Broadband (East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire)

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on the perfect timing of his arrival in the Chamber, which I can only assume is a result of having some sort of superfast broadband connection to inform him that the debate was about to commence.

The title of the debate could be somewhat confusing. It is about broadband in east Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire, and by east Yorkshire I mean the whole ceremonial county, not the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), which should perhaps be called Bridlington and Pocklington, although I am not sure what the good folk of Market Weighton would think about that. [Interruption.] Or Driffield, indeed. Nevertheless, it is good to have my right hon. Friend here to support the debate from his new position as a member of the Government, and I congratulate him on that. I think he is the only Member from east Yorkshire or north Lincolnshire to be serving in government. I was shocked not to receive a call myself, but there is always another year.

The debate will focus on both east Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire, as I represent communities in both. I will therefore split my speech into a number of sections. My main focus is to put some questions to the Minister on certain issues, and I will list those at the beginning of my speech rather than wait until the end—I always think it is fairer to Ministers that way. First, I will talk about flexibility in broadband delivery and particularly whether wireless broadband can be considered as a possible solution along with fixed-line deployment. Secondly, I will ask the Minister whether the north Lincolnshire broadband bid can be moved further up the procurement ladder, and thirdly, I will talk about deployment across the east riding with reference to Kingston Communications. Of course, the position in the broader Hull area is unique, because there is no BT provision, only KC. Fourthly, I will seek assurances from the Minister about the potential funding gap in the east riding’s broadband plan, and fifthly, I will ask for guarantees that projects are on course to be completed by 2015. I believe we have until half-past 10, so I may also speak for a short while about 4G provision, which I plan to get to at about 9.50 pm. We are in for a good evening.

This campaign enjoys cross-party, cross-Humber support, and it is good to see my hon. Friends the Members for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) in the Chamber. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) are also much involved with this issue. In general, superfast broadband cannot come quick enough to the good folk of east Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, and in parts we enjoy some of the worst broadband connectivity in the country. As we try and move our economy forward, particularly the renewables agenda and our enterprise zones, it is vital that rural broadband—and, indeed, more urban broadband —is rolled out as quickly as possible.

I congratulate the Government—the Conservative-led Government as we like to call them when things are going well; the coalition Government when things are not going quite so well—on the £8.5 million they are investing in what they are not allowed to call the Humber region: north Lincolnshire and east Yorkshire. We have a number of not-spots across our area, and for my constituents—particularly in villages such as Adlingfleet that rests on the east Yorkshire/north Lincolnshire border, which is currently undefended—there is absolutely no broadband coverage and people struggle to get 0.5 megabits on their fixed-line broadband.

The roll-out of broadband cannot come fast enough. More and more of my constituents have to work from home and want to access telehealth services, which is simply not possible with the sort of connection speeds found in a lot of those communities. I therefore welcome the commitment to have superfast broadband rolled out to 90% of my constituents by 2015, with the remainder receiving 2 megabit broadband through other means.

I mentioned some of the benefits of superfast broadband. In north Lincolnshire, it has been estimated that the average cost of residential care is £18,000 a year per person and, as I mentioned, there is an increasing move to telehealth services, which will return a saving of £11,000 per person in a single year. I went to see telehealth services in operation at Goole in the east Yorkshire part of my constituency and I was incredibly impressed. Of course, if people do not have good broadband connectivity—or none at all—it is not possible for those services to be rolled out.

In north Lincolnshire, 52% of children under 15 are unable to use the same online tools they use at school because of poor or no access to the internet. As my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe will attest, I know from my previous profession that more and more homework is delivered through online tools that young people have to access at home, but that is not possible for a lot of our communities. Indeed, in some communities in east riding, it is not even possible to access those tools at school. I visited Pollington-Balne primary school on the edge of east riding, which is unable even to access BBC education tools. The kids all have iPads and are connected to the school internet, but they are unable to access even the most basic tools on the BBC website.

This morning I kicked off the new school term at Goole college where I had a meeting with the newly appointed principal—I congratulate her on that—and she told me of the problems there. Broadband access, therefore, is a problem not only in rural communities, but also in more urban areas. More and more of our constituents across east Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire are seeking to access education online, whether through distance learning or something else, but find that that is simply not possible given some of the connection speeds.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew Percy]

I will, of course, give way to my hon. Friend. She is not quite from north Lincolnshire or east Yorkshire, but I know she will have something to say on the matter.

[Anne Marie Morris]

My point is that broadband is not, dare I say it, just a problem in the north of the country; it is also a problem in the south-west. Broadhempston primary school got access to broadband for the first time only last year and, as my hon. Friend has said, without that, how can our young people learn?

[Andrew Percy]

Absolutely, I confess that my geography gets a bit shady south of Sheffield, but my hon. Friend’s constituency—

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Percy]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for his intervention. He is right. I visited a business in West Cowick on Saturday that wants to grow but that is currently restricted by its broadband connectivity. It attracts many corporate clients—we need that kind of cash in our part of the world—but it will struggle as it tries to expand because of its poor broadband connectivity.

That brings me to one solution and my first main point: the potential for wireless broadband to help with the roll-out. I was unaware of the amount of wireless availability in the area. Jibba Jabba, whose catchy name will resonate with anybody who used to watch “The A-Team”, is part of Lakeside IT and based in Doncaster—we will forgive it for being just over the border in south Yorkshire—and Quickline, which is based in Hessle, are two locally based companies that currently offer between 10 megabits and 40 megabits, which is roughly equivalent to the speeds experienced by urban residents with carbon fibre connections. Their services are available across the whole of east Yorkshire and north Yorkshire and are expanding to cover north-east Lincolnshire.

I met the companies a few weeks ago and told them I would be interested in trialling wireless broadband alongside my fixed-line broadband to see how it works and have been staggered by what happened. I have done a number of speed tests in the past couple of weeks. In the small village of Airmyn, just outside Goole, where I live, I record speeds of about 2.5 megabits for downloads and 0.5 megabits for uploads on my fixed-line broadband. I cannot do a great deal with that—it is just enough to stream iPlayer and such, and sending files is incredibly time consuming. Speeds on my wireless broadband, which is simply a small box on the side of the house, have gone upwards of 28 megabits for downloads and about 18 megabits for uploads. Those numbers are currently reduced because something is being done to the mast, but they will increase.

In many other parts of the world, wireless broadband is being used as part of the roll-out, but it is not part of the delivery plans here. My argument to the Minister is that we need more of a push on wireless broadband. People in the whole of my constituency can achieve significant speeds through wireless broadband, so we need to give it more importance, because we will struggle in parts of the country to roll out fixed-line broadband by 2015.

[Anne Marie Morris]

I support all my hon. Friend says on the importance of flexibility, but as fewer fixed-line companies can compete with BT, does he agree that the new parts of the market he describes become even more crucial as part of the franchise if we are to have the open, competitive market that will solve the problem?

[Andrew Percy]

I agree entirely, and it comes, of course, without all the infrastructure problems. I have a lot of respect for BT and have worked with it on a number of issues, but the roll-out programme is very BT-centric, and we need to consider broadening that. As one wireless provider said to me, “It’s not the entire solution, but it can bring rapid deployment at reasonably little cost”, which would help to justify, particularly in marginal areas, the demand for those areas being commercially fibred—if that is the term. BT is involved in that through its trialling of white space wireless technology. This has to be part of the solution. I am told that in many parts of the world—eastern Europe and the US, for example—superfast wireless broadband is very much part of the mix. We want that mix here. I want wireless broadband rolled out as far as possible by 2015.