Rural Phone and Broadband Connectivity

Debate between Lord Benyon and Guy Opperman

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

That is frustrating—I entirely understand my right hon. Friend’s concerns.

I had the pleasure of being the Minister responsible for national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. Nobody feels more strongly about landscape than I do, but our planning policy is still restrictive. There is a phrase that I find myself using too much in politics: “The squeaky door gets the oil.” Often, when there is a proposal by a mobile phone company to put up or raise a mast to achieve more coverage, there is a lot of noise from a small number of people. The silent majority who just want a better mobile phone signal are not heard. It is important that we listen to the silent majority.

[Guy Opperman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Richard Benyon]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not because other hon. Members want to speak.

At least two mobile phone masts in my constituency are designed as pine trees. I am not a great fan of pine trees and the masts do not look like pine trees to me, but they work perfectly. That is a solution for those who believe landscapes will be abused by the presence of masts. I urge mobile phone companies to develop more fake pine trees of that nature.

Regulations on renting land for masts and on repairing and upgrading those masts have not been meaningfully updated since 1984. The industry suffers from much higher rents. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) made a good point about urban mobile phone signals, and that is one of the reasons for his problem. In Madrid, there are two thirds or at least half as many more masts than there are in London, one of the most important cities in the world. We can understand why his constituents are frustrated. My question—it is perhaps rather philosophical than an attempt to elicit views from the Front Benchers about the election—is on whether we should be looking at mobile phone delivery much more as a utility. My fellow members of the Country Landowners Association might not thank me for saying this, but it could be an opportunity, because that might dictate a different type of rent.

The electronics communication code needs amending, and amendments to the Infrastructure Bill tabled to introduce the new code were withdrawn. I hope the Minister updates us on the code.

I want to draw hon. Members’ attention to a remarkable Vodafone project in west Berkshire, in the village of East Garston up in the Lambourn valley. I hosted an event and I am really pleased the Minister came and made an excellent speech. There are pilots around the country and that was an opportunity for him to show off his new beard, which we all welcome. In rural locations, networks can struggle to deliver coverage by traditional means, but it can be done through small technologies. In that case, a community of 450 people in a not spot have been provided with a signal from a church steeple. The Vodafone project was delivered not through a top-down statist approach, but through a local provider working with a community. It was a joy to see the first of those Vodafone pilots. It is now one of 100 schemes throughout the country. We have heard of a similar scheme in north Norfolk that has transformed the tourism potential of the area. That is a key area of delivery for the tourism industry.

I would love to spend more time talking about broadband connectivity. We in west Berkshire look forward to ensuring that 95% of Berkshire is covered by 2017. Our focus is now on the final 5%. I believe my local authority will make an announcement in the next few days which will be welcomed by a great many people, and that we will see benefits delivered. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) that the last 5% will always be the most difficult—on any subject. We must focus not just on being rigorous in one technology but across the piece. We must be flexible and local in how we deliver this. The Opposition suggest a centralised approach that we know has failed in the past. The Government have put in place an approach that works with communities.

Water Bill

Debate between Lord Benyon and Guy Opperman

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. If I felt a degree of paternalism towards the water White Paper, I feel one even more towards the Canal & River Trust, which is one of the great successes. It has seen volunteer numbers rocket since it went from being a government organisation—as British Waterways —to being in the charitable sector, and Members on both sides of the House should take pleasure in its success. Will the Minister respond, if not tonight, at some point, to the real concerns that the CWT has about clause 12? I hope that we can allay its fears because, as the Secretary of State rightly said, the CWT will be an important player in delivering the kind of connectivity we want in our water sector. The CWT will also be a huge resource, in terms of the economic regeneration of our cities, the potential for tourism and the social dimension of volunteer numbers. So I hope that the Minister is able to address the CWT’s concerns, which have been eloquently voiced to hon. Members on both sides of the House.

A debate is rightly taking place about the affordability of water. That was of primary importance in the Government’s mind as we developed the vision in the water White Paper and in the Bill, and I know that it is a great concern of the Minister as he steers the Bill through. Those who believe in price caps can relax about water, because we have a price cap for water—the five-yearly price review. Ofwat provides a price cap for customers, albeit one that is done by negotiation. It has been an effective way of keeping water relatively affordable, although I know that some of my colleagues from the south-west have views on that—we have partly addressed those. Obviously, there are ongoing concerns about water prices, so it is also important to recognise what the Walker review said. It found that the rateable value of a property bears no relation to a customer’s ability to pay and it discovered that 40% of low-income households live in the top rateable value properties.

