Broadband: Price

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

We are advertising the support which is available generally. The social tariffs are available to people who are in receipt of universal credit and other means-tested benefits, but there is help for anyone who may be struggling to pay their bills, thanks to the commitments we secured from the industry last July. That is why we are advertising all of the help generally, through the Help for Households campaign, but of course that is being monitored for its success in getting the message out, and all ideas are welcome.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, BT businesses are operated under a special government regulation through Ofcom. In view of the fact that throughout rural areas in the UK, BT Openreach is providing broadband connections at highly difficult and challenging costs for many consumers, will the Minister, as a result of today’s questions, talk directly to BT Openreach about reducing its costs and ensuring that infrastructure issues are better dealt with, including wayleave permissions, because many people in rural communities cannot access the broadband they require to undertake their work?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

As the noble Baroness notes, Openreach’s prices are fixed by Ofcom as part of its five-year wholesale fixed telecoms market review and have been allowed to increase by CPI to reflect the significant additional costs faced when deploying new infrastructure. Our £5 billion Project Gigabit programme is delivering lightning fast and reliable broadband to hard-to-reach areas right across the UK, as the noble Baroness says. That funding is available to a range of suppliers; where infrastructure is built using public subsidy, suppliers must make their networks available for use by other operators so that everybody can benefit.