Business of the House

Albert Owen Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I will raise the matter with the Secretary of State and I think that he will want to take it forward. The former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), is to be congratulated on the steps that she has taken to bring our broadband programme to where it is, with 10,000 homes a week getting access to broadband and an investment of more than £1 billion in our broadband and mobile infrastructure. It will deliver a lot of additional connectivity.

My hon. Friend is right, as I know from the rural areas in Cambridgeshire. The Connecting Cambridgeshire programme will get us to 98% of homes, but it has required significant local authority funding to establish the contract with BT and attract the additional Government funding. I know that the Secretary of State will want to respond to him about these matters.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

May we have a debate in Government time on the Government’s plans to fully privatise search and rescue? That would provide us with the opportunity to discuss moving search and rescue headquarters from the base in my constituency to Caernarfon airport, where according to the Environment Agency it will be built on a floodplain. We need to have such discussions before the Government rush ahead with their plans.