Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Chloe Smith Excerpts
Thursday 16th October 2014

(9 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Mr Vaizey
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I am delighted to tell the hon. Gentleman that our rural superfast broadband project is going extremely well, and we should have reached 90% of the country by the beginning of 2016, but broadband is already, in effect, universally available to 99% of the population.

Chloe Smith Portrait Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
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The Minister received East Anglia’s digital divide proposal on rural mobile and broadband, including a request for Norwich to be made a super-connected city. Will he update East Anglia on his consideration of that?

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Mr Vaizey
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We had an extremely good meeting with my hon. Friend and her East Anglian colleagues, and we are looking carefully at the proposals they made. Norfolk, Suffolk and many other counties in East Anglia are great examples of counties that do not just sit back but take the lead and come up with interesting initiatives and proposals.