Customs and Borders

Debate between Antoinette Sandbach and Matt Warman

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I am delighted that this debate has been extended to 5 o’clock, but I am afraid that my duties as Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Northern Ireland Office mean that I will not be here for the wind-ups. I apologise to the House for that.

My constituency, as I have said many times in this place, voted more strongly than anywhere else in the country to leave the European Union, and I, as an individual, voted to remain. I suppose that I am therefore one of those whom the Father of the House teasingly described as someone who has undergone a damascene conversion. One of my constituents suggested that I had undergone a damascene conversion from kamikaze to life support when I voted to trigger article 50.

My starting point is the same as the point that I made when we were fighting the referendum campaign—we have to respect the result. That means that we have to define what we discussed during that campaign. In my constituency, as in many others up and down the country, the two defining points that we discussed were ending freedom of movement and being able to strike our own trade deals around the world. Those two things—although we may not have expressed it in these terms at the time—require us to leave the single market and to leave the customs union.

If we are to respect the way that people voted, it is impossible to get away from those positions, for two very simple reasons. First, freedom of movement is absolutely bound up with our membership of the single market. That point is probably more accepted by those who have called this debate than the second point. On the customs union, no one on any sensible side of the debate—certainly no one in my constituency—is arguing for a compromise in which we are unable to control our own trade policy but have to take the rules that the European Union makes. No one is suggesting that there is a compromise that both upholds the result of the referendum in allowing us to go and strike our own trade deals around the world and allows us to remain in the customs union. I simply do not see how today’s proposal would allow us to respect that.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Many of my constituents say to me that they voted to join a common market. If there were a compromise that delivered a common market but took them out of the political institutions of the EU, they would accept that as an acceptable compromise, and it would bring together remainers and leavers.

[Matt Warman]

I would like to agree with my hon. Friend, in the sense that if the European Union were to offer an option that said, “Remain in the customs union and remain in the single market, but you don’t have to have freedom of movement and you do have the ability to go and strike your own trade deals”, then a lot of us would think that that was a very attractive move. However, that would make it a better deal to be outside the EU than to be in it.

I simply do not see how it is a sustainable, coherent position to think that the European Union would offer us that sort of compromise, so we have to live, as Opposition Members have so often said, in the real world. That requires us to say that people did not vote for the European Court of Justice to continue to have its rulings being valid in this country when we play no part in that organisation, and people did not vote for us to have no remedies on our trade policy. What people voted for, whether some in this place like it or not, is a clean break, because that is what allows us to have the control that they wanted. Many Conservative Members accuse the Opposition of trying by subterfuge to force us to remain in the European Union. However, the more we pursue the line that we can remain in the customs union but also do our own trade deals, the more we not only undermine faith in the referendum result overall but undermine faith in democracy as a whole, and we have to preserve that above all else.

Broadband Universal Service Obligation

Debate between Antoinette Sandbach and Matt Warman

Thursday 15th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

I am delighted to pass on that message.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Matt Warman]

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Yes.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that a number of innovative firms, such as ITS in my constituency, are rolling out wireless technology that allows some communities to band together and fill the gaps that the current programme, unfortunately, has not reached?

[Matt Warman]

I agree, and I will come on to that in a moment. The USO must enable those innovative solutions, otherwise it will not fulfil exactly the ambitions I know my right hon. Friend the Minister has for it.

In my constituency, despite having the least well-funded police force, an enormous rural road network, and very strong opinions on the EU and immigration, broadband is the single biggest issue in my postbag. My local superfast connection figures are still 6% below the national average, and for the neighbouring constituency of Louth and Horncastle they are 13% below the national average. All Lincolnshire’s MPs know from their respective constituents the importance of this issue, even though our county council has delivered its projects ahead of schedule and under budget. I think all Members agree that the USO is a huge opportunity to make an economic impact, narrow the gap between the urban and the rural economy, and reform Government services.

--- Later in debate ---

[Antoinette Sandbach]

It is not just rural Scotland that suffers. In fact, most of my constituency has only a 2G signal—we do not even have 3G. Ofcom has launched a very useful app, which people can download to their mobile phones, that feeds data directly to Ofcom. I encourage everybody who suffers from poor signal to download it, so that Ofcom can have real-time information on the appalling quality of service some of my constituents are getting with their mobile phone coverage.

[Matt Warman]

I thank my hon. Friend. I will come to the importance of data in a moment.

Ofcom has not yet defined the “U” the “S” or the “O” bit of the USO. We must acknowledge that there will be areas that it is not economical to connect, just as we do with water or electricity, but that underlines the importance of a USO that is technology-neutral, minimising the need for ubiquitous fibre but planning for a fibre spine that powers wireless connectivity and in due course allows a genuine 5G revolution. By the time that 5G is around, the USO must also have risen with what we might call digital inflation, because 10 megabits per second is barely good enough today and certainly not good enough in perpetuity. In the manner of the Low Pay Commission, Ofcom should make recommendations each year to see the USO rise incrementally, and the Government might occasionally make a point of surpassing those recommendations, as it has with those of the commission.

Assuming that this USO is like those in other industries, in that it allocates a reasonable budget per connection, it will be vital that communities can pool their funding, in the manner that my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) mentioned, in order to encourage private companies such as those she mentioned to take innovative paths. This effectively would create a voucher scheme of the sort that the Minister talked about in a recent debate. It is certainly important that we explore the avenue of allowing communities to club together rather than leaving individuals to fend for themselves.

Connecting the final few per cent. of the UK will require an unprecedented host of diverse solutions, from satellite broadband to, I hope, full fibre. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury will agree, however, that one size will not fit all, however marvellous the companies she mentioned might be. A single company might not necessarily be the right approach to provide a backstop for a USO. I suspect that many will express views on BT in this debate, but in reality even that one enormous company will not be providing every part of the solution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Warman]

I absolutely agree with both points. It is daft that we are not fibring up every new housing development by default, and it is short-sighted of developers, because we know that superfast broadband connections add value to the houses. There is virtue on both sides.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), I would go slightly further than Lord Adonis’s National Infrastructure Commission did recently, and say that we should be slightly more creative in identifying areas of default provision.

Crucial to all this is the issue of data. There would be a real risk of cherry-picking if we were to publish simply a bulk set of every single connection and how fast it is; actually, that might provoke the sort of anti-competitive behaviour that none of us would like to see. However, it strikes me that publication of address-level data will provide constituents with an accurate picture of their broadband speeds now, and it should also provide them with a road map for the future, so that it would allow not only prospective purchasers of a house to see what speed they might get and what their upgrade path might be, but communities to pool their own data so that they can identify whether they should be going out to other companies to try to attract investment or whether they might be able to wait a little while because they know that a solution is coming.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Actual Experience provides free software that can be downloaded on to people’s computers at home that feeds into Ofcom and provides real-time data? I am trying to encourage communities in my constituency that do not have access to 2 megabits per second broadband to use that free software so that we can gain greater and more effective data on this issue.

[Matt Warman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Actual Experience, which has worked with Ofcom, provides an invaluable and often free service from which all our constituents could benefit. It is precisely that data that allows communities to join themselves together and work out whether they can go to companies and point out that they are an attractive place to invest, or indeed whether they need to persuade, as has happened in many parts of the country, a friendly farmer to help them dig the trench. It is a useful thing.