Superfast Broadband: Rural Communities

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the rollout of superfast broadband to rural communities.

It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. Anyone wondering why broadband should be of concern to me and my constituents could do no better than to look at the briefing paper prepared by the House of Commons Library for today’s debate. If anyone is looking for Orkney and Shetland in just about any of the various league tables in that paper, do not bother looking for us at the top of most of them, because we are generally at or around the bottom. We are the sixth lowest UK constituency for superfast broadband availability, and in the table for average speeds, the situation is even worse—we are fourth lowest. The only table where we feature near the top—fourth from the top—is unfortunately the one showing the percentage of households in constituencies that are unable to get connection speeds of 10 megabits per second or more.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. When we look at the maps, it is quite obvious who is in or near the relegation zone, and his constituency is indeed there or thereabouts, but does he agree that, within the confines of those maps and that assessment, there are smaller areas within larger constituencies that are also very badly affected in terms of not having superfast broadband access?

[Mr Carmichael]

Indeed. Breaking the picture down to ward level gives a much better idea of what is happening on the ground, but even when one looks at the statistics that are provided, one does not have the full story. I know from engaging regularly with BT in my constituency that it will say that x number of people within an area now have broadband access—it is doing that within postcode areas, essentially—but one will find that, even within the specified area, the people who can actually get superfast broadband will not be the same as those included in the headline figure.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Only last week I received a response from BT in relation to the superfast extension programme. It informs me that

“even when improvement work is complete, there is no guarantee that everyone will access faster broadband”

speeds in rural areas. Has the right hon. Gentleman any comment to make about that?

[Mr Carmichael]

I could make many comments about that sort of thing, but I fear that you would rule me out of order, Mr Brady. It does, however, illustrate the frustration that many people in rural communities feel, and it is becoming more acute. The evidence is growing that the disparity between the densely populated urban areas and rural areas is becoming ever wider.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

If I can just make a second or two of progress, I will take as many interventions as I can later.

The problem is acute for people in rural areas and it is particularly serious for people in island areas—it strikes at the heart of everything that we seek to do in maintaining island populations. A critical mass of population is essential to maintaining the economy and the social viability of any island community. In a rural area that is close to an urban area, if someone loses their job or their business goes into administration or receivership, they can move or they can drive for another half-hour or hour to get another job. However, if someone in an island community loses their job and another one is not available locally, they leave the island, which means that another salary is taken out of the local economy, another school has a smaller roll and fewer people are using the local post offices—the list goes on. That is why connectivity is essential for us.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mrs Murray]

rose—

[Mr Carmichael]

I suspect that I am going to get willing agreement first from the hon. Gentleman and then the hon. Lady.

[Mr MacNeil]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct—it is willing agreement—but it does not have to be like this. To his west and my north-west, everyone in the Faroe Islands is connected with at least 2 megabits. In fact, that was the situation three or four years ago and speeds are probably faster now. Everyone has 4G phone and there are undersea tunnels with a 4G signal. We cannot go between Gatwick airport and London and get a phone signal going through the tunnels. His point about population is absolutely right. The Faroese population will hit 50,000 for the first time in history this month or next.

[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Gentleman and I both know the Faroe Islands quite well and we both know that they have been able to achieve the things that our island communities have struggled to achieve because they start from the presumption of a service that is provided for the people on the islands first. It is not something that is driven from, as it is for his community and mine, people in Edinburgh or even Inverness, which is frankly not an awful lot better. It is community and island-centric provision. That is what matters.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the problem exists not just at the end of the country where his constituency is, but in Cornwall? I cannot attribute this to my right hon. Friend the Minister. Superfast Cornwall, which is a partnership between the EU, the Liberal Democrat-led Cornwall Council and BT, is failing to roll out broadband in a satisfactory way for a lot of my constituents. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there is a problem there as well?

[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Lady has the advantage of me. I was mildly and pleasantly surprised to hear that we still have a controlling interest in Cornwall. I am sure that my colleagues there are doing their best in very difficult circumstances. I am sure equally, from the tone of her intervention, that the hon. Lady will be doing everything she can, in a non-partisan way, to work with them.