The concerns and fears that people have about increased metering do not necessarily correlate with the idea that we should leave as many households as we can paying for water through a rateable system. In the next price review period, possibly with the aid of some legislative stimulus, we could see a much higher rate of metering. Knowledge is power for households. We will not be having this debate in 20 years’ time, because we will all be managing our utilities on our laptops at work. We will be able to see that a rocketing in our water usage could be down to a leak in the system. We will be able to manage our household bills more effectively. The high level of metering in the south-west and the work that Southern Water and Thames Water are doing to increase the level of metering should be applauded and supported.

The WaterSure scheme and other social tariffs are important tools, but we should consider the whole question of affordability in a much more holistic way. The effect of a freeze in council tax, of getting more families on low incomes out of paying tax altogether and of other measures will have infinitely more impact on the total expenditure of those households than will tinkering around the schemes with some of these points.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), the Chair of the Select Committee, made an important point about bad debt, but I refer her to her own local water company, Yorkshire Water, which is an exemplar in dealing with bad debt. The money we all pay on our bills for bad debt varies around the country. Some are paying £14 or £15 and some are paying a lot more, because our water companies might be bad at dealing with bad debt. I was impressed to hear that, at Yorkshire, a resolve scheme negotiates repayment terms for customers with arrears of more than £500. A couple years ago, some 5,000 customers paid back £650,000 of bad debt, and the water company wrote off £1 million of bad debt. It is that kind of partnership approach that is delivering a much lower figure of bad debt, which should be seen in the context of affordability. Ofwat estimates that the next year’s price review could reduce bills by between £120 million and £750 million, which seems an awfully wide difference.

Of course we all want to keep water bills low and as many people as possible out of water poverty, but we concentrate on that at the risk of reducing investment. I have spoken about that matter recently in the House and I will continue to do so. A high level of investment is better for customers. It is about stimulating innovation and resilience and reducing the impact on the quality of people’s lives and ultimately on the bills they pay.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North mentioned my comments about the drought. In the spring of 2012, the Environment Agency said to me that there was a 3% chance of us having enough rain through that summer to refill the reservoirs and depleted aquifers. We were fortunate because it started to rain in May. It rained right through the jubilee and stopped just as the first athletes started arriving in the Olympic village. We all thought, “Thank goodness”, although we did have a number of flooding incidents in certain areas. That rainfall might have caused us a problem that summer, but we were planning very seriously for a third dry winter. I put to the House this question: are we really content to see people in the most economically active part of the UK, which is sixth largest economy in the world, reduced to collecting their water from standpipes in the street? That is the sort of image that brings down Governments and causes wholesale, serious and endemic problems in society, and we must use this Bill to avoid that.

[Guy Opperman]

I represent Northumberland—probably the wettest county in England—and we should probably have held the Olympics, as there would then have been no such fears. The Secretary of State referred to water supply earlier, when he called on business men, farmers and other people to get involved and create smaller reservoirs. As my hon. Friend drafted the White Paper on water and knows so much about the subject, can he say what assistance will come from DEFRA and the Bill to incentivise and assist such people to create those reservoirs?

[Richard Benyon]

There is provision in the Bill to establish an inset regime and allow new entrants to design innovative infrastructure, which can link into the water system. Moreover, under the capital allowance system, farmers can invest in new reservoirs and have the right to give the surplus of that water to their water companies. In dire circumstances, the Environment Agency can purchase that water to keep rivers flowing. Real opportunity exists for people. I am not saying that that will resolve our water resilience issues; many farmers will need to build many reservoirs for that to happen. None the less, there is a genuine opportunity.

I have one plea. Yes, we can get involved in lengthy debates about whether we should have a primary or a secondary sustainability duty, or whether the robust new resilience duty—I urge hon. Members to read about that—will provide an added incentive; but if the rivers do not flow, our reservoirs are empty and our economy suffers, we should be absolutely determined to concentrate on the outcomes. I appeal to Members in this Chamber and in the other place not to get stuck on the tokenism of any duty, but to consider the outcome that it can deliver. I am relatively agnostic about whether Ofwat should have a primary or secondary duty to deliver sustainability. I am much more concerned about the outcomes, and I have yet to be convinced that just changing the wording will make a huge amount of difference. A really important gain in all this is the resilience duty on Ofwat.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Benyon and Guy Opperman

Thursday 24th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I welcome the ministerial team to the Front Bench. It is good to see someone with some farming experience finally putting forward the case on behalf of DEFRA. Will the Minister confirm that in these difficult times, when decisions have to be made regarding cuts, consideration will be given to the Agricultural Wages Board, as its task could be dealt with through the national minimum wage procedure?

[Richard Benyon]

I can confirm that the future of the Agricultural Wages Board is being considered as part of the whole review of arm’s length bodies and non-departmental public bodies, and that there will be an announcement soon.