Superfast Broadband

Debate between Lord Walney and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) on securing this debate.

I will be brief, as the main themes have been well aired already. I want to raise specifically with the Minister the issue of two areas in my constituency that are being appallingly served by BT, Askham and Kirkby-in-Furness. I have been deluged by complaints from constituents who have just about managed to get internet access to email me in advance of the debate, because they knew I intended to speak today.

The situation in Askham concerns a particular cabinet. It is the sort of case that will be familiar to many hon. Members present—indeed, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness gave a good account of how BT seems to shift the goalposts. People in Askham were promised a cabinet. They were then given the excuse that the road around the cabinet site was eroded; if the Minister wants to come and look at the cabinet—I am sure that will be high up on his to-do list at the start of the new Parliament—he will see that that excuse is a nonsense. They were then given a second excuse, namely that there was no land on which the new cabinet could be sited that was not private. But anyone looking at the site would see that those excuses do not hold water. Hundreds of people in Askham are tearing their hair out.

The situation is similar in Kirkby. The service is going significantly backwards and BT has not given a date by which it will be fixed. I do not like having to name and shame a company for poor service, but I am afraid that is what we have to do in Parliament, given BT’s intransigence on this.

[Mr MacNeil]

Might it be a solution to have a specific fund for cabinets? Once the network is laid out, the problem will be getting cabinets that can be spurs off the network to local communities.

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting suggestion and one that the Minister may want to consider, but as far as I am concerned—and as far as my constituents are concerned—a promise was made by Government to deliver superfast broadband and another was made by BT to facilitate that, and we should hold both to account, whether or not a separate fund for cabinets is created.

I do not like having to raise this issue in Parliament, but we are going to keep banging on about this to BT until it fixes the issue. I hope the Minister will be able to give us some reassurance that the Government will intervene, if necessary, to sort the problem out.

Rural Phone and Broadband Connectivity

Debate between Lord Walney and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I am not sure, given the new time limit on speeches, whether I will get many megabits per second into my speech, but I will try to get in several syllables per minute.

[John Woodcock]

I see what the hon. Gentleman has done there.

[Mr MacNeil]

Well done, thank you. At least somebody on the Opposition Benches is switched on. I just saw a lot of blank faces on the Government Benches.

As people, many of our needs have been met. We have food, drink, clothing and communication. In our houses, we have electricity, water and insulation, but we need communication and connectivity. That connectivity happens thanks to broadband—hopefully, it is 4G and mobile connectivity. The point was well made by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) who talked about “not not spots”. Let us ensure that we get “have have” spots, because that is what we need. This connectivity is a natural need, and it is what many people want and expect. The expectation that that connectivity will be in place is growing. People are comparing the situation in their own areas not only with other places in their own countries but with other countries, particularly rural places in other countries.

Our aim is to have superfast broadband and 4G reaching 98% of the population, which should mean that connectivity is well distributed across the country and that we do not have places in the UK where broadband coverage is far below 98% of the population. If 95% of us have superfast broadband, then surely 100% of us should get normal broadband. If superfast broadband has speeds of up to 30 megabits or more, surely others can reach 2, 4, 6 or 8 megabits.

There is also a possibility of convergence with 4G, as 4G is primarily a data carrier with speeds of up to 30 megabits. It does not matter whether or not people are connected with fibre, because connectivity can be found to enable them to get on the web thanks to the speed of the new mobile communications.

Trident Renewal

Debate between Lord Walney and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a treat to follow the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), and the House should take a moment to appreciate his tenacity. This is a man who at the last election spearheaded his party’s drive not to have deterrent successor submarines at all, but to have an entirely new form—a mini-deterrent, with adapted Astute submarines and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The Liberal Democrats were so sure of that policy that they put it before the electorate. It was not successful, but they retained it. As Minister, the hon. Gentleman was so determined that he persuaded the Government to fund the Trident alternatives review. That review took 18 months or two years to examine that option exhaustively, finally to conclude what we had been saying all along, which is that the policy was complete nonsense and would cost even more than the current system and be far less efficient.

The hon. Gentleman is not deterred by that. In the manner of a child jumping from sandcastle to sandcastle as the tide comes in, he seeks to find new ways to differentiate himself from the Opposition while never saying the words, after his exhaustive speech, that he is a unilateralist and his party is a unilateralist party. There is an absurdity—I think I have it right—to having not a part-time deterrent, but a no-time, or IKEA, deterrent that he could put together at some point. IKEA furniture can be difficult to assemble, but it does not take the months or years that his proposal would take. In the meantime, would we put glass in the submarines so they can become public viewing vessels? Could they carry grain, so that they could become underwater famine relief vessels, which is one of the more famous suggestions from the unilateralist CND members in my constituency? What is it? Tell the House, or is he going to leave this policy until the election to reveal it?

[Mr MacNeil]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that famine relief vessels are a crazy idea?

[John Woodcock]

Goodness! If the hon. Gentleman wants to tell me that firing grain out of the torpedo tubes of the successor to Vanguard-class submarines is an effective use of public money, then he should go ahead. I will come on to his policy in a little while, if he does not mind.