Superfast Broadband

Cat Smith Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

There has been a consensus across the House that the economic and social benefits of reliable broadband are undeniable. I spent the summer touring village halls around my constituency for “chats with Cat”, and that subject certainly came up in the rural parts of my constituency. I have spoken in this place before about Broadband for the Rural North—a group of people in my constituency who decided that they were not prepared to wait for BT to deliver superfast broadband, so they dug the trenches and laid the cables themselves, and now they have eye-watering speeds of up to 1,000 megabits per second—yes, 1,000. Calling that superfast broadband would be an understatement.

It is clear from my rural communities and my recent meetings with the local branch of the National Farmers Union that our communities need reliable internet access in order to access Government services, including applications for the basic payments scheme. However, it is not just our rural communities that are missing out on access to good broadband. I have received a great number of complaints from residents of the Highgrove estate in Lancaster. They certainly do not consider that they live rurally—indeed, it is about a half-hour’s walk from where they are to the centre of Lancaster. They have been complaining to BT that they were not receiving the superfast broadband, whereas neighbouring housing estates were. Their frustrations continued when they felt that BT was ignoring them.

The issues relate specifically to cabinet 76 at the corner of Caspian Way and Lindbergh Avenue. The cabinet is within the commercial roll-out of broadband and in an area where there is the possibility of competition, known as a “grey area”, according to my recent letter from the Minister. Because of this potential commercial competition, it is outside the scope of the publicly funded project. However, my constituents, many of whom work in our local NHS hospital down the road and at Lancaster University, need decent reliable fast internet to download X-rays, for example, or to stream academic conferences. They find that the lack of internet is frustrating their work and they are unable to take opportunities such as working from home. In the words of one resident who is an orthopaedic consultant, “My parents live in a village in India and they have high speed broadband, yet I have to campaign for it here.”

If the UK is to continue its role in the world, we must make sure that our broadband can compete internationally. A petition signed by 71 households from the Highgrove estate should be landing on the Minister’s desk any day now. They are calling on the Government to act in their bid for superfast broadband. I hope that he will consider their petition.