Shared Rural Network

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman, or the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), will be. Unfortunately, although I have many powers, moving mountains and valleys is not one of them—there is a limit to what I am able to do, but perhaps in due course, who knows? We would need to talk to the mobile network operators about their proposals in relation to the infrastructure needed for the future and for masts in particular. As I said in my statement, this proposal will deliver additional coverage to 16,000 km of roads, and I certainly hope that the M4 corridor will be one of those.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

This announcement is hugely welcome for the people of Lincolnshire, who are suffering from notspots. What can I do to ensure that Lincolnshire gets access to the network earlier rather than later between now and 2025?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend. She might want to take a leaf out of the book of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), by working with the mobile network operators to map where they have coverage and masts and where they think they will need new infrastructure, to ensure that this coverage can be delivered. I know that she will be very active in lobbying for that, to benefit her constituents.

Online Pornography: Age Verification

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

If what I said was open to misinterpretation, I apologise. I am not suggesting for a second that it is a child’s responsibility to protect themselves online. That is why the Government are bringing forward the online harms agenda. I am not suggesting either that we are addressing a problem that has suddenly popped up. It is something that Governments of various colours have sought to address over a number of years, and we will continue to do that. We are seeking in the “Online Harms” White Paper to go further, in a thoughtful and sensible way, than any other country in the world has managed to do, and I hope we can do that with cross-party consensus.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The internet has been a fantastic resource for children in their education, but all too often, pornographic images are available to children when they are not specifically looking for them, particularly on social media sites. What will the Government do during this brief delay to ensure that social media is encompassed within their reforms?

[Matt Warman]

My hon. Friend highlights one of the crucial differences between our new policy approach and the old one, which is that we are now able, via the “Online Harms” White Paper, to consider what the duty of care might mean for social media companies in a way that would not have been in the scope of the original proposal. That is just one example that demonstrates how much further we are able to go with this new approach, and it is a reason why this is the right thing to do, even though it is a tough decision.

Free TV Licences: Over-75s

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

Yes, and I hope that as a result of this debate about the licence fee concession many people who are entitled to pension credit but are not claiming it may have their attention drawn to that fact, recognise that they can claim, and do so. We, with the BBC, will certainly give thought to the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion about how that can be best communicated.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The television is a window into the world for lonely elderly people, and may be their only company for long periods. We keep hearing about millionaire pensioners receiving free TV licences, but this decision is not about millionaires. Pension credit is available only to single people with weekly incomes of less than £167.25 and couples whose weekly incomes are less than £225.25. That is not a lot of money. Those who just miss out on pension credit will struggle to find the money for the TV licence. Will my right hon. and learned Friend do all that he can to persuade the BBC to reverse its decision?

[Jeremy Wright]

I share my hon. Friend’s disappointment, for the reasons that she has given, and the answer to her second question is yes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

As it happens, when I am in London I live very close to the O2, so I hear all kinds of people playing there. The hon. Gentleman is right that we should be looking to deliver the benefits of these kinds of performing opportunities to the whole country. I am happy to talk to him further about what we might do to bring this opportunity to the north, and, of course, all parts of the UK.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

T6. Since we are celebrating the achievements of our families today, I would like to wish my daughter Rosie good luck with her grade 5 singing exam and my younger daughter Matilda good luck with her grade 1 piano exam—and, since a mother never leaves out any of her children, congratulate Wilfred on winning his very first swimming badge this week.Barclays released a report this week showing that more Britons are taking holidays in the UK—staycations—which is a great boost to local economies. As the Member of Parliament for Sleaford and North Hykeham, I am very fortunate to represent an area that has many fantastic tourist attractions including the International Bomber Command Centre, the National Centre for Craft and Design, Belton House and Doddington Hall. What more are the Government doing to support tourism in Lincolnshire?

[Michael Ellis]

VisitBritain works very hard to promote the UK internationally, including all our regions, and promotional images from across the country demonstrate our wonderful tourism offer. In addition, VisitEngland has a brilliant programme called the Discover England fund, which helps to ensure that visitors explore all of England, including Lincolnshire. A number of Lincolnshire projects are a part of the initiative including The Explorers’ Road, The Friendly Invasion and the England’s Originals products.

BBC Pay

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am sure that the BBC will have heard the strength of feeling in this House that the hon. Lady has just articulated.

