Rural Phone and Broadband Connectivity

Alan Reid Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacNeil]

I am afraid that I meant both mobile and broadband. The Minister is right that the Scottish Government have done a great job and he gives me a tremendous opportunity to tell him just how well they have done. While the UK Government provided £100.8 million through BDUK, £410 million is being spent on the Digital Scotland superfast broadband programme. For that, great thanks should go to the Scottish Government, who know full well and understand the situation.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is fiddling the figures. The total might be £400 million, but well over £100 million of that came from the UK Government and well over £100 million from BT. The Scottish Government put something in, but delivery by the Scottish Government and BT is hopeless. It is high time that the hon. Gentleman got on to the Scottish Government and told them to deliver broadband to my constituency with the money they have.

[Mr MacNeil]

I see that the hon. Gentleman is criticising British Telecom—I am not sure whether he is calling for a Scottish Telecom. When he spoke on this issue in the middle of last month, he did not allude to the fact that there was £400 million. He said that only £120 million was being spent and did not give the full picture at all. He will, of course, be delighted to know that a 4G pilot project is coming to the island of Coll, which I am very pleased and excited to hear about. Surely he should be welcoming the progress we have seen and the laying of fibre cables to 19 remote islands, including some of my own. I am pleased to see that and I hope that it will expand. If the Scottish Government were not involved and only his own Government were, we would not have seen that at all and we would have been in a parlous state. The hon. Gentleman would do well to remember just what the Scottish Government have done. Just today, we have the news of the improved services going live in Orkney and Shetland—not my islands or his, but we celebrate that that is coming. I particularly celebrate that the service is on the way to Stornaway as well, where 5,000 premises in the Hebrides will be connected to superfast broadband for the first time.

Our next step is to expand throughout all the islands, in the rural areas of each island, and to make sure that everyone benefits, because we do not want a situation where we have the not not not spots. Lack of broadband access is a social blight and a business blight, which of course leads to an economic blight. We need the same connectivity not just as the cities of the UK but as the rural areas of the Nordic countries.

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[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) for so ably introducing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to raise the hopeless performance of telephone companies in Argyll and Bute.

In the past two months, telephone companies, both landline and mobile, have failed miserably to keep many of my constituents in telephone contact with the rest of the world. Following a storm in early December, some constituents are still waiting for their landline service to be repaired. The experience of one constituent from south Kintyre is typical. He reported a fault in December. BT made an appointment for an engineer to visit on 28 December. That appointment was not kept. It was the same on 14 and 28 January. He is still waiting. He now has another appointment for this Thursday. I hope that this time the engineer will turn up and fix the fault.

BT’s excuse is that it has declared MBORC, which stands for “matters beyond our reasonable control”. It claims that owing to exceptional circumstances, it is unable to meet its normal commitment times to provide a service or repair faults. It seems that by declaring MBORC, BT can also get away with not turning up for appointments. This is totally unacceptable. The engineers are clearly working flat out, often in difficult weather conditions, but BT clearly does not have enough engineers operating in Argyll and Bute.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

My hon. Friend has been given a different excuse for not fixing a fault. In my constituency, the problem was the unforeseen meeting of NATO in Newport. Does he agree that that was a foreseen circumstance?

[Mr Reid]

My hon. Friend is correct. We all knew for months, if not years, in advance that NATO was meeting in south Wales. His comments clearly indicate that BT looks for excuses to declare MBORC.

As several hon. Members have mentioned, BT Openreach is in the privileged position of having a monopoly on landlines. It should not be able to dodge its responsibilities for months simply by declaring MBORC. Will the Minister look at the regulations again?

The universal service obligation is supposed to guarantee a landline service no matter where one lives, and my constituents are quite rightly fed up being told that if they lived in Glasgow their phone line would be repaired quickly, but that they will have to wait months because they live in a rural area. I hope the Minister will look at the regulations again. Heavy fines need to be levied for failure to repair faults in a reasonable time and for not turning up to appointments. If BT was faced with heavy fines, it would be compelled to employ enough engineers.

[Sir Robert Smith]

It also transpires that Openreach pays compensation to service providers, but not all service providers necessarily pass that compensation on to the end user. Perhaps if there was more of a compensation culture the management would be more efficient about maximising repairs.

[Mr Reid]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Fines are necessary to encourage companies to carry out their responsibilities properly, and not just use the cop-out of declaring MBORC.

On mobile phones—the problem is not just with landlines—Vodafone cannot escape criticism either. Its performance in carrying out repairs has been poor. For example, last summer it took 18 days to repair a fault on the isle of Islay, and another fault on Islay in December took even longer to repair. These are not isolated cases. There is now yet another fault on Islay that is taking ages to repair, and there have been several instances in other parts of Argyll and Bute of long delays. When challenged, Vodafone dodged responsibility by blaming the many other companies involved in tracking down and repairing faults.

A mobile phone service is not a luxury these days, but a necessity—for example, if someone’s car breaks down on a quiet country road or a farmer has an accident. I am aware of a farmer who broke a leg. He was conscious and able to use his mobile phone, but because he had no signal, he had to lie in severe pain until somebody found him. That shows the importance of mobile phone coverage these days. It is an essential, not a luxury.

I am pleased the Government have reached an agreement with the mobile phone companies. It means that the latter will be investing at least £5 billion over the next three years to extend coverage and improve signal strength, and that the number of places not covered by mobile coverage will reduce by two thirds. However, I will keep fighting for 100% coverage and speedy repairs, because speedy repairs are as crucial as the original investment. It is no good having a box-ticking exercise with an investment strategy, and then failing to maintain the service. Constituents with contracts with Vodafone are entitled to use the service. Leaving everything to the market is no good, because the mobile companies and BT Openreach would simply concentrate on the densely populated areas and ignore the highlands and islands. The Government should introduce performance standards for repairs and fine companies that fail to meet them.

