Superfast Broadband (Urban Areas)

Debate between Meg Hillier and Mark Field

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity formally to put on the record the frustrations of my constituents and many businesses about the roll-out of superfast broadband in my central London constituency. I know that the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), whose constituency neighbours mine, has similar concerns.

It may come as a surprise to many that here in central London there is a problem with superfast broadband. The perception is that this is an issue only for the rural parts of the United Kingdom, but there are some fundamental issues that I want to address, and I know that the hon. Lady will want to make a brief, broadly supportive contribution, although she does not know exactly what I will be saying.

The speeds in the centre of London are, in fact, among the slowest in the capital as a whole—some 11.9 megabits per second on average for the City of London as compared with some 20.9 Mbps for the capital as a whole. Ofcom defines superfast broadband as 30 Mbps and has recognised that the gaps in the superfast broadband coverage in Westminster and the City are particularly pronounced.

For clarity, there are three common types of connection. The slowest, and the sort that many colleagues may well have at home, is copper broadband, which uses a phone line. The fastest is the sort used by larger companies, which have a private or a leased line connection, but those are expensive and affordable only to relatively few larger businesses. To put that into figures, copper broadband costs at least £10 a month, whereas a leased line will cost many hundreds of pounds a month to install and run. The other connection option is, of course, superfast broadband, which operates between the copper and leased lines in terms of both price and performance, but is largely affordable for domestic users and small and medium-sized enterprises.

I recognise that the Government have already directly supported the supply of superfast broadband to over 1 million homes and businesses where it would otherwise not have been commercially viable. Many of those residents and businesses are, unsurprisingly, located in rural areas and the current roll-out is expected to provide a £1.5 billion boost to local economies. It is also estimated that the superfast broadband programme will deliver returns of up to £20 for each £1 invested, which would, if that came to pass, represent tremendous value for money.

My constituency—the one we are sitting in today—includes the political, business, cultural and ceremonial heart of the UK, yet a large number of residents and SMEs from right across this patch still do not have the option to connect to superfast broadband. That is somewhat surprising, given the level of investment that the Government have ploughed into improving the UK’s digital infrastructure. Needless to say, that is an integral part of the Government’s long-term economic plan.

Just last month, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport proudly announced that central and local government are investing some £1.7 billion to extend superfast broadband. Access to that has now been extended to some 78% of the UK—88% in London—and it is hoped that that will be extended to some 95% in total by 2017. The Mayor of London has also made it a clear aspiration for every resident and business in London to be able to have access to an affordable high-speed internet connection.

According to the Government’s own body, Broadband Delivery UK, if faster broadband is rolled out, it would be expected to boost the economy by £17 billion annually by 2024. As a consequence, there would be a huge economic opportunity cost to not comprehensively rolling out high-speed broadband in central London. The square mile alone hosts some 13,500 small and medium-sized enterprises. It is often thought that it is only the very big international corporate businesses that are based in the City, but that is not the case, and has never really been. There are many small businesses employing literally a handful of people that are still based in the City of London and which require this most up-to-date global broadband access.

My concern is that there is a failure in how the market currently operates. In urban environments, the approach of network providers seems to be based on a belief that there is insufficient demand to invest further. That means that large swathes of urban areas with important SME users are poorly served and restricted to outmoded copper broadband, which I referred to earlier.

UK telecommunications regulation has successfully created healthy supply-side competition in connectivity for London’s larger corporations, which are prepared to pay many thousands of pounds a month for high bandwidth connections—indeed, many of those are businesses that absolutely need the most state-of-the-art global bandwidth connection. That competition has created a rich network of wholesale fibre-optic cables across the capital, but there is a gap between that wholesale fibre-optic network and the retail network that serves small businesses and residential properties. The policy must now begin to focus on how that rich wholesale fibre core can be extended to London’s small business community and to the residential community here in the centre of London.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

I concur with nearly everything that the hon. Gentleman has said; he has summarised the challenges that are also present in my constituency. Does he not agree that some of the key challenges are the length of time it takes to get connected, unreliability of speeds and the misleading maximum speeds that are often advertised, which is just not delivering for SMEs and many residents?