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Like the new Secretary of State, I love the BBC, but I welcome the approach he has taken to ensure that there is full transparency regarding how public money is spent. When spending public money, it is important to ensure both that there is gender equality and that the wages are justified. Will he be asking the BBC to justify why some stars are paid 25 times as much as we pay a transplant surgeon and 80 times what we pay a nurse?

[Matt Hancock]

My hon. Friend brings up reasonable comparisons. I compared the pay of foreign ambassadors with that of BBC editors. All these jobs are in public service, and when one is in the service of the public, restraint is necessary.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Bill

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 10th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak for longer.

It is a pleasure to speak on this Bill tonight, because when I campaigned in the by-election back in December broadband was one of the major issues. Indeed, trying to deliver broadband throughout my constituency is part of the five-point plan on which many hon. Friends helped me campaign back in those winter months.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) that broadband is essential. That is a relatively new thing. I am not that old, but when I look back to my childhood, I remember there being one BBC computer in a corner of the school that we went to use a class at a time. Only when I got to university did we really start to use the internet and have the ability to send emails. At that stage, we were sending emails only to other people within the university—in my case mostly to the man who is now my husband.

Now, we cannot conceive of how we could possibly live without the internet, whether we are young or old. As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) said, people need it to be able to do homework. The children of my constituents and my own children have been given homework on Sumdog and other maths applications that they are supposed to do online, but they simply cannot do it with broadband speeds of less than 2 megabits per second. That is affecting the educational opportunities of the children in our most rural constituencies.

Young people in general are having difficulties. When they turn on the television and turn on Sky broadband, for example, they are told they can watch downloads, TV on demand or downloaded films, but they cannot because those things are not available to people who live in many of the rural areas I represent, where download speeds of less than 2 megabits per second are very common.

It is perhaps for business people that the lack of broadband represents the greatest problem. It is a particular problem for small businesses and, in rural areas, for farmers, who have to complete their single farm payments online. Reloading and reloading and reloading that page becomes very wearisome. We are now being asked to complete tax returns online—in fact, we will be asked to do so four times a year. VAT returns are also done online. All this becomes more and more wearisome when we have to do it online and we simply cannot do it. When businesses want to advertise for new employees they do it online and when people apply for those jobs they do it online. All those things cannot be achieved because we do not have access to what is now, in effect, a utility. In many parts of my constituency, it is not possible for families to do their shopping online. They write to me complaining, “We live in the most rural area in the country, and we cannot order our shopping.”

This is, perhaps, of even greater concern to the elderly. Jo Cox founded the Commission on Loneliness to help people in our community, such as the elderly, who are cut off from society. That may be more prevalent in rural communities than it is in cities. The internet offers elderly people living in such communities the opportunity to be connected to their families through Skype and other methods of communication. It also offers opportunities for telemedicine. At a time when we face challenges in relation to social care and the elderly, telemedicine and the use of the internet to monitor the condition of and check on the wellbeing of an elderly person can enable us to improve our social care offering to people in rural communities, and communities everywhere; but if we do not have the necessary internet resources, we cannot do that.

I welcome the Government’s 93% superfast broadband coverage—we have made great strides in increasing the number of people who have access to this wonder—but for those who do not have access to it, the position has become increasingly frustrating. Some people living in Wellingore wrote to me saying, “We can see the cabinet, but we do not have access to it, because we are on a different exchange, and by the time the signal reaches us from that cabinet, it is so slow as to be virtually useless.” Those people are being supported through the community fibre partnership, and I hope that in time they will be able to benefit from good broadband. The situation is similar in Swaton. A constituent wrote to me saying that they were full of excitement at the sight of the superfast broadband sign with the little box in the corner. It is right outside their house, but they are not connected to it; they are connected to one down the road.

People in Sudbrook—here I must declare an interest, in that Sudbrook happens to be the nearest village to where I live—were originally told that they would have broadband by this September. Unfortunately, however, they have now been told that that will not necessarily happen because of the railway line, although the railway line is not new but has been there for a long time. Their broadband seems to have been indefinitely postponed. It beggars belief that in this day and age something as simple as a branch line should prevent the upgrade of a broadband network.

Overall, I think that the Bill, which will abolish business rates on fibre broadband for five years, will encourage the placement of new fibre lines, and I hope very much that that will happen in the rural components of my constituency. I hope that, in focusing this benefit, the Minister is minded to ensure that providing broadband for people in rural communities who are currently suffering from a lack of access to that vital utility is given a higher priority than increasing broadband speeds from very, very fast to even faster in our cities and town centres.