BT Service Standards

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered BT service standards.

It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall, and I express my gratitude to Mr Speaker for having granted this debate. I am conscious that there are many colleagues here today and presumably, because of their attendance, they have experienced similar problems to those that I have in my constituency. Those issues centre on BT’s inability to deliver its service obligations to its customers—our constituents. I reassure hon. Members that I intend to be generous with my time and in taking interventions, because I know that this subject fills many of our postbags. Lucky constituents have the ability to send us emails, although some of my constituents in Romsey and Southampton North have resorted to quill pen and ink, such is their frustration with their poor service.

I make it clear from the outset that this is not about broadband, although I will mention it, and I am sure that will give colleagues an opportunity to vent. Instead, I plan to focus on the myriad problems my constituents have faced over the course of the last 12 months and, in some cases, BT’s inability even to seek to rectify faults. Its contractors have repeated errors that have caused mayhem in some villages in my constituency.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I was prompted to rise when she mentioned the limits of the service, in terms of faults not being rectified. In my constituency, a 99-year-old lady’s phone line was down, but BT refused to send an engineer. Thankfully, my office forced it to send one in. After the work was done, however, she had a stroke. Her son managed to make phone contact to discover that, but it could have been so very different if the line had not been fixed and her son had been unable to get through. She could have died without immediate assistance, and that shows the importance of phone lines.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. He makes a really valid point: we rely on our telephones, and not simply to make social calls or to run businesses. They also enable a huge number of elderly people, through modern technology and particularly through their personal alarms, which are connected to the phone service, to live independently and safely in their own homes and to alert relatives to a problem simply at the push of a button.

Inevitably, I will conclude with some specific questions for the Minister and even some suggestions about what BT are doing well, but perhaps might do better. I welcome the publication by Ofcom last month of its review into digital communications, which came after I had applied for this debate, but before I heard that it had been granted. In many respects, the review addresses some of the significant criticisms that I will make today of BT. I was particularly pleased to see its headline point: that Ofcom intends to introduce tougher rules on faults, repairs and installations; transparent information on service quality; and automatic compensation for consumers when things go wrong.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. She is making a very good point, but in my constituency I had a case that was not about the system that was in being repaired, but about no system being put in at all. For six months, residents in a new housing development had no telephone and, to cap it all, they also had no mobile signal, so they were effectively cut off. Until I got involved, absolutely nothing happened.

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point that out. Like me, she represents an area with enormous rural parts where the mobile signal is often patchy, shall we say, at best. It is absolutely true that in cities it can perhaps be less serious if there is no working telephone connection, because mobile coverage is better—not perfect, but better—but in villages there is often no mobile signal at all. I am sure that we all share the frustration that our constituents do not get the satisfaction that they are looking for from BT until they turn to us.

As I was saying, I welcome the intent expressed by Ofcom, but I ask the Minister to ensure that it is delivered promptly and with absolute rigour, and that Ofcom publicises widely the manner in which customers might communicate with it about faults, the length of time that it takes for repairs to be done and, importantly, transparency of information.

It would not be a debate in Westminster Hall if I did not have a quick trip around the geography of my constituency and the myriad faults and problems that have occurred.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. Does she agree that the trouble is that in 2015 BT reached all its targets as prescribed by Ofcom? Is there perhaps something wrong with the targets prescribed by Ofcom and not just with BT?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Gentleman’s point is very important, and actually we want the targets to be much higher. We live in a world where consumer demands are getting greater by the day. We expect incredibly high levels of customer service, and companies such as BT should be able to respond to that and have stretch targets to make sure that they are delivering the sort of communication services that we can reasonably expect in the 21st century.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. This is not just about targets, but about attitude and the way that people are dealt with. A constituent of mine paid a deposit for a phone line but the line never arrived, and she was sent several bills. In the end, BT refused to respond to any complaint from her and called in debt collectors. It was sorted out only when I intervened. This is a shocking state of affairs, as I am sure my hon. Friend would agree.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend makes a good point that when services are ordered, there is an expectation that they will be installed. I can think of a case in my constituency where a customer’s order was accepted, but they were told that they could not have it delivered because they were in such a remote location, yet the properties on either side of the customer both had phone services. It just required my input, yet again, to say to BT, “Come on, you can do this. This isn’t the middle of nowhere; there is a telephone network running down the road.”

I turn first to the village of Sherfield English, which is a settlement of about 400 houses, in a linear development, where there has been very little house building over the past 10 years. However, with the increase in people working from home, or perhaps running small businesses, which we would all seek to encourage, there has been growth in the demand for telephone lines. It appears that BT has struggled to keep up with that demand, but rather than telling potential customers that they cannot have a new line and acting transparently, it has accepted the orders. There have then been repeated incidents of contractors working on behalf of BT simply extracting an existing line’s connection to the cabinet and putting in a new one in its place.

