Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Bill

Lord Ashton of Hyde Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, raised connectivity in remote areas. I thank her for her remarks. It is an issue that we explored at Second Reading and in Grand Committee, and one that I absolutely agreed is of utmost importance, as I do now.

The amendment seeks to ensure that deprived or isolated areas receive “a certain proportion” of the relief. However, it is not clear what exactly that would entail as the term “a certain proportion” is not defined. By its very nature, all areas would get “a certain proportion” of the relief depending on how much and where fibre is deployed and lit from 1 April 2017. If the noble Baroness intends for “deprived or isolated areas”—again, those are not defined—to receive a higher proportion of the relief than others, the amendment would not have that effect.

The Government cannot therefore agree to the amendment as it is technically deficient and does not fully engage with how the telecoms networks are deployed and the approach taken to upgrade our networks with more fibre. I do not want to dwell on the technical deficiencies because even if they were resolved the amendment would still not be in keeping with the Bill’s very simple aim—to promote fibre connectivity wherever it takes place.

As my right honourable friend the Minister for Digital said in the other place, we need to think of the fibre network like a growing tree—he is a romantic soul. We already have a strong trunk, which links our great cities and connects Britain to the world, but we must now grow the boughs and branches. We must grow out this fibre not just in the trunk or the boughs, but in a multitude of branches that serve people’s houses, businesses, and all the public services of the land. The point is, we need to support fibre everywhere and if the relief is not available to support the growth of those branches then they may not grow at all, such is the difficult balance of the business case for more fibre. Therefore, if we seek to ensure that particular areas benefit more than others it is possible we will undermine that business case and deprived or isolated areas may not benefit at all. I do not believe this was the noble Baroness’s intention.

We do agree that it is vital to see improved connectivity in remote and indeed rural areas. People need at least acceptable broadband at home and at work; it is essential for modern life. That is why the Government have consulted on the design of a broadband universal service obligation, which would provide a digital safety net by giving everyone, no matter where they live, the legal right to request a connection to broadband speeds of at least 10 megabits per second. But we are not satisfied with just acceptable levels of access: we want to ensure that businesses and households throughout the country have access to faster broadband—superfast and better. By the end of this year, 19 out of 20 premises will have access to superfast broadband. We are taking steps to ensure that the figure rises even further in the next two years so that 97% of households and businesses have superfast access.

Some £30 million of the £200 million funding under the England Rural Development Programme has been made available through Defra. This is targeted at supporting rural businesses and growth, for broadband services in these areas at speeds of 30 megabits per second or faster where this is not currently available or planned, and to ensure that all areas can and do have the broadband speeds they will need for the future.

The Government are delivering a series of measures to support the rollout of fibre broadband in addition to the measure we are debating today. We launched the £190 million challenge fund as part of the Autumn Budget for local bodies to bid into as part of the local full fibre networks programme. As it was being developed during this year, we received a great deal of interest in that programme from local bodies in all parts of the UK, not least in rural and remote areas. The projects delivered under this programme will, we expect, encourage further commercial development of future-proofed fibre networks right across the country. This follows our announcement last year of more than £1 billion to support digital infrastructure.

Also part of that substantial sum is the digital infrastructure investment fund. That involves £400 million of government financing now being administered by fund managers and will attract significant private investment which will be available for alternative providers to use for fibre networks. This work will have impacts right across the country and enable operators to make the commercial case for wider deployment. In summary, therefore, the Government acknowledge that all areas of the country need decent broadband. That includes urban and rural areas which do not have it. I have outlined the measures the Government are taking to achieve this, but the Bill has one simple aim: to incentivise new fibre optic cable wherever it is laid, because we need it everywhere. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, I notice that the Minister, in his detailed response, made the assertion that we would have what he described as “decent broadband” throughout the country. I have to say that I query the definition of “decent broadband” that is provided by the Government. A speed of 10 megabits per second is not really acceptable in the current way that business and households operate. The Government’s measure of “decent broadband” being within one kilometre of where the fibre is laid to the street cabinet certainly does not provide broadband speeds at the property, given that 300 metres away it has degenerated to such an extent that the improvement is negligible.

What concerns me, and I have pressed it throughout the passage of the Bill, is that all public bodies—understandably, and supported by me—are moving to digital by design. For instance, if you are unemployed and in receipt of employment and support allowance you are required to make job applications online. If you are not in a facility with good broadband speeds, that is really difficult.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Let me make one thing clear: the universal service obligation, which we have said will come in 2020, will be at 10 megabits per second which although I know is not acceptable to a lot of people, will allow things such as job applications to be done: you can even download and watch a film at 10 megabits per second. The universal service obligation, which is a safety net, will be available to everyone.

