Rural Broadband

Debate between Clive Betts and Susan Elan Jones

Thursday 10th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I will try to make my contribution short, because the Minister appears to have a little list—in fact, it appears to be a large list. It probably has the names of all our constituencies on it and how things are improving, so I will allow him a little more time to engage in dialogue with Members about that.

We have had a good debate, introduced by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). A lot of thoughtful speeches have been made. I was interested to hear the hon. Gentleman speak about the importance of value for money and how we deal with broadband in the hardest-to-reach areas. There has been a great deal of discussion about businesses and their receipt of broadband, or in many cases about how they cannot receive it properly. Furthermore, if we consider business development and rural regeneration, we see that there is an untapped source of private regeneration involving home workers living in rural areas, perhaps travelling sometimes to a company in the city. For that group, too, it is vital for there to be good access to broadband in rural areas.

I will not be able to mention all the speeches made by hon. Members, but I would like to draw attention to a couple of them, including the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith). She made the important point that farms today must often diversify their business, and good broadband is vital for that. She also spoke about Broadband for the Rural North, which seems to be doing a valiant job.

My Welsh colleague and neighbour the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) spoke about Superfast Cymru, which I think we all agree is a good programme that will deliver real improvements. The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) referred to Access Broadband Cymru. Although Conservative Members do not always praise what is happening in Wales, there is widespread agreement that that is an excellent initiative that deserves serious consideration.

This always happens at the summer recess: we come back and discuss the Government’s failure to deliver rural broadband. The Minister makes another speech; he often comes with a little list. We wonder whether the Prime Minister could not get mobile coverage on Polzeath beach during the summer, or whether it was difficult for him to chillax in his holiday cottage, but whatever it was, the view is always that something must be done, and the Minister is always dispatched here to tell us that he is the person to do it.

However, the facts are fairly simple. We all know, especially those of us from rural communities, that far too many parts of the country do not have any broadband coverage whatever. Some areas cannot get the most basic broadband at 2 Mbps, which is not even fast enough to watch iPlayer, and the roll-out of that basic broadband is three or four years late. Some people are still unconnected now, in 2015. The Minister says that the Government will provide basic broadband in 2015, while the Department for Culture, Media and Sport website says that it will be 2016. It would be interesting to hear which year we are talking about.

The Government are considering a minimum requirement or universal service obligation; I know that that has been raised in various speeches in this debate, including by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach). However, I believe that the universal service obligation that the Minister has discussed is only 5 Mbps, not the 10 Mbps that Ofcom says we need as minimum. Why has he not listened to Ofcom? Perhaps he has, and can clarify or even correct me.

The level up from basic broadband is superfast. The Government’s target is 24 megabits per second, but even that target is a long way short of what Ofcom and the EU call superfast, namely 30 megabits per second. Why do the Government promote that dodgy definition? They promised the

“best superfast network in Europe”,

but their broadband scorecard does not even measure its speed. At the same time, research shows that our rivals are speeding ahead. One study even showed that Ukraine’s capital has faster broadband than ours. Why is Kiev faster than London? The Government missed their superfast roll-out deadline of May 2015 and shifted it back by two and a half years to December 2017.

The Minister is writing furiously; I hope that he will correct me and bring the deadline forward a bit. Even the 2017 deadline is only a hope, as senior BT executives and almost half of councils have warned that it could be 2018 before the roll-out to 95% of the country is finished. Is the Minister really going to get up and say that BT Openreach has been doing a brilliant job or will he get things sorted?

The Government designed the tender process for superfast roll-out so that it was virtually impossible for any company other than BT to win. The hon. Member for Eddisbury and the hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey) also raised points in connection with that. What was the result? Funnily enough, BT Openreach won 44 out of 44 contracts, and its monopoly on the existing copper network was reinforced. BT Openreach delivers the Government’s delayed roll-out.

Although it is nominally at arm’s length from BT, Ofcom says that it still has an “incentive to discriminate” in favour of the rest of BT Group. Ofcom is now considering whether the situation provides an unfair advantage to BT and whether BT Openreach should be split off in the interests of transparency and fair competition. The Opposition believe that the situation is now so bad that Ofcom’s review should work on the presumption that BT Openreach should be split from the rest of BT unless the review produces conclusive evidence to the contrary. Surely the Government, apparently wishing to champion free enterprise—at least some of the time—should consider that view.

Beyond the existing roll-out, at least there is a plan for getting superfast broadband to 95% of the population, even if it is two and a half years late. The Government do not seem to have any plan whatever for how to get superfast broadband to the final 5% of the population, let alone how to pay for it. It is not 5% of the population, however, because as the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton made clear, we are talking about 50% in certain areas. The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott) spoke of similar proportions in Northern Ireland. The Government have pilots looking at different ways to get to that 5%. When will those pilots definitely report? Will the Minister confirm the story in the Financial Times that he is considering an industry levy of £500 million?

The Government have missed target after target on basic and superfast broadband, and yet despite their record of failure, they are setting themselves another goal to miss. [Interruption.] The Minister smiles; he is going to correct me. The Government have set their sights on an ambition that ultrafast broadband should be available to nearly all UK premises. They plan to review progress against that ambition annually, starting in April 2016. Will the Minister commit today that the review will be conducted independently and then published for proper scrutiny? Will the Government be able to deliver on all their goals? At the Edinburgh TV festival, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport got the definition of “superfast” and “ultrafast” wrong. He said that it was “up to” not “at least” 24 and 100 megabits per second. That does not fill us with confidence.

What does the Government’s performance mean for rural communities up and down the land? Many of us fear that broadband is too slow and too late for many people and that the Government are creating a digital divide. We all rely on the internet. Broadband has become as much a public utility as electricity and water. People in rural communities expect decent, high-speed, reliable broadband. We all shop online, pay our vehicle duty and council tax digitally and check deliveries on the go on our mobiles and tablets.

We want high-speed, reliable broadband for social media, for catch-up TV and iPlayer. The NHS orders drugs, shares patient records and sends x-rays and test results online. Farmers are supposed to register and receive their common agricultural payments online. Builders and plumbers rely on internet searches for new clients and many of the burgeoning new industries, such as video games, are entirely dependent on the fastest possible broadband. Rural communities need broadband to diversify economically. Reliable superfast internet and mobile connections are essential for farmers who want to diversify their business, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood said, and for the geographically isolated. It is not an added extra any more; it is essential for every aspect of our lives and the economy. That is why we hope that the Government will get a grip and deliver decent rural broadband, so that the Minister might have a glimmer of good news for us for once.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

May I ask the Minister to finish at two minutes to the hour to allow Mr Parish two minutes to wind up?