[Mark Field]

That concern has certainly been put to me by many of my constituents as well. In today’s debate, I am trying to focus on what the Government might do, given their ambitious programme, which, as I said, has made some real headway in relatively depopulated, rural parts of the UK, but which has left behind, ironically, the sorts of areas that the hon. Lady and I represent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

My hon. Friend’s area does not only have green fields; I expect that there are also green boots in that bit of Gloucestershire. However, as he will rightly point out, many of his voters and constituents live in a relatively urban part of Gloucester, which I do appreciate. There are some fundamental problems, and I am glad that we have had an opportunity to ensure that this is not seen just as a central London issue. It might have come as news to my hon. Friend and to the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) that we have a specific problem here in central London.

Many firms in London require superfast broadband as much as they require electricity or water. More than 98% of the UK’s visual effects firms are in the Soho area of London, bordering Covent Garden, which is cited as being in a broadband notspot—the term mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer). Not all firms, especially start-ups, are able to link into the private Sohonet, which notionally serves that part of W1. Instead, they rely on BT and the other telecommunications companies, which do not yet offer such a comprehensive service.

However, there is good news, and I want to give credit where it is due. Recent developments suggest that a number of the private sector providers are now taking a more positive approach. BT, for example, committed only last week to working with the City of London to investigate how new forms of technology can benefit local SMEs. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch. We have worked together to try to ensure that BT works on this, and that is an example of where some cross-party co-operation can work well. Clearly, these issues affect parts beyond a single constituency. That is in addition to BT’s promise of an extra £50 million of investment specifically aimed at expanding coverage further in urban areas. I hope that some of that investment will make its way into my patch.

Progress, of course, can be made through innovative schemes at local level. I should like to highlight the creation by Westminster city council and its arm’s-length management organisation, CityWest Homes, of a new partnership with the private sector called Community Fibre. The aim of the project is to install a fibre-optic telecommunications network in the council’s social housing and associated commercial property stock. That service started as a pilot of only 1,000 or so properties, but has now been extended to cover 22,000 properties in and around the Pimlico district of my constituency.

Until the spring of 2015, businesses have the option of applying for vouchers worth up to £3,000 towards the installation of superfast broadband from a range of providers, through the Government’s SuperConnected Cities programme. However, I understand that, to date, the take-up has been pretty low. I am informed that the Greater London authority has issued only 812 vouchers across London as a whole. The total funding pot for vouchers in London was set at £23.8 million.

If we assumed that all the vouchers were allocated for the maximum amount of £3,000—some, of course, would have been for a smaller sum—the total funding would account for barely 10% of London’s total allocation. There is therefore a compelling case for the Government’s extending the scheme well beyond the spring of 2015, as well as for making the application process more straightforward.

There is clearly a place for Government investment in broadband infrastructure where there is a market failure in supply, but, as responsible policy makers, we should limit the exposure of the taxpayer by first establishing the extent to which the market can address unmet demand. Physically rolling out high-speed broadband networks in urban areas provides a number of challenges for broadband providers. Some 85% of the cost associated with building broadband infrastructure is accounted for by civil engineering. On average, it costs £43 per metre to dig a traditional trench in a footpath.

Of course, digging a trench is particularly expensive in London, for a number of reasons. The large number of heritage and protected status sites leads, of course, to significant bureaucracy and up-front delays. Other reasons are the cost of permits, parking charges and the nature of surface materials, such as York stone, which makes that sort of excavation extremely expensive. The dig rate in London is approximately 25% of the rate of digging seen outside London, as a result of congestion measures such as early finishes and close-down requirements.

To aid the private sector in rolling out superfast broadband in London at minimal cost, I should like to encourage Ministers to work with the Mayor of London and local authorities to minimise the cost of providing this vital infrastructure. For example, we might reduce the cost of permit schemes for broadband upgrade works by limiting charges to A and B category roads, and consider allowing for installation via narrow and micro-trenching for broadband deployment only.

I understand that there are ongoing discussions with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Transport on updating the “Reinstatement of Openings in Highways” code of practice to allow such a move. Narrow trenching would cut the costs of trench deployment by about one third, and micro-trenching would reduce it by a further third, so that would be two thirds in total.

