BT Service Standards

Calum Kerr Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Calum Kerr (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (SNP)]

I am happy to get the opportunity to respond to the debate for the Scottish National party. I do so in a couple of capacities. First, I am the SNP’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson, and nowhere is the digital divide felt more acutely than in rural areas. Secondly—I have to declare an interest—before I came to this place with my slender 328 majority, I worked in the telecoms sector for 20 years, starting off with a Dutch company but working mostly with Canadian and American companies. The subject is therefore close to my heart for many reasons.

I am pleasantly surprised by and happy with the way the debate has gone. If Members read the Library briefing and the SNP briefing—most Members will not have seen that—those documents had nothing to do with BT service levels. The debate has stuck to the subject, so I congratulate the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) on setting the right tone and everyone else on following it.

There are real challenges out there, and sometimes in Parliament we are guilty of just making a lot of noise and not putting forward proactive suggestions on how to make things better. Complaining about that to my party leadership got me the traditional response of, “Well, Calum, if you are not happy about it and you worked in telecoms for 20 years, why don’t you set up a group to go and look at it?” So we have an SNP MP group involving a number of people with a range of experience in the industry, and we are proactively trying to understand the issues at a deeper level so that we can come forward with constructive suggestions.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. I thought she set us off well with her tone and by talking about the importance with which this issue should be treated. A number of Members have spoken about the Ofcom report, which is important. It sets an intent and expresses the importance of that intent, but as she rightly identified, tougher rules, transparency and compensation need to be delivered. Her constituent Mr Forfar and his connection saga are, I am afraid, not unusual. I think we all have experiences of things like that. I sometimes wonder whether the ever-so-helpful BT engineers getting one job done means someone else unfortunately being dropped off the other end. As someone who worked for six years as a channel manager with BT—not for BT, but with BT—I understand only too well the nature of its people. It has some fantastic people, but some challenging systems and approaches.

The hon. Lady said, “This is Hampshire, not the Outer Hebrides”. My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) would say “Amen to that!” I will have to pass on to him what she said, and I am sure he will have some choice words for her. I would turn what she said on its head: if broadband truly is a utility, it should not matter where someone is in these isles; they should be able to expect a proper level of service.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Corri Wilson) wins the prize for the biggest tale of woe from a constituency office. I point out that it is not only BT that faces this challenge, because the circuit to my office in Galashiels, which was supplied by Virgin through parliamentary authorities, did not appear, so we got in touch and said, “Where’s our circuit?” Virgin said, “It has been installed.” “No it hasn’t.” “Yes it has.” “No, it hasn’t.” It was installed to the empty property next door. My hon. Friend deserves a prize, though, and I will work up a certificate later.

I commend the proactive approach of the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman)—talking in Westminster Hall is very useful for learning the names of everyone’s constituencies; I hope I remember at least half of them—in seeking solutions. A lot of us have done that at local level. We know there are challenges and that the system that has been put in place can be moved forward. The Minister will make a justifiable case for the system being successful, but where it fails is now being flushed out, and that is where we must go next. I thank him and his team for their positive engagement as we seek solutions. I can say with some confidence that they at least understand the problem, which is the first step towards finding a solution. I look forward to supporting them further on that.

Members may have noticed that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is thankfully better at articulating his case than he is at providing me with a glass of water. A member of my staff sent me a text message saying, “I hope that wasn’t coffee.” If they are watching, no, it was not. The hon. Gentleman made some fantastic points. The sector has a challenge with customer service, and part of my background is in contact centres and customer service. Bigger organisations have that challenge, but I have severe and real concerns that our looking for more structural separation may just lead to more finger-pointing between BT and BT Openreach about who is to blame for something not being done. A joined-up approach to customer service and the ability to hold BT to account are important. He also highlighted the lack of competition, which is a real issue in rural areas. I will come back to that point.

The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) used a word that we have probably all used today: “hopefully”. In my old job, if an area or regional leader said the word “hope” to me, I would say, “Hope is not a strategy”, but when it comes to BT, sometimes it feels like that is all we have. If we are reliant on hope, that is not enough. We should be able to rely on levels of service on which we can hold organisations to account, whether they are BT or others.

My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) highlighted the challenge of simply getting broadband—he went very local, and I congratulate him on that. He brought up the universal service obligation. We are all interested in that, but we must ensure that it does not paralyse us, as the BT broadband roll-out has, with communities waiting and waiting because they think they might get BT broadband and so not pursuing other schemes. It is also critical that the USO covers not only download speeds but upload speeds, levels of service and cost. I encourage the Minister and Ofcom to consider such things as voucher schemes. It does not necessarily need to be a case of, “Here’s the satellite solution”, or whatever it may be. If there were a voucher scheme, communities might choose to use it in a different way to provide local solutions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) has a stunning constituency, and I look forward to talking with him later in the debate on whisky. That will be a more uplifting experience, I feel. Depopulation is a massive issue, and we must match the policy reality to the rhetoric about communications being a utility.

I suggest to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) that perhaps GCHQ has made a conscious decision that it does not want any connectivity around it. I suggest that GCHQ be moved to Argyll and Bute, where that can be done more successfully.

[Jim Shannon]

Within the Union.

[Calum Kerr]

The hon. Member for Strangford has to whisper “Union” repeatedly in my ear every time I speak. It is a skill he has.

BT’s position is key. I am a big supporter of it, and it gets kicked about too much on its broadband roll-out scheme. It is a commercial entity that acts in a commercial way, but we also need to remember that it was a public carrier, and it has market dominance. The role of MPs, the Government and regulators is critical. We must and should hold BT to account, and we should hold it to high standards. Ofcom’s report states that it wants:

“A step change in quality of service”.

We must define that, measure it and hold BT to account as soon as possible, and I think BT would welcome that. Clarity and transparency of message are key. Two of Ofcom’s aims are:

“Empowering consumers to make informed choices”,

and to:

“Deregulate and simplify whilst protecting consumers”.

We must accept that the market does not function in rural areas. We need different solutions. We need Government interventions and more flexibility of mind about what the solutions look like. In a lot of scenarios that probably does not mean BT, because BT has established ways of working.

I thank the Minister for the way in which he has engaged with me and my colleagues on this topic so far. I urge him to act on the Ofcom report in relation to services and to work with us to ensure that the rhetoric of digital comms as a utility is backed up by substance and policy.