Chris Bryant
Main Page: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda and Ogmore)(9 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
John Woodcock
Of course I will give way to my hon. Friend the shadow Minister; perhaps he could come along to this meeting too.
Chris Bryant
Will my hon. Friend point out to the Minister that just spending money is not a success, and that success is when—[Interruption.] Well, it is about time you lot learned that. It is when broadband is actually delivered that there is a success.
John Woodcock
I am afraid that I cannot agree to my hon. Friend the shadow Minister’s request because he has already eloquently put the case himself, and I would be a pale imitation of him if I were to try to follow.
Perhaps we should not be all that surprised that so much of rural Cumbria is seeing such slow progress towards superfast broadband. Many of the areas that I have spoken about have yet to see any significant progress at all with the earlier technology of mobile connectivity.
Nick Herbert
I strongly agree. That is a good example of why access to broadband is no longer a luxury but a necessity, particularly when people such as farmers are required to file information in that way.
Three and a half years ago, I held a summit in conjunction with West Sussex county council. The then Culture Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), attended and we had a good meeting to discuss how to improve the situation. Following that, the Government announced their programme to extend broadband access across the country and West Sussex county council announced its Better Connected programme. With £6 million-worth of central Government support, which was matched by the county council, the programme will fulfil the Government’s ambition to ensure that 95% of the county has access to superfast broadband and the whole county has broadband coverage by 2017.
I welcome the Government’s support and commitment. I recognise what they have done to make improvements, but we have to look ahead and test whether what is being done will be sufficient to ensure access for those in rural areas who will not benefit from the programme. The Rural West Sussex Partnership, which is a branch of the local enterprise partnership, Coast to Capital, has suggested that in fact the coverage delivered by the programme will not be 95%, but could be 90% or even as little as 85%. Even if 95% coverage were to be achieved, there would still be the matter of the 5% of people who did not have access to superfast broadband. They are often the people who do not have access to mobile phone coverage, either, and are therefore effectively disconnected.
I know of the strong interest taken by my hon. Friend the Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who met me recently to discuss these issues. I was grateful to him for the interest that he showed and for listening to the concerns that I set out. I have a few observations which I hope he will not mind my repeating to the House.
First, as other hon. Members have pointed out, there is a problematic lack of competition in the sector. That is one of the reasons why we are not seeing the necessary roll-out, an effective roll-out or sufficient customer service. There was a problem in the initial contracts awarded by BDUK because, although there were originally two bidders, one—Fujitsu—dropped out. We ended up, therefore, with one bidder for the contract, BT. So there is an effective monopoly and that is unsatisfactory. That is not the Government’s fault; it is simply the reality.
Chris Bryant
The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We need greater competition because that would deliver results faster for everybody. However, I query his last comment. With 44 small tenders, it was remarkably difficult for anybody to presume that they might gain more than one, other than BT. My worry is that the way the tender process was set up created the monopoly in the first place.
Nick Herbert
I am not sure whether that is the case, but we can look ahead at how we can inject more competition into the sector to ensure the competitive pressures needed to improve customer service. I would look again, as hon. Members have suggested, at BT’s relationship with Openreach and see whether there is a case for splitting them, injecting more competition there and potentially breaking up Openreach. We need more competition in this sector.
Secondly, we should not be fixated on the fibre-based solution, which will never be realistic in the hardest-to-reach rural areas. In those areas, wireless technology or access to 4G or faster mobile data signals will become the solution. I do not believe that satellite will be the solution. We therefore need to ensure that the kind of solutions being advanced in public-private partnership recognise that different solutions will be necessary in rural areas.
Julian Smith
Absolutely. That is a well-made point. This is not just about the Government’s responsibilities; people are taking responsibility themselves. The B4RN project—Broadband for the Rural North—split between Lancashire and Yorkshire has sought out all of the disused wires and cables to make the most of the opportunities to deliver superfast broadband.
We have not yet discussed the issue of demand, demand stimulation and how much superfast broadband is being used by our communities. On average, the figure is 18% to 20%, and in North Yorkshire it is about 20% to 25%, but we need to get those numbers up. The Opposition criticised the Government for an ad campaign over Christmas, but the Government were absolutely right to spend that money. What is the point of all the pipework and infrastructure if they are not going to spend money to encourage people to use it?
Julian Smith
I am not going to give way to jumping jack.
I pay tribute to the expertise of Chris Townsend, who has no need to do the job but who is giving great public service by leading BDUK and pushing us forward.