It is important that we take a dynamic and innovative approach to dealing with the coverage problem, as laying cable underground may, in the not-too-distant future, become an entirely outdated process. That will be especially true as mobile superfast broadband coverage becomes increasingly available, now that speeds of up to 50 megabits per second are physically possible. That has the advantage that there is no need for a landline and there is the ability to supply a connection flexibly and quickly. Local authorities must be encouraged to co-ordinate with superfast mobile broadband providers, as providing that service is likely to have implications on public works, street furniture and new developments. Ofcom can also keep a close watch on this market as it develops, to ensure that any technological progress provides as much benefit as possible to the end consumer.

It is widely assumed that the demand for bandwidth will continue to grow tenfold every five or six years. The legacy fibre and copper network will still be able to deliver superfast broadband to some customers, but competitive global city economies will in truth require a full fibre-optic network after 2015 in order properly to compete. I should be keen to see the Government encourage greater activity by broadband providers, in co-operation with local authorities, to press quickly ahead with the creation of affordable broadband.

[Meg Hillier]

I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman has said about the need to ensure that this issue is a high priority. I could not have put it better myself, so I thank him.

[Mark Field]

Lovely! I shall just finish my own points by saying this. I say to the coalition Government that we need fully to harness the digital capabilities in the heart of the UK’s cities—I accept that this applies to other urban areas as well—because that is truly where that is most needed.

The Riots

Debate between Meg Hillier and Mark Field

Thursday 13th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Field]

Very much so. The pure economics of the matter show that if you can reach that small number of families, huge amounts of money can be saved. Otherwise, if we do not reach those families, there are wasted lives that will be put to shame.

The focus of the “Your Choice” programme is on having key transition stages from primary to secondary school. However, it has also developed targeted gang exit programmes, cross-border gang mediation to try to break down the postcode rivalry that lies at the bottom of many of the problems surrounding gang culture in London, and support to get young people into sustained employment and training. We all appreciate how difficult that is, and I fear it will be for some time to come as elements of the economy continue to deteriorate. We also need intensive support to be given to parents and families in the holistic way that my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) described.

We want to try to provide families with a real choice: take the services on offer and become real members of the community, or face a range of enforcement options. That choice is based on evidence of what works, including tried and tested programmes in Westminster, such as the successful gang exit programme. Only 5% of youngsters on that programme received a conviction compared with 42% before the strategy began.

[Meg Hillier]

Does the hon. Gentleman have any experience of gang injunctions in his constituency? We have had great difficulties getting them to work in Hackney. Has he had any conversations with people in his borough or with other Ministers about them?

[Mr Field]

We have not had any in my constituency. As I mentioned the other day, one of the issues surrounding the Churchill Gardens estate in my constituency is the worrying sign that we are getting close to a tipping point and that the gang problem will become much more intense than in certain parts of the northern end of the borough, which the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) represents. That is clearly not something I am entirely aware of.

I appreciate that other hon. Members want to speak, so I will just say a couple more things. It is important to recognise that turning around the lives of what are regarded as problem young people and families takes time, patience and, inevitably, resources. All too often, local authorities have to rely on one-off funding pots, which often fail to deliver an impact or may deliver that impact only in the very short term, with the problem ultimately reoccurring before too long.

The programme that Westminster is trying to develop requires a sustainable funding stream to ensure that the council can intervene early and support young people to make the right choices in their lives. If we can secure sustainable funding, we will aim to intervene early and support children as young as the age of five through that programme. Westminster city council has secured funds to deliver the bulk of the programme for the current tax year, but it wants to be able to deliver a sustainable programme over three to five years. I have made representations on that and, as I mentioned the other day, I am someone who believes in getting the deficit down and who has tried their level best to recognise that that means not standing up, even at a constituency level, for programmes when cuts are being made. This is probably the only exception. We need to look at the provision of youth services. If we are to have a genuine long-term impact, one of the legacies of trying to ensure that the riots do not happen again must be that we examine those services.

In Westminster—I am sure this is replicated in all London boroughs and, indeed, in boroughs outside the capital represented by hon. Members here today—we have had a substantial reduction of some £828,000 from the funding of our youth services as a result of the emergency Budget in June 2010. That was followed by a further £513,000 reduction in the current tax year. In the light of the rioting, all local authorities will be keener than ever not only to secure money for their programmes but, I hope, to ensure that we can improve the lives of the most vulnerable. As is so often the way in life, the prevention will end up being considerable cheaper in the medium and longer term than the cure that will otherwise be before our eyes.