Let me make progress for a minute or two. Ofcom’s “Connected Nations” report in December 2016 gave us a good snapshot of the overall picture. Average download speeds across the UK as a whole are now running at 37 megabits per second. However, 5% of premises, which is about 1.4 million, are unable to receive speeds faster than 10 megabits per second. Superfast broadband—that means speeds greater than 30 megabits per second—is now available in 89% of premises, which is more than 25 million, across the whole of the United Kingdom. However, those high-level, headline statistics actually illustrate the acuteness of the divide—the growing divide—between urban and rural communities. In Scotland, 43.9% of people living in large urban areas, as opposed to 7.9% in remote urban areas, are able to receive speeds classed as superfast. Those unable to reach the 10-megabits-per-second threshold constitute 1.6% in large urban areas, as opposed to 54.3% in very rural areas. That is a good illustration of the gap between the digital haves and have-nots—the rural and the urban.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

First, I must make it clear that I fully support the roll-out of rural broadband. It is crucial for the highlands, the islands and, indeed, the borders of Scotland—if I did not say that, my mother-in-law in the highlands would kill me. The right hon. Gentleman might not be aware that many households and businesses in urban areas, and particularly in areas of commercial deployment, are also being missed and left with very slow speeds.

[Mr Carmichael]

The position will never be uniform across any community but—I think that this distinction is material—there is a range of opportunities available in urban areas that are simply not available to those of us in more rural areas. It is invidious to play one side off against the other—in making the comparison between urban and rural, I am merely highlighting the difference and not trying to set one community against another.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share my view that it must be just a coincidence that, in many of the areas selected for commercial roll-out, which the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) talks about, BT seems not to have connected with fibre some of the small business parks and light industrial estates? I am sure he will agree that there is no way that that can be because BT is trying to make some money out of leased fibre lines to those premises.

[Mr Carmichael]

I do not want to turn this into a whinge-fest about British Telecom, because that is just too easy. Our role in this debate is to look at a more strategic picture. The fact is that where there is provision, business and economic development follow. That is why it needs strategic, political and regulatory intervention. It is in all our interests that we maintain the widest possible spread of economic development. If the political will and regulatory effort is put into getting the roll-out, we will find that the economic opportunities follow.

The final illustration I have on the difference between rural and urban broadband is that I asked my staff to run broadband speed tests on their own machines. I asked my caseworker in Shetland to run the broadband speed checker first of all. On broadband.co.uk, she recorded a 0.3 megabits download speed. My researcher based in the House of Commons, who has an address in Surrey, did the same test and came up with 184.12 megabits per second. If that is not a digital divide, I really do not know what is.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Is it not right to note—as the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) did—that there can be premises in an urban area sitting cheek by jowl with others where there are enormous disparities? Does the right hon. Gentleman also recognise, and share my intense frustration, that millions of pounds of public money is sitting in bank accounts ready to hook up homes and premises, but all too often excessive caution, or the terror of being found in breach of state aid rules, prevents that money from being spent?

[Mr Carmichael]

I confess that of the many difficulties I have encountered in the years I have been dealing with this issue as a Member of Parliament, that is one I have not come across. However, what the hon. Gentleman describes would frustrate us all. The difficulty is that this problem is now beginning to undermine Government policy across the board. The Government as a whole have an interest in the Minister’s Department taking a lead in driving it out.

We are forever encouraging our farmers to diversify, saying that they should be setting up holiday accommodation and finding different ways to bring people into the countryside and add value to their product. Bluntly, however, that requires good connectivity—without that it will not happen.

I recently had contact with a postmistress in Shetland who tells me that her business as a postmistress is now being adversely affected by the intermittent service and extremely slow broadband speeds that she has to deal with. She says customers at the post office are being seriously affected by long waits because of the internet cutting out. As well as the difficulties that slow broadband speed causes her personally, it is considerably affecting her ability to provide a reliable post office service to that community in Shetland. There is a broad measure of political consensus in the House on the provision of post office services, but again, in the areas where it is most challenging it is being undermined by poor connectivity.

I will offer another couple of examples of how this problem affects my constituents. I recently had contact with one constituent in North Roe, right at the north of Shetland, who told me that in one week he had missed out on approximately £800 of potential grant funding for marine equipment as he was unable to open emails and download attachments. He says that he cannot submit fisheries or crofting forms online and that after 5.30 pm he need not even bother trying the internet, such is the quality of service he gets. The best example I got was also from a resident of North Roe, who told me that he tried to load the BT speed tester on his machine but did not have sufficient connectivity to load the page for the test.

The most interesting example came just this week in a piece of correspondence from a constituent in Westray. For the benefit of younger or newer Members in the House, that was a letter, which is what we used to get from constituents. He tells me:

“Access to broadband is not a luxury these days. We do banking and shopping and book flights to the Scottish mainland on the internet, and we communicate by email. Information that used to be on paper is on webpages now. I wrote to Ofcom about BT’s service and their reply referred me to web pages where I could learn about how to escalate my complaint and seek compensation”.

