Broadband: Communications Committee Report

Baroness Fookes Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fookes]

My Lords, I, too, want to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Inglewood, not only for his excellent chairmanship of the Communications Committee but for the wonderful summary he gave of the work of the report we are discussing tonight.

I listened with great care to the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, particularly when he suggested—I hope I have this right—that the technology is perhaps galloping ahead but use is not necessarily following behind. I differ from that. As far as I can see, the take-up in this country—apart from in the pockets the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, mentioned of those who are not connected at all—is enormous and galloping. Our concern must be to make sure that the technology catches up with it.

I shall give one small example. I am a governor of a school in Devon. I was there for a governors’ meeting and, yet again, we were discussing electronic communications, their use in the school and how we could make sure that we had good services. In the morning, we went to two lessons. In one lesson that I went to, the electronic side was a key part. It was a history lesson looking at the rise of Nazism; the electronic part was very cleverly integrated and used, and the preparation would come in that format. That, therefore, is one example of how it might be used in education, and there are endless other ways of doing it.

I must confess that when we first embarked on this I was not a little alarmed. There was a whole range of jargon with which one had to become familiar, such as “dark fibre”—which sounded positively evil although it simply means that it is not being used—cabinets, copper wiring and fibre-optic wiring. All this became slightly clearer after we had paid a visit to a division of BT where we saw an example of a cabinet—which looked like a cabinet—copper wires and the amazing fibre-optic wires, which are the size of a human hair. What one can get through them is beyond my real comprehension, but I realised the immense capacity of this form of communication, which, even by the way in which we are now going forward with technology, looks as though it will be useful to us for decades to come.

That is why I am so keen, along with other members of the committee, that the Government should embrace the idea of fibre-optic cabling and not rely on more outdated technologies that will not be able to meet our needs, both now and certainly in the future. I share with others this desire that fibre optics should be taken as near to people’s premises or homes as possible, as a prudent way of developing broadband. In connection with that, I hope that the Government will go so far as to introduce regulations to require every new building to be given the ducts and requirements that are needed for this to be introduced. Installation in existing buildings will be difficult enough but this is absolutely essential, and I hope that when the Minister answers tonight he will be able to give us some assurance on that point.

This is an amazing new technology that represents immense opportunities for us as a nation. Others have indicated the varying uses towards which it is already put, and one cannot see that there will be any lack of new opportunities. Some of us went to what I suppose you could call the BBC’s future technologies department, where a teenager’s bedroom had been set up with all the various things teenagers like to use. It was very instructive and, for someone as old as me, exceedingly frightening. However, at least it gave an indication of the manifold uses to which all these modern tablets, televisions and interactive TV sets can be put. We are entering what the heroine of The Tempest might have called a brave new world—one that I am seeking to embrace as best I can.