We have talked about Openreach, and I concur with all the comments made. We are generally happy with BT in North Yorkshire, but there have been major service and data issues. We have tried to get information from particular boxes so that we can work out where we can improve and get more demand—again, the Minister has been helpful in knocking heads together. The issue of fibre to the node is providing opportunities to get deeper into rural areas, although BT has dragged its feet on that.
Ultimately, the infrastructure of the fourth national utility is managed as a subsidiary to the overarching board of a global successful corporation. Is that the right structure going forward? In football rights versus infrastructure I think football rights will always probably win, and we must have a real think. Ofcom started that in the past few weeks, and we must think over the coming years, with a Conservative-led, competition-driven Government, about how Ofcom is structured for the future.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
I am pleased to take part in this debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on securing it, because it has highlighted, across the Chamber, the need for broadband and mobile reception in rural areas, and the recognition that it is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.
Let me start by discussing the basic need for some kind of phone that connects someone’s house to the network and by reinforcing the concerns about the performance of Openreach in the most basic provision of phone lines, especially to new builds in the constituency. It has sometimes taken six months between someone moving into a house and their having a basic phone connection. We are talking not about superfast broadband or broadband, but a basic phone connection. Anything that the Minister can do to improve that performance will be welcome; the point has been made that such a connection should be treated like electricity and water as an essential service to the household. I hope he will also deal with the relationship between Openreach and the service provider in ensuring that the consumer gets compensation for a failure to deliver. Such compensation would help focus the mind and make some recompense for people not having that basic service.
As many have said, we still need to roll out basic broadband to many of our constituents. I remember that when the first roll-out took place the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) was the Minister. He was an extremely useful Minister for my constituency, because he dealt with broadband, post offices and the oil and gas industry, bringing together almost all the casework for someone dealing with a reserved section of the legislation, given that so many other activities are devolved to the Scottish Parliament. He was shown all the different innovative projects. At the time, Scottish and Southern Energy was going to do broadband through the electricity cabling, but suddenly the exchange in Stonehaven mysteriously reached the trigger point for BT to roll out ADSL. The point about competition and the importance of driving forward innovation has been made well in this debate. The wi-fi solution for many of those places still needing a broadband connection has been highlighted by others as an important way forward.
I particularly wish to reinforce the importance of superfast broadband to the north-east of Scotland, because with the oil and gas industry, there are a lot of businesses dealing with large amounts of data, and a lot of those businesses have grown up in rural parts of Aberdeenshire. Similarly, many people who work in the industry or work abroad could work from home if they had the proper superfast connections to deal with the data. The money that the UK Government have given to the Scottish Government needs to deliver on the ground for those people in the north-east of Scotland if we are to keep a vital industry effective, at its most efficient and raising more money for the tax system to reinforce investment in infrastructure.
The other challenge is not just the mobile phone reception from the network but the fact that many of the traditional houses are made of granite, which mobile phone signals cannot penetrate. The business centre in which the constituency office is based is a brand new building with high-quality insulation, which again cannot be penetrated by mobile phone signals.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman cites a problem that is very similar to the one that exists in the valley communities in south Wales. People cannot get mobile telephony inside their homes because their houses are made of stone or granite which cannot be penetrated by the signal. A possible answer to that lies in wi-fi, for which people need broadband. People end up getting hit by a double whammy.
Sir Robert Smith
The hon. Gentleman makes a point. There was also the illegal solution of boosters. Perhaps it is time for Ofcom to look at how mobile phone signals can be boosted in properties and business centres. Individual suppliers using wi-fi and broadband could be a solution—that could be the case for the business centre that I mentioned. There would need to be a signal booster for each network, but it should be looked at.
Let me reinforce the fact that broadband and mobile phone connections are not a luxury; they are essential. It is time that we saw delivery to those rural areas that missed out the first time round.
Mr Stuart
My hon. Friend is right. I pay tribute to him for how since the moment he was first elected and arrived in this Chamber—and probably before that—he has taken seriously the need to get broadband into his rural constituency. It was a privilege to attend a conference that he organised for hundreds of people in Cumbria some years ago to highlight exactly this problem.
I want to move on to talk about the long-term economic plan. When we consider the economic needs of the nation, one thing we see is that there is a productivity gap between urban and rural areas. The analysis of why that productivity gap exists shows that the problem is connectivity. It can be about highways and railways and buses, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) rightly says, it is also about the digital divide. That is why if we are to have an equitable country that is fair to all and that closes those gaps, we must prioritise this issue.
