Rural Broadband (Cheshire East)

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing this debate. She and I have already met executives from Cheshire East council to discuss the issue. I also know from her own personal history that, before entering the House, she did some extraordinary work in her local community, which she continues to represent forcefully now that she is in Parliament. There could not be a stronger champion than her for broadband in her part of the world. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Macclesfield (David Rutley), for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), for Warrington South (David Mowat) and for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) for their interventions, which show the astonishing amount of engagement and interest from colleagues in this important issue.

I want to use the brief time remaining to outline the progress that we have made in bringing greater broadband access to rural areas, and to try to answer some of the specific points that my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton has made. It is the coalition Government’s aim to have the best superfast broadband network in Europe by the end of this Parliament, with 90% of households having access to superfast broadband, and universal broadband access of at least 2 megabits. It is an ambitious programme, but we have secured more than half a billion pounds to ensure that it happens.

As my hon. Friend has said, in her constituency some 14% of premises are unable to receive a good level of broadband, even after the private sector investment that is already taking place in the area. One in five people live in a rural community, and rural communities are home to more than 1 million businesses, so this is not just a “nice to have”—getting broadband out to rural areas is essential to our economic growth, as my hon. Friend has made clear. Reliable broadband also underpins the social fabric of our rural communities.

We published our plans for superfast broadband in detail at the end of last year. Through Broadband Delivery UK, the Government are working with local authorities and the devolved Administrations to ensure the delivery of broadband infrastructure to those areas that the market will not reach on its own. We have announced indicative funding allocations for every local authority area in England. As my hon. Friend has pointed out, £3.2 million has been set aside for Cheshire and Warrington. If that can be matched with local funding, we believe that that will make it possible to bring superfast broadband to 90% of properties, and standard broadband to all premises.

We are not dictating to each local authority how it should go about installing broadband in its area. It has been our view from the very beginning that local communities and, therefore, local authorities are best placed to determine their own priorities. Every local authority has therefore been asked to produce local broadband plans for each area that set out its approach, how it will deliver the economic benefits from broadband, and how it will ensure local match funding. Many local authorities throughout the country have made clear, detailed and imaginative proposals, and I am confident that this is the right approach.

As my hon. Friend has indicated, I was able to find out about the good progress being made on Cheshire’s plans when I met her and officials from Cheshire East council recently. In my view, the Cheshire local broadband plan is well on the way to being ready, and my officials in BDUK are working closely with council officials on it.

I realise that match funding, particularly money from the European regional development fund, to which my hon. Friend has referred, is key to Cheshire’s broadband future, as well as that of many other parts of the country. We have vigorously pursued the issue with colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Communities and Local Government, to try to ensure that broadband can be funded from the north-west region’s programme, and likewise in other regions. We need to ensure that expenditure on broadband is consistent with the ERDF regulations. We recognise the critical nature of this funding to Cheshire and, indeed, others, and I want to make sure that we give as much scope as we can to allow funding for broadband projects.

I will briefly indicate the nature of the problem. Given that ERDF funds exist to promote economic growth and are, therefore, targeted at small and medium-sized enterprises, it has been a task to try to get some flexibility in the programmes. As my hon. Friend has made clear, a pipe going into a domestic home that houses a graphic designer will clearly promote economic growth, but, under current ERDF regulations, that would not be seen as funding to support economic growth, because it would not be going directly to business premises. We have, however, secured a revised definition of the final mile with DCLG, which should allow ERDF funds to be applied. The issue is with DCLG at the moment, and it is important that we work with it to communicate the revision to local offices of DCLG around the country. The issue was raised at the ministerial group on growth, and there was agreement that DCLG needs to address the issue. We continue to work with it on it.

We are also awaiting decisions from the cabinets of Cheshire councils to underwrite the ERDF funding, in lieu of a decision on ERDF to speed up so that we can speed up project approval of the local broadband plan. I would be happy to write in further detail to my hon. Friend on that progress, and to the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), to impress on him the need for clarity from my hon. Friend’s point of view.

The procurement process has been mentioned. There are 40 local broadband projects across the country. We have worked with BDUK to put a framework contract in place to speed up the procurement process and to help local authorities minimise the costs and time taken for procurement. We also have to be mindful of physical limitations. Clearly, we cannot network the entire country at once and it will be important, as I think my hon. Friend has indicated, to ensure that we progress projects in a timely manner, to ensure that the operators who win contracts have the resources to implement them.

We are making a number of other key policy interventions. We will publish a second consultation on the deployment of new overhead lines, which should allow the deployment of broadband much more cheaply. Next month, we will issue guidance on microtrenching and street works. I also impress on my hon. Friends how important it is for them to work with local councils to ensure that the planning process is as simple and as low-cost as possible for operators when they are laying new fibre.

Finally, we have commissioned a review of the electronic communication code and how it applies to wayleaves and access to private land. I recently wrote to the Country Land and Business Association and the National Farmers Union to ask them to speed up the voluntary agreement at which they are meant to arrive to ensure that wayleaves can be dealt with. We have also made significant progress in reducing the cost of access to BT’s ducts and poles. At the Conservative party conference, the Chancellor announced an additional £150 million for mobile coverage.

I hear what my hon. Friend says about responsibility being parcelled among a number of Departments, and I agree with the implications of her remarks, namely that the responsibility should be mine. I hope that she will lobby the Prime Minister on that later tonight.