Shared Rural Network
Debate between Baroness Barran and Baroness McIntosh of Pickering(5 years ago)
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Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement this afternoon. I stress my disappointment at the timetable—it could perhaps be a little more ambitious.
Will my noble friend clarify one remark she made? I understood her to say that commercial mobile phone networks will have access, when this new procedure is in place, to the emergency service infrastructure. I pleaded that the North Yorkshire Police mobile phone communications system could be made available to the commercial phone networks, and I was told that was not possible because of the security implications. Can my noble friend put my mind at rest in that regard? She will appreciate that North York Moors is one of the most sparsely populated rural areas and has now achieved the nomenclature “super sparse”. Much like the noble Lord who chaired this House’s Rural Economy Select Committee, next door we had a number of reports from the EFRA Committee pleading with the Government to improve connectivity. There is a safety aspect: there are now no fixed phones—they have all been removed by BT—so we are entirely dependent, in these rural areas, on mobile phones.
Baroness Barran
I thank my noble friend for her question. She describes the North York Moors as “super sparse”; I would say they were super beautiful when I was last there. On using the emergency services infrastructure, I will write to my noble friend if my understanding is incorrect, but where she is absolutely right is that the priority in terms of the use of emergency services infrastructure is for emergency services personnel. Nothing we are planning should interrupt that and there should be no disruption to the emergency services network as a result of this proposal, but we believe that, where it is possible and appropriate, that infrastructure should be made available to share with commercial operators to deliver the coverage improvements that are needed.