My hon. Friends must realise that after 13 years of the previous Government—understandably, as we can see the level of interest in rural issues among Opposition Members—fewer than half of all households, and those the easy and commercially available households, have superfast broadband. It is this Government, who in so many ways have had to do the heavy lifting, who have taken that figure to three quarters of households and who, by 2017, will be delivering 95% coverage. As has been said, I am concerned about the other 5%.
Mr Stuart
I will give way to the shadow Minister and I hope that he will apologise not only for the failure of members of his party to take an interest in this vital issue but for the fact that in government—perhaps preoccupied with other matters—Labour did not focus enough on the needs of people in rural areas or recognise the disadvantage there.
Chris Bryant
I am sort of grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but I was not going to make a very aggressive point. I was just going to suggest that he might correct his figures. Superfast broadband is not the major issue that most people have been complaining about in the debate. The complaints have been about getting even to 2 megabits per second. Our ambition, which we would have secured, was to reach that speed for everybody by 2012 and it was his Government who abandoned that target.
Mr Stuart
With respect to the hon. Gentleman, the only people I have heard who felt that that programme was on track to be delivered were representatives of the Labour party. It is a shame that there are not more of those representatives in the Chamber today to intervene and explain precisely how it was going to be delivered. The hon. Gentleman is an excellent advocate for a difficult cause, and I respect that as a politician, but the truth is, as he knows, that the record of his party was weak. The record of the Conservative party is distinctly better, but we should recognise the context. We are all saying to the Government and to the Minister that it is not enough; we must go further and that is why we are here today. It is great to have the shadow Minister here today, even if we do not have any of his colleagues—[Hon. Members: “There is one!”] I apologise.
We have the opportunity to put an ambitious aim in all the manifestos. Let us ensure that people are not isolated and that we close the gap.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I agree with the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart). At times, I have felt as if I have walked into a meeting of the 1922 committee this afternoon—it has been a congregation of the excluded, the dispossessed and the disconnected. I should tell all hon. Members who have complained about the last 3% or 5% that I feel their pain. I recommend that they vote Labour at the general election because that is the only way they will get this sorted out.
For once, it is not just about the many, but about the few. As many hon. Members have said, mobile telephony and broadband—superfast broadband—are not luxuries any more. They are a fundamental and essential utility. People have a right to expect both in residential properties, and businesses have a right to expect them. As the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) said, many business parks are still not connected. Incidentally, ensuring that that is rolled out is the strongest argument for state intervention. That is one of the things we need to look at.
If hon. Members watched “Last Tango in Halifax” on Sunday evening, they will know how important mobile telephony is. A wedding might all too easily be cancelled because somebody did not manage to send a text message or get mobile coverage to be able to say, “I’m on my way.”
For that matter, in many places in the country, if people want to watch “Last Tango in Halifax” half an hour or an hour later on iPlayer, they would have to have 2 megabits per second at least, and yet, as many hon. Members from parties on both sides of the Chamber have said, too many people cannot even get that 2 megabits per second. If somebody is upstairs watching YouTube on a tablet, somebody is downloading something on their smartphone and somebody else is watching iPlayer through their smart TV, even 5 megabits per second might not be enough because of contention ratios. Even when the technology has been rolled past their door, many people are not connected, either because they do not know the benefits or simply because there is not enough competition in the market to make it cheap enough for them to afford.
I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on introducing the debate. I know the problems in his constituency, because when I stayed there for the Hay festival last year, I had absolutely no means of finding the place where I was going because Google maps gave up on me, because there was no connectivity. I think Edmund Burke would have been proud of him. I am not sure Burke had a lot to say about mobile telephony, but he was quite keen on connections. After all, he said:
“The only liberty…is a liberty connected with order.”
I want to talk about the Government’s record. Hon. Members have snuck around the corner here a little bit. In essence, they know that most of what they have argued this afternoon is a criticism of the Government’s record. They have not put it in such terms, because they know there is a general election coming.
Chris Bryant
I will not give way if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because we want to get on to—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
The hon. Gentleman has only just walked in.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Just for clarification, normally you do not walk in and intervene, no matter if you have spoken earlier. The convention is you at least hear a little bit of the new debate.
Chris Bryant
On the Government’s record, I think what everybody has said today is that we have to take the whole country with us. That means 100%, not 93% or 95%. I merely point out to hon. Members that the original target was 2 megabits a second by 2012. That was abandoned by this Government, who moved the target to 2015. Now, the target has been moved to 2016. I suggest that that means we want lots of people to be able to run before some people are even able to walk in the digital economy, and I think that that is a mistake.