Global Climate Change

Lord Ashton of Hyde Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, for this debate and for his clear setting out of the complexities of the basic science, which so often get distorted in media commentary and occasionally even within this House. It is also a bit daunting to follow such great contributors to this area as the noble Lord, Lord Stern, and my noble friend Lord Prescott, who have done a lot to bring the whole issue of climate change up the agenda. We are now focusing on how the UK Government can contribute not only domestically but also to the geopolitics which precede the Paris conference and those at the European level.

It is of course true that none of this is easy. There are conflicts between short-term economic goals and some of the decisions on investment priorities that we need on the climate change agenda. In addition, as has already been pointed out, there are some conflicts within the environmental objectives. For example, the development of biofuels and biomass can conflict with land-use objectives and sustainable food production and, as has already been said, some of the immediate measures on air quality—particularly on diesel—can be in contradiction to those you would need to take if you were focusing only on climate change. However, in the long run, if we do not tackle the climate change agenda nationally, locally and internationally, none of these things will be able to be resolved either.

At the global level, Kyoto was a binding legal agreement and we will not exactly be replacing that at Paris. My noble friend Lord Prescott made a major contribution to a successful outcome at Kyoto. In passing, in view of some sad news last week, I pay tribute to our then colleague, Michael Meacher, who also made a big contribution in that respect.

Copenhagen was in some senses a disappointment. Although some success was retrieved at the end of the day, it meant that binding agreements were no longer on the agenda. However, as my noble friend Lord Prescott said, we are now looking at a framework of national or regional commitments from all nation states, developed and developing, and a proper system of verification and enforcement, which could ensure that those national agreements are met. That is different from Kyoto; nevertheless, it is a practical political and geopolitical outcome, and we need to ensure that it is met.

Of course, we have a central underlying problem, which is the dependence on fossil fuels by so much of the world and so much of our industrial complex. A couple of years ago, the IEA pointed out that the level of subsidies for coal and oil was substantially higher than that for renewables or nuclear. At the same time, we have had the fracking bonanza distorting the relative economics of fossil fuels against renewables and nuclear. Now, the fall in the oil price has again distorted the economics. The Modi Government in India, for example, are now making exploitation of their coal resources the major driver for economic revival. That is not helpful.

On the other hand, we have had Australia coming back into the discussion. One hopes that after last week we will have Canada coming back into it too, and we have had the Obama initiative in America. In Europe there have been a few hiccups. The 2020 European targets will largely be achieved. On the other hand, the European ETS is a failure, and in parts of Europe—in Poland, in eastern Europe and, indeed, in Germany since it abandoned the nuclear option—there is a growing dependency on coal. That needs to be reversed if Europe is to make a major contribution, which it always has done. We need to ensure that the environmental agenda which Europe is capable of delivering actually can be delivered and that it is one of the great examples of European co-operation which, one hopes, will affect people’s consideration of our future within Europe over the next year or two.

However, all around the world the burning of fossil fuels will continue over the next few decades. With a continuing dependence on fossil fuels, the only way of ensuring that the targets are met to achieve the 2050 outcome is to develop a genuine system of carbon capture and storage. I am not sure that we can achieve that, but we need to invest scientifically and with capital investment to try to bring carbon capture and storage into full effect so that the continued burning of fossil fuels does not have a proportionate effect on the carbon in the atmosphere. There will continue to be some dependence on fossil fuels in the world, including in Britain and Europe, but if we can develop carbon capture and storage—which really ought to be a much greater government and European priority—we can square the circle.

My final point concerns the urban environment, to which others have already referred. It is a slightly different issue from climate change but the two are interrelated. It is not just the visible pollution in Chinese and other Asian cities but the invisible pollution that affects people here in London, with the appalling levels of air pollution and the deaths, which others have already mentioned. Here, there is a conflict with some powerful manufacturers. German car manufacturers stalled or diluted earlier decisions in Europe on the targets and standards for pollution in diesel cars. It turns out that, even then, they were prepared to fiddle the system. It is known to almost everybody that the on-road emissions have been five times that which was predicted from the tests. We now know that there was serious corruption by at least one company, and I do not honestly believe that Volkswagen was entirely alone in this.

I was distressed to read in today’s Times that the new limits being discussed at European level have been made easier following yet more intensive lobbying, primarily by the German car manufacturers. We cannot allow these vested interests to override the health and long-term survival of this planet, neither on air quality nor on greenhouse gas emissions. I hope that the Government are taking that lesson into account in their agenda in Paris and Europe.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, I quickly remind the House that this is a time-limited debate. It is a fascinating debate and I know that people have a lot to say, but, for the benefit of later speakers, if they could try to keep their speeches within the time limit, it will not cut into the Minister’s reply.