I refer in particular to my constituent, Mr Ian Forfar, to whom that has happened four times. I assume that his connection must be at the top of a row of connections within the cabinet. He is now on first-name terms with many members of staff at BT and is in the habit of stopping at the local cabinet when passing if he sees someone working on it, just to check that his line is not about to be disconnected again. Mr Forfar is an extremely articulate, determined man—a man who is not to be messed with. He has provided me with a very clear timeline of all the events that have impacted on his telephone service over the last year or so. Each time he has gone home and found his line dead, it has been because a third-party contractor has taken out his connection in order to provide a new line for a new customer. Mr Forfar was promised a full investigation last year of what was going wrong in Sherfield English, but then the regional manager went on holiday and Mr Forfar heard no more. It comes to something when, earlier this year, Mr Forfar’s line went dead for a fifth time, and he was celebrating because it had been caused by a branch that had fallen across the line.

Lack of capacity seems to be a real problem, and it is not just limited to the rural parts of my constituency. Cabinet No. 7 in Bassett, which is right on the edge of Southampton, has suffered from a lack of availability of new lines, as well as many other faults. Again, one of my constituents—this time a local councillor, Alison Finlay—has provided a very detailed timeline of events, which dates back as far as 2011. In common with the constituents in the middle of Romsey, the cabinet seems to provide a variable service, especially when the weather is not good. I do not know why rain should be such a problem, but as Councillor Finlay puts it:

“I mentioned that care would need to be taken when dealing with Cabinet 7 as my constituents experienced variable levels of telephony…from it, especially during winter months.”

As we heard earlier, many elderly residents are dependent on the telephone line being in good working order for their personal safety alarms. Without a connection, if they push the button on their alarm in the case of a fall or other incident, help might not be just minutes away; in the worst cases, as my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said, it could be many hours or even days away. None of us wants that for our more elderly residents. Independence and the ability to stay in their own home is wonderful and technology today can provide great peace of mind for elderly people and their relatives, but that is dependent on having the network to back up the technology.

Cabinet 7 in Bassett was long scheduled for an upgrade. Indeed, in 2011 Councillor Finlay first flagged up the problems, and the fact that care would be needed with any changes and that they would have to be done with extreme caution because they were known to be very delicate. In December 2015, the cabinet was finally upgraded, after many delays and false deadlines. Sadly, that is not the end of the story because, in January about 30 households were cut off for four weeks, lines were crossed and, according to Councillor Finlay, only a semblance of service was restored.

That is similar to the almost entertaining, interesting experience of the residents of Up Somborne. A few weeks ago, most of the village’s lines were crossed and neighbouring households were providing a message service to one another as lines were swapped and numbers were redistributed, apparently randomly. The spectacle of neighbours running up and down the road passing messages to one another may sound amusing, but in the 21st century it is not acceptable.

BT’s obligations are very clear. For telephony, it has a universal service obligation, meaning that basic telephone services should be available on request for a reasonable fee. For broadband, a universal service obligation is not yet in place but is on its way for 2020, and I warmly welcome that. However, I question how well BT is meeting its obligation to provide a basic telephony service when residents are cut off for four weeks, poor Mr Forfar is a repeat victim of being cut off and residents of Up Somborne are running round the village passing notes to one another.

I am sure that every hon. Member present this morning is here because they have experienced exactly the same sort of problem and their constituents have turned to them because they cannot get satisfaction on their own. That is why the Ofcom review, published two weeks ago, is so important. Ofcom intends to introduce tougher rules on faults, repairs and installations, and I welcome that, but an intention is all very well. I urge the Minister to ensure that there is a stringent timescale for when that will be achieved.

Customers—constituents—want and deserve transparency. They want to know when they can expect a repair to be effected. They also want an automatic right to compensation at a level that is published, clear and available for anyone to check. I am always at pains to point out to constituents that, when service has been interrupted or orders placed and not fulfilled, they are entitled to compensation, but people have to know that to ask for it. How much better an automatic refund will be.

It is interesting to note from Ofcom’s “Strategic Review of Digital Communications” that dissatisfaction with BT is at its highest in rural areas and that slow repairs and installations were the single biggest issue that consumers raised in the review. We all know about the automatic right to compensation for other services, such as electricity, gas and water. Customers left without a phone line often describe it as being akin to a power cut, so reliant are we now on telephone services. So it is good news that Ofcom

“intend to introduce automatic compensation”,

but my question to the Minister is: when?

