Broadband: Rural Communities

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder), who I know to be an outstanding parliamentarian and a Conservative for whom I have some measure of affection. I will go no further than that.

This is a really important issue. I have no need, much less wish, to cause any more pain to the rural English MPs who have turned up here today to cite the very real challenges faced by their constituents in accessing what is essentially a vital utility like any other in the world that we live in today. However, I want to highlight what the Scottish Government have done, first to demonstrate how outstanding the Scottish Government are, but secondly to demonstrate how much it costs to supplement the woeful service levels of the UK Government. It is the UK Government, not the Scottish Government, who are responsible for broadband in Scotland.

Nevertheless, we in Scotland are not prepared to sit by and watch our communities and enterprise suffer while waiting for Westminster to act. That is why the Scottish National party-ruled Scottish Government’s reaching 100% superfast broadband commitment will ensure that everyone who wants superfast broadband has access to it, extending full-fibre broadband across some of the hardest-to-reach rural communities in Scotland. As I mentioned, this is reserved to the Westminster Government, but the Scottish Government committed to enabling access to superfast broadband—speeds of at least 30 Mbps —to every home and business by 2021, now upgraded to a new commitment to make the connections 30 times faster than originally stated. Connections will be delivered on a rolling basis under R100—reaching 100%—contracts, which are expected to be completed in 2028. Around 99% of the connections being delivered by the Scottish Government through R100 contracts are full-fibre capable and able to deliver speeds of up to 1000 Mbps.

That commitment is being delivered via three strands. First, there is £600 million in R100 contracts, delivered through a partnership with the UK Government. One would think that the Government responsible for delivering that would put in the bigger element, but no: the Scottish Government are putting in £550 million and the UK Government are putting in slightly less than £50 million. I say to the hon. Member for West Dorset, whose pain I feel after his intervention on the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord): £8 million to ensure that hard-to-reach properties are supported to achieve such connectivity is chicken feed. It will not even look at it; we need to invest vastly bigger sums. So that is the scale of the inaction and the challenge that is commensurate with that inaction.

The R100 Scottish broadband voucher scheme will help those that want access to the R100 principal scheme. The voucher helps people connect to superfast broadband in northern Scotland. Those not covered by R100 can apply for a one-off £5,000 voucher to help them set up a permanent suitable connection for themselves. Above that, a £400 interim voucher is available to those for whom it is known that R100 will benefit them in time, but not yet.

To date the Scottish Government have invested £1 billion of public funding to transform Scotland’s digital connectivity through the Digital Scotland superfast broadband and reaching 100% programmes, and improving mobile connectivity through the Scottish 4G infill programme. That is not our responsibility. I say that again because it is so important.

The Scottish Government’s Digital Scotland superfast broadband programmes have already connected about 1 million properties across Scotland to faster broadband. It should not be viewed as a cost; it should be viewed by the UK Government as an investment, because it is viewed in Scotland as such. We believe, and can demonstrate, that every £1 invested in the Digital Scotland connectivity programme delivers £12 to the Scottish economy. That same R100 programme has also delivered full subsea cables. The hon. Member for West Dorset and colleagues from the south-west and north-west have demonstrated that their topography and geography is particularly challenging, but so is that of the Orkney and Shetland islands. The roll-out of superfast broadband is taking place there as well.

There is lots of disdain for Openreach, but in response to the investment that the Scottish Government have put in, Openreach is building full fibre faster and further now and reaching around 60,000 new premises every week—equivalent to a town the size of Livingston in West Lothian. That means passing another home or business with ultrafast gigabit-capable broadband every 10 seconds.

It is important to realise that I am here as the SNP’s spokesperson, but also as somebody who represents a rural constituency. Although larger towns and villages are benefiting, it is not the case in my glens. It is not the case in Glen Doll, Glen Prosen or Glen Isla that the digital speeds are being realised, so it is absolutely essential that the UK Government regulations and legislation support the Scottish Government’s ambition to be a truly digital nation.

I rarely get a response from a Minister in Westminster Hall, so I am hopeful that the Minister will break that cycle this afternoon. I should be grateful to know what the Scottish Government will receive from the UK Government’s £5 billion earmarked for investment in gigabit-capable infrastructure, because the Scottish Government continue to urge the UK Government to extend the gigabit networks to Scotland’s rural communities where the challenges remain manifest. As I say again, perhaps for the sixth time, telecoms is an entirely reserved matter.

Economic growth in Scotland’s islands and rural locations is being curtailed by the slowest broadband speeds in the UK. That does not help rural communities in the south-west or north-west, but it is a challenge that the UK Government must step up to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant]

If I got anything faster than anyone else on my street, I think my neighbours would lynch me.

[Dave Doogan]

It would be a good excuse.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

No, it is not a good excuse and that is not a very good argument to make.

I concur with the point made by the hon. Member for Meon Valley about the head of Openreach. It is important that major corporations, which broadly speaking have not far off a monopoly position in the UK, respond to Members of Parliament as swiftly and directly as possible and do not simply pass the buck. The hon. Lady also made a very good point about the need for better co-operation between all the different operators in this field, because now, with all the “old-nets”—I fully support competition within the market—there is a danger, which I will discuss a little later, that if there is not co-operation there will be a complete and utter muddle.

