over a counter, and see it locked away in the drawer and on its way to the bank’s vaults.

Then there is connectivity. I know this is not a rural-urban issue and I know that the Government’s broadband roll-out programme is making great advances in areas like mine, but the reality is that these banks are closing more quickly than the broadband network is being improved and so even those who are willing and able to do their banking online are not always able to do so.

[Albert Owen]

The hon. Gentleman is giving a very eloquent description of his area’s situation, which I am sure is mirrored across the whole of the United Kingdom. What he is suggesting is that there is no joined-up thinking. We have one Department—BIS—that is responsible for one area and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport responsible for another. There is also a survey by Government to retain and regenerate town centres, which has been ignored, because the hon. Gentleman highlighted four empty buildings in his relatively small town.

[James Heappey]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. While of course the Treasury will have an interest in the provision of banking, DCMS will have an interest in the provision of broadband, and the Department for Communities and Local Government and perhaps the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs might concern themselves with the overall impact on the viability of communities in both rural areas and towns.

I am also concerned about the capacity of the post office network to pick up the slack. They are offered again and again as the route out of a bank closure, yet too often there are reasons why the Post Office cannot do more, and I will come to that shortly.

Finally, there is the availability of free-to-use ATMs in our town centres. Replacing an ATM outside a bank with something we need to pay a few pounds to use is not fair on the community that then finds itself needing to access its cash at that expense.