The superfast target of 24 megabits a second has also been changed. It was 90% by 2015. Then, when the Government worked out that that simply was not going to happen, for all the reasons hon. Members have set out today, they moved it to 95% by 2016.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman will be speaking in a few moments and we wait with bated breath. If he can bate his breath, I will bate mine.
When BT appeared before the Select Committee it said that we probably would not get to the 90% target until 2018, so there are problems. The Committee was absolutely right when it reported today that
“Repeated changes in target dates for rollout of superfast broadband inevitably reduce confidence that coverage will be achieved on time. They also leave those in the hardest-to-reach areas uncertain as to when their businesses will be able fully to engage with digital practices.”
The Committee, which is made up of all political parties in this House, is absolutely right.
There are key decisions that I think the Government have taken ill-advisedly. The most important in terms of mobile telephony roll-out—the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) effectively referred to this—is in relation to the electronic communications code. There are landowners in the country who have made it phenomenally difficult to put up a new mast or increase the size of a mast. The provisions in the electronic communications code need to be more like those that exist for electricity and water—the common utilities that we absolutely need—than as a luxury, which was how mobile phone telephony was originally looked on. The Government got the Law Commission to report two years ago on the electronic communications code. Only at the very last minute did they table very poorly drafted amendments to the Infrastructure Bill. They could have been on the Order Paper to be properly considered in the normal way a year ago. If hon. Members really want to tackle the problems of mobile telephony coverage across the country, they have to deal with the electronic communications code. The Government have misplayed this matter completely.
Incidentally, the hon. Member for Newbury said that we had to listen to the silent majority. I am not quite sure how one listens to silence. Maybe the point is that the silent majority are not connected and so do not have an opportunity to tell us what they think.
Another failed programme from the Government was the £150 million mobile infrastructure project. One hon. Member gently suggested that it is a bit of a failing if only two masts, serving another 400 homes, have been put up in all that time. That is not a slight failure—it is a massive failure. The Government should be coming to the Dispatch Box to hang their heads in shame.
Another £150 million has been allocated to the super-connected cities programme, but why just cities? Why did they decide to give out vouchers only for superfast cities? Why not the whole country? I represent an area—
Chris Bryant
No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. We are going to hear from the Minister—
Chris Bryant
No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. He might recall refusing to give way to me earlier. Had he been a little nicer then, I might have returned the favour.
The Government allocated £150 million to the super-connected cities programme, but what did they do? They hid their light under a bushel—they did not tell anybody about the programme—and guess what? Nobody applied for the vouchers. The hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) complained that we objected to the advertising programme. That is completely wrong. He should read his briefing note from the Whips a little more carefully. We complained there was no advertising, which is why there was no take-up and why, of the £150 million, so far only £20 million has been spent. That is another failure from the Government.
On the tender process, I accept the point about having local communities drive the agenda rather than a national statist agenda, but I gently suggest that if we set up 44 separate areas, it will be almost inevitable that the only people able to compete with a company such as BT will be those with very deep pockets who could be almost certain of getting several contiguous tenders, and that was never going to happen. In effect, it resulted in a licence to create a monopoly, and where we have a monopoly, we need tough, serious rules to ensure greater competition.
The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), who lost his voice and was helped out by the Minister, made a sensible point about the lack of competition across the whole area, particularly in the provision between the cabinet and the home. That was exactly the problem with the incident he related about the company called B4RN. The other problem is that we are falling far short on take-up compared with roll-out. A far better economic model would be to drive roll-out by encouraging take-up, because people would understand what we need all these megabits for. People hear us talk about 24 megabits, 30 megabits, 50 megabits, 100 megabits, 1 gigabit, but actually nobody knows what we are talking about.
Chris Bryant
The vast majority of people have no understanding of what we are talking about, which is why we have very low rates of take-up.
The Government have taken some very wrong steps. For one, they ruled out wireless at the beginning. It is a delight that there is now a £10 million pilot looking at wireless solutions, but it should have been in existence in 2011-12. It is too late now. It is wrong only to look at fibre to the cabinet, and not fibre to some properties, because the simple truth is that people whose houses are a long way from the cabinet will never be part of superfast broadband under the programme as thus exemplified.
As I have said, there is next to no competition. If the Government are to spend the best part of £500 million of taxpayers’ money—most of it coming off the licence fee—they need to make a strong argument that it is meeting market failure, and I think that when they advanced phase 2, in particular, of superfast broadband without a proper business plan, they failed to prove it was meeting market failure. There is no evidence that this is meeting market failure, rather than simply helping BT make investments it would have made anyway.
We should be one nation, not digitally divided or disconnected. We should embrace the words of E. M. Forster in “Howards End”: “Only connect”.