The review rightly comments that the landscape of digital communications has changed beyond recognition in the 10 years since the last comprehensive review, and I suggest that the gap between large-scale reviews is too long. Perhaps the Minister will urge Ofcom to carry out such reviews more regularly. Given that the new universal service obligation for broadband was announced last November for implementation by 2020, five years would seem to be a reasonable interval. Technology, price and availability change so fast that a decade can seem a lifetime.

Expectations of quality and customer service are rising exponentially and rightly so. We have a technologically literate and demanding customer base whose requirements grow every time a new platform is released. I welcome the news that BT is seeking to bring the vast majority of call centres back to the UK by the end of the year and I congratulate it on that effort to address some customers’ genuine complaints in that respect.

Inevitably—this will not surprise the Minister—I cannot resist making a small reference to broadband because it would be remiss of me not to. There have been many debates in this place and in the House on broadband, its roll-out in rural areas and the great digital divide between the haves and the have-nots: those who are on more than 2 megabits and those who do not receive even that.

The week before last, I received a set of statistics that seemed to suggest that only 1.8% of households in my constituency were receiving less than 2 megabits and I worked that out to be in the region of 700 households. Given the number of complaints I have received, I think I must have been in correspondence with every last one of them. In fact, BT’s own figures show that the number is many times that. Around 20% of my constituents do not receive 2 megabits, and this is in Hampshire, not the Outer Hebrides—[Laughter.] I suspect we are about to hear from the Outer Hebrides. Barton Stacey in my constituency is less than 70 miles from Westminster, but my constituent, Mr De Cani, has been told that he can no longer expect to receive broadband at all. That is despite BT’s accepting his order, delivering a painfully slow and intermittent speed for a while, and now throwing in the towel and saying he is just too far from the cabinet to expect any service.

[Julian Knight]

On cabinets and their location to customers, a number of small businesses in my constituency have told me that BT is refusing to connect them to cabinets outside their premises. Clearly, that is not good enough from BT and is beginning to have a negative impact on small businesses in Solihull and employers across the country. Does my hon. Friend agree that, when the infrastructure is in place, it is unacceptable for BT not to connect to a cabinet that can be seen from the premises?

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There are examples in Romsey of industrial estates with exceptionally low speeds where customers can see the cabinet on the other side of the road. They desperately want to be connected, but for business customers the regime is wholly different. I have specifically restricted my comments to residential customers, but my hon. Friend makes a valid point. A number of people running very small micro-businesses from home are hugely affected.

There are too many people like Mr De Cani, there are too many properties without access to the services we take for granted, and there are too few solutions coming forward. Mr Blake of East Wellow makes one plea to BT and it is a good one: the technology exists. He works for IBM and went on a tour of a BT facility in Ipswich where he saw the G.fast mini cabinet, which can be placed on a telegraph pole and has the potential dramatically to increase speeds.

Another constituent was here yesterday as part of the SET for BRITAIN student competition and was show- casing her work, which puts amplifiers on fibre optics to increase capacity dramatically. These changes are all coming but we need to make sure they can be trialled. Mr Blake would like to put in a plea to BT today for a G.fast cabinet in Gardeners Lane, East Wellow. It is a fantastic idea and he is very happy to be part of any trial. In places like West Tytherley, communities are coming together and seriously looking at how to arrange wayleaves, dig ditches, lay cable and bypass BT altogether. When that happens, we know that things have got pretty desperate.

My final comments relate to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight air ambulance service, which operates from Thruxton, just north of my constituency, and RAF Benson, but provides services across the whole county of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. To put in place the required high speed broadband and the necessary telephony at its new, upgraded base at Thruxton, the air ambulance service must liaise with BT to get Openreach to do the installation. No direct contact with Openreach is possible and the air ambulance service tells me that its attempts to make sure South Central ambulance service, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight air ambulance service and the operators, Bond Air Services, all have their connection done at the same time to minimise costs have so far been fruitless. It just requires a bit of joined-up thinking and co-ordination to make sure that the trench digging and installation are all done together. I am sure BT will be listening today and will ensure that it happens. When considering the essential and life-saving services provided by the air ambulance service and the lack of coverage by mobile phones in that sort of rural area, a BT solution needs to be provided.