To load those pages, however, he would be required to go to the library in Kirkwall, which is a nine-hour round trip from his home in Pierowall in Westray.

The difficulty is that broadband roll-out, whether south of the border in England and Wales, or in Scotland through the Scottish Government—in partnership with Highlands and Islands Enterprise and BT in my area—is driven by targets. Indeed, the targets themselves may often be misleading. The next generation of roll-out, however, is not just going to be confined to broadband. For us the opportunities come from the availability of 4G and 5G—whenever that becomes a feature of our daily lives.

The Minister should perhaps be talking to his colleagues in the Home Office about the roll-out of the emergency services network. The contract has been given to EE, and that is going to give it an obvious advantage in having control of infrastructure across the whole country. The opportunity is there for much improved 4G coverage through EE. I give EE credit for the way in which it has engaged with communities, certainly in my constituency, but I hear increasing complaint about its willingness to engage with other mobile companies. It tells me that it does not know what features are going to be found in the design of this roll-out, and that it does not know what the mast heights and positions are going to be. This generational opportunity to improve the service is an opportunity for Government Departments to work together instead of in their own individual silos, to ensure that when that provision is ultimately rolled out it brings the maximum benefit to communities across the whole of the United Kingdom and companies across the whole of industry.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a constructive point about the roll-out of mobile telecommunications. Are not the industrial strategy and the Digital Economy Bill an opportunity for the Government to look at this 5% of areas, which will predominantly be rural, that are not included in the target of 95% by 2017? A pilot scheme in the Shetland and Orkney Islands and Ynys Môn would be a great example for that going forward.

[Mr Carmichael]

Indeed; I can think of few areas that would be more suitable. I say that not entirely with my tongue in my cheek, because I suspect that anything that can be made to work in the constituencies and communities that the hon. Gentleman and I represent could be made to work anywhere else.

The understanding I want the Minister to take from today’s debate is that the days of centrally driven, top-down roll-outs are over. They have achieved a significant amount in getting targets met and getting out to the low-hanging fruit, as it were. However, for that remaining 5% of areas there will have to be a different approach altogether.

[James Heappey]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again—he is being very generous with his time. I absolutely agree with him on that point. Devon and Somerset are the last areas to get their phase 2 contract awarded, but once that phase 2 contract is awarded and the premises within the 91st to 95th percentiles are known, why would we wait to deliver the universal service obligation sequentially? If we know what the final 5% is, let us get on with delivering the USO concurrently and employing whatever technology suits rather than a central solution from above.

[Mr Carmichael]

I think that will be the answer to filling the last 5%, but there will not be a single solution. I am frustrated by the way in which the fibre roll-out is now holding some things up. We know that the last 5%—or whatever it will be—in Scotland will be delivered by Community Broadband Scotland, which can only come in when we know what is left. However, those responsible for the fibre roll-out wanting to sweat the asset, effectively, is leaving communities waiting at the end of the queue.

[Mr MacNeil]

Does the right hon. Gentleman find the ad hoc nature of much of this strange? I happened to come across some people from EE once who said, “If only we could get the Northern Lighthouse Board sites, that would help,” so I wrote to the Northern Lighthouse Board, which said, “Yes, no problem at all.” However, nobody is co-ordinating things centrally. It is similar with Vodafone and EE at the moment—opportunities are constantly being missed. Sometimes a bit of central thinking is needed, and I do not think that has been happening at all; it is far too ad hoc.

[Mr Carmichael]

That is a good illustration, though I will not, on the one hand, make a plea for decentralised thinking and then on the other berate Ministers for not taking control of everything. There is a strategic role for Ministers at the centre, but those who are charged with broadband delivery in the hon. Gentleman’s area and mine—Highlands and Islands Enterprise, for example—need to be much more focused on community engagement and taking communities along with them than they have been hitherto. That will be absolutely essential when it comes to finishing the last 5%, or whatever the margin will be.

For some years now I have organised a series of digital forums in Shetland and Orkney. The last one we took out to Skeld in west Shetland—one of the most poorly served mainland Shetland communities for broadband coverage and mobile phone connectivity. During the forum I got an explanation of the inadequacies of the roll-out that, frankly, I do not ever expect to be able to improve on. A constituent who had worked for 30 years in the NHS said she suspected that if the NHS had left all the difficult cases till last in those 30 years, most of the difficult cases would have died. Right hon. and hon. Members can probably join the dots on the analogy being drawn. It is one that the Minister would do well to listen to.

[Several hon. Members rose—]