I think I have heard some of the speech by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) before, too, and again I commend him for repetition; it is not something ever to complain about in politics. He made two really important points. The first was that being isolated is a dangerous place to be in the modern world. If we think about an elderly person who relies on mobile connectivity to connect to her relatives, who might be on the other side of the world, or to healthcare providers, that is evident, and the point is extremely well made. He also made a point about hill farmers. Funnily enough, when I had a farm in the Rhondda, which was on a hill, I had the best connectivity I have ever had, but that was purely and simply because the mast was almost immediately opposite my house.

The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) made a very important point about Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency or DVLA services no longer being available in post offices. Soon, my constituency will no longer have a bank at all—no bank whatsoever. Of course lots of people are using digital banking services today, but sometimes it is necessary for someone to go physically to a bank, to prove their identity and so on. Banks will need to go a considerable further distance to make some things available online that currently people cannot do online; because of the distances involved in travelling in rural areas, the present situation is simply problematic. However, even if that happens, people need full access to a broadband connection; otherwise, they are simply unable to continue their business.

I think that Vintage Ghetto is the hon. Lady’s business, or perhaps one of her businesses; I do not know. Vintage Ghetto has some very fine things online, if anybody wants to go shopping before Christmas. However, I simply note that it will be difficult for people to pursue that kind of business, which many people in rural areas now do, without having a really strong broadband connection.

Finally, there was the contribution by the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan). I would have laid a bet that he would refer to what the Scottish Government have done and condemn the Westminster Government for not doing what the Scottish Government have done. I could point out that the Welsh Government have often intervened in the same way in Wales to address some of the problems that we have in rural areas. However, the truth is that we need a whole-UK answer to all these issues, and I will give some of the reasons why in a moment.

Broadband is not just important in rural areas but absolutely vital—for building or growing a business; for running a farm or, for that matter, diversifying an agricultural business, for instance by allowing tourism; for doing homework or, for that matter, doing university study; for providing healthcare and local services; and, frankly, for growing up, by allowing children to talk to their friends online, play a video game or download a film.

Members have talked a lot about the haves and the have-nots in this field. Members may not be aware that the phrase “haves and have-nots” originally comes from “Don Quixote”. It is when Sancho Panza says:

“There are two kinds of people in this world, my grandmother used to say—the haves and the have-nots. And she stuck to the haves. And today, Señor Don Quixote, people are more interested in having than in knowing. An ass covered with gold makes a better impression than a horse with a packsaddle.”

I quote that extract because one of my concerns about the way that we are developing in relation to broadband and digital connectivity in this country is that we get a bit too focused on the “having” rather than on the “using”. Indeed, my biggest concern as an MP who represents one of the poorest constituencies not only in the UK but in Europe, is the affordability issue.

I have raised this issue in a previous debate and I know that the Minister has similar concerns. There are social tariffs. They are almost unknown to most of the people who might be able to take them up. One local council—maybe several councils now, but certainly Sunderland City Council wrote to everybody in its area about social tariffs. The council had the information on who qualifies for universal credit and who therefore qualifies for a social tariff, so it wrote to everybody concerned and that drove up the take-up of social tariffs. However, when 18% of poorer homes in the country—in my patch, I suspect the percentage is even higher—do not have any internet to home at all, even when superfast broadband or gigabit capability is available, that is going to be a long-term problem for levelling up, for all the reasons that the hon. Member for West Dorset gave earlier. It is not levelling up if people simply cannot afford to take something up.

Secondly, as several Members have said, many people are not taking up better connectivity, either because it is too expensive or because they simply do not understand what the benefit might be to them. When we and the industry bang on about gigabit-capable, megabits per second, superfast or fast broadband and all the rest of it, that is not a sell to an ordinary household. People want to know what they will be able to do that they could not do previously and therefore why they need it. There is a real marketing problem across the whole of the UK that we need to address if we really are to drive up take-up, otherwise the danger is that all the companies will be making massive investments but getting no return. That is when the whole situation may get into trouble.

I worry about the exclusion of certain areas and categories of people. I have asked the Minister this before and I ask him again: how are we doing on new contracts for Project Gigabit? When I asked him the last time we met, he said that more were going to be let in the next few months. It would be interesting to know precisely how that is going.

My other concern is this: competition is a really good thing, but not if it turns every street into the wild west. In just the last few weeks, in my own patch—particularly in Tonypandy, CF40—lots of different companies have been digging up the roads again and again. People are sick of it. It is happening not just in Kingston upon Hull but in lots of different places in the country. I worry that the system, through Ofcom’s powers, is not strong enough to ensure that there is proper co-operation. One complaint I had said:

“You will have seen road closures without relevant permissions being granted, poor reinstatement of pavements, mud-laden streets, poor communications with residents and tardy workmanship.”

I am fully in favour of companies such as Ogi rolling out gigabit-capable broadband in my patch, but I also want to see rational co-operation between the different organisations.

Finally, the Minister will know that the Government’s digital strategy is now more than a decade old. In fact, the online version has references to websites and programmes that no longer exist, so I think it is time for a new Government digital strategy. After the Government responded to the House of Lords digital exclusion report, Baroness Stowell, who is a Conservative Member of the House of Lords, said that the failure to come up with a new Government digital strategy

“suggests a reluctance to dedicate political attention and departmental resource to this matter”,

and the Communications and Digital Committee in the House of Lords said:

“The Government’s contention that digital exclusion is a priority is not credible.”

I therefore hope that the Government will announce today that they will start consultation on a new Government digital strategy.

I will end with some questions. I have asked these questions before, but the Minister did not answer them. Have I run out of time?