Shared Rural Network

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Chi Onwurah.

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

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I apologise to the hon. Lady; I meant to call Hannah Bardell.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my right hon. Friend. As a former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, he will understand the significant challenges that there have been to bring everyone together to work on this. He is right to point out that there will always be a final 5%, but there are other proposals such as the roll-out of broadband, all of which have to be taken in the round. We are talking about 4G today, but there are also the 5G proposals and broadband. We know that this is a challenge and that it is in the most rural areas that connectivity is most important.

[Chi Onwurah]

Businesses and citizens across this country suffer the consequences of the Tories’ ideology of austerity, which prevented proper investment in our digital infrastructure. Rural broadband is not a next generation “nice to have”, but a necessity here and now. Therefore, given this agreement for shared infrastructure, will the Secretary of State say what the quality requirements are for uplink, downlink, latency and congestion; how rural areas will benefit from the infrastructure competition that there still will be in the rest of the country—will he commit to there still being an infrastructure competition in the rest of the country—and how we can make sure that the telecoms companies are accountable for the public money that they will be given to make this happen?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for her question. In talking about the difficulties and the disappointments, she almost ran out of time to actually ask her questions. She is right to say that connectivity is hugely important for all our constituents wherever they are. There will be, as she will know if she looks at the detail, a shared rural network entity, to which all four mobile network operators will be party, and that is the way they will be held accountable by the Department for the targets they are meeting.