I want to ask the Minister three specific questions. We all welcome the Ofcom review into digital communications, but some timescales should be set for the introduction of automatic compensation for our constituents. I would like consideration to be given to more frequent reviews. As I said, the last Ofcom review was 10 years ago. The landscape changes so fast that every 10 years is not often enough. And I ask that BT be encouraged to continue making the changes that customers want. As I mentioned, 80% of its call centre handling will be done in the UK by the end of this year. That is certainly something that customers are seeking; they feel frustration at the current situation. However, it must be about providing a level of customer service and reliability that we all expect in the 21st century.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall. I congratulate the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) on securing this important debate. I too must declare an interest: I worked as a chartered electrical engineer in telecommunications for 20 years before coming into Parliament, although I never worked for BT. I always wanted digital connectivity—broadband and mobile telecoms—to be higher up the parliamentary agenda. However, I am disappointed that it has moved higher up because of service failure rather than because of the social and economic potential that digital and telecommunications connectivity offers. The notoriety of certain cabinets—was it cabinet number 7?

[Caroline Nokes]

indicated assent.

[Chi Onwurah]

Such notoriety is not to be welcomed, but I believe we will see more and more cabinets getting a national profile.

The economic benefits of communications infrastructure —or, as we have heard in some contributions, any kind of infrastructure that does not involve running up and down the street—are well known. We have heard detailed contributions about the limitations of that infrastructure from the hon. Members for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Corri Wilson), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) and for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Calum Kerr), and we have heard some heart-rending stories about the impact on their constituents. We also heard from the hon. Members for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman).

As the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk said, we should have connectivity from Hampshire to the Outer Hebrides and everywhere in between. The economic benefits of better communications have been accepted by the Government. Their own broadband impact study states:

“It is now widely accepted that the availability and adoption of affordable broadband plays an important role in increasing productivity.”

The UK has one of the worst productivity records in Europe.

As well as economic benefits, there are social benefits to connectivity, which we have heard about in detail in today’s debate, from online shopping, which is often cheaper, to access to more public and private services and remote healthcare. It is not right that some people cannot access those essential benefits of modern living because of the lack of a digital infrastructure. As has been said, the internet opens up a world of free education; indeed, it is a window on the globe. However, many people are missing out.

Many hon. Members focused on basic telephony; others emphasised mobile and broadband. The Minister recently admitted that his mobile infrastructure project was a failure, but he still claims that the broadband roll-out has been a success. Only last week, he was once again rubbishing Labour’s pledge to have fully funded 2 megabits per second universal broadband for all by 2012. We have heard today that far too many people—more than official figures admit—still do not have even that service. The Minister trumpets the universal service obligation of 10 megabits per second by 2020, but he should note that within eight years the broadband universal service that he proposes will have increased by only 1 megabit per year, and his commitment is entirely unfunded.

The importance of broadband for the rural economy has also been emphasised. A third of small and medium-sized enterprises do not have access to superfast broadband, so we have tabled amendments to the Enterprise Bill, which we will be debating in the House today, to improve the broadband available to SMEs, which, as is often said, are a driver of the economy.

Broadband is the fourth utility. That has been the consensus of today’s contributions. The Government have a responsibility to deliver it, and they have failed. I, too, do not wish to focus the blame entirely on BT—it is not BT’s responsibility, because it was the Government who did not ensure that there was competition so that we have the standards we need.

Ofcom’s recent consultation on the strategic review of communications found:

“The single biggest issue attracting comment”

was “quality of service”. It went on to say:

“Openreach’s performance is a particular source of concern.”

It concluded:

“These problems can only be addressed through more effective network competition or through regulation.”

It also stated:

“Over time we have found it necessary to apply more prescriptive regulation in order to address concerns about Openreach’s performance.”

That is a clear admission that competition cannot now be relied on to improve service standards, because the Government have failed to foster a competitive market-led roll-out.

I do not know whether betting is in order, but may I ask the Minister to forecast how many times he will be called to the House in the next Session to try to explain his failure on broadband and digital infrastructure? We have a related debate on this subject tomorrow.

The Ofcom review focused on two things: service standards, as we have heard, and opening up duct and pole access to support competition. How will the Minister determine that we have finally achieved a competitive environment in broadband and digital connectivity? What will he do if that is not achieved? In the absence of competition, how will he ensure that the service standards set out by Ofcom are met? What will he do to ensure that the targets are not gamed by BT and others, and that there is appropriate action if they are not met? How long does he think it will take for BT’s service standards to meet the expectations set out in today’s debate? An important point made today was that expectations are rising. As broadband and digital connectivity become more and more essential, what measures will he take to ensure that such expectations are met in this country?

All the measures set out in the Ofcom report are subject to further consultation and debate, and no doubt many lawyers will be present. Ofcom will need the right kind of political support to ensure that those measures are put in place. Our digital infrastructure is critical and strategic, and we have wasted five years in the policy wilderness not improving our digital infrastructure. The Minister will need to focus minds on that rather than on the exit from Europe that his Secretary of State is focused upon.