Having criticised Vodafone for its failure to carry out repairs in a reasonable time, I want to congratulate it on its Rural Open Sure Signal programme, which will bring mobile phone coverage to several villages in my constituency. However, I urge it to follow up the initial investment and all the publicity with a proper repair service, because that investment is no good if the system does not work.

I was pleased when in 2013 the Government gave Arqiva a contract to build mobile phone masts in places where there was no signal. The new masts were supposed to be up and running by the end of this year, but from the experience of Argyll and Bute, this programme seems to have badly stalled. The last time I met Arqiva, it could not say where in my constituency the new masts were to be sited or when they would be constructed. We need more transparency, and I hope the Minister will tell Arqiva to publish its intentions now. We need to know where the masts are going and when they will be put up.

Bringing superfast broadband to rural areas is vital. I am pleased that more than 20% of the Government’s investment in superfast broadband—more than £100 million—was given to the Scottish Government to bring superfast broadband to rural areas in Scotland. However, delivery was left to the Scottish Government, and they gave the contract to BT Openreach. Cables have been laid and some addresses have been connected to the new superfast broadband, but most of Argyll and Bute is extremely frustrated that neither the Scottish Government nor BT can tell them when, or even if, they will get broadband. Some people on very slow speeds tell me they do not want superfast broadband; they just want a decent broadband service.

The Scottish Government and BT must be much more open and tell people when, or if, their home or business will be connected to fibre-optic broadband. Not knowing what is happening prevents people from making other arrangements, such as wireless or satellite. Given these failings, I must congratulate a local organisation on its initiative. Mull and Iona Community Trust, well led by its extremely enterprising general manager, Moray Finch, is leading the way with a project that will deliver superfast broadband by wireless to parts of Mull and Islay, as well as to the islands of Iona, Colonsay, Lismore, Luing and Jura, and to Craignish on the mainland. MICT has done very well, but that same type of project should be going on throughout Argyll and Bute, because in many places it is simply not practical to deliver superfast broadband via fibre-optic cable. I want the Scottish Government to follow the lead of the Mull and Iona Community Trust and work with community groups throughout Argyll and Bute to deliver superfast broadband everywhere in the constituency.

It is not just in remote rural areas that problems arise. BT promised that the town of Dunoon in my constituency would get superfast broadband paid through BT’s own resources last year. However, this was postponed without any announcement—it was only when people started complaining that we found this out—and it is supposed to be happening this year, but there is still no sign of anything happening. Some constituents receive extremely slow broadband speeds of well under a megabit in some cases. It is high time that BT got the work done and gave my constituents a decent broadband service.

Broadband and mobile phone services are essential these days. Investment in infrastructure and much speedier action when faults occur are essential. The Scottish Government and BT must drastically improve their performance to bring superfast broadband to Argyll and Bute as a matter of urgency. BT and Vodafone must drastically improve their performance when repairs are needed. The loss of both landline and mobile phone services in Argyll and Bute this winter has been unacceptable. I call on the Government to beef up the regulations so that phone companies can be fined for poor performance when repairs to the phone infrastructure are needed.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I agree with the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart). At times, I have felt as if I have walked into a meeting of the 1922 committee this afternoon—it has been a congregation of the excluded, the dispossessed and the disconnected. I should tell all hon. Members who have complained about the last 3% or 5% that I feel their pain. I recommend that they vote Labour at the general election because that is the only way they will get this sorted out.

For once, it is not just about the many, but about the few. As many hon. Members have said, mobile telephony and broadband—superfast broadband—are not luxuries any more. They are a fundamental and essential utility. People have a right to expect both in residential properties, and businesses have a right to expect them. As the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) said, many business parks are still not connected. Incidentally, ensuring that that is rolled out is the strongest argument for state intervention. That is one of the things we need to look at.

If hon. Members watched “Last Tango in Halifax” on Sunday evening, they will know how important mobile telephony is. A wedding might all too easily be cancelled because somebody did not manage to send a text message or get mobile coverage to be able to say, “I’m on my way.”

For that matter, in many places in the country, if people want to watch “Last Tango in Halifax” half an hour or an hour later on iPlayer, they would have to have 2 megabits per second at least, and yet, as many hon. Members from parties on both sides of the Chamber have said, too many people cannot even get that 2 megabits per second. If somebody is upstairs watching YouTube on a tablet, somebody is downloading something on their smartphone and somebody else is watching iPlayer through their smart TV, even 5 megabits per second might not be enough because of contention ratios. Even when the technology has been rolled past their door, many people are not connected, either because they do not know the benefits or simply because there is not enough competition in the market to make it cheap enough for them to afford.

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on introducing the debate. I know the problems in his constituency, because when I stayed there for the Hay festival last year, I had absolutely no means of finding the place where I was going because Google maps gave up on me, because there was no connectivity. I think Edmund Burke would have been proud of him. I am not sure Burke had a lot to say about mobile telephony, but he was quite keen on connections. After all, he said:

“The only liberty…is a liberty connected with order.”

I want to talk about the Government’s record. Hon. Members have snuck around the corner here a little bit. In essence, they know that most of what they have argued this afternoon is a criticism of the Government’s record. They have not put it in such terms, because they know there is a general election coming.

[Mr Reid]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will not give way if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because we want to get on to—