Business of the House

David Heath Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

That matter came up a number of times in the Budget debate. An important point in that debate was that this Government are putting more and more effective resources into measures such as the Help to Buy scheme and the efforts of housing associations to lend to support additional house building. House building in this country hit a low under the last Government in the wake of the collapse in 2008 and in the midst of the Labour recession. We have built up the number of starts. If the hon. Gentleman would like to take a detour on his way to Huddersfield, he could see houses being built all over South Cambridgeshire.

[Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

Will the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport make a statement to the House on the provision of high-speed broadband in very rural areas? I fear that the success of the roll-out in Somerset and Devon will be undone by the failure to reach the last 10% of properties. That is partly because of the requirement for match funding, which is difficult to meet for sparsely populated areas, and partly because of the effect of the over-reliance on BT on areas to which it clearly does not want to or cannot provide a service.

[Mr Lansley]

I will raise the matter with the Secretary of State and I think that he will want to take it forward. The former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), is to be congratulated on the steps that she has taken to bring our broadband programme to where it is, with 10,000 homes a week getting access to broadband and an investment of more than £1 billion in our broadband and mobile infrastructure. It will deliver a lot of additional connectivity.

My hon. Friend is right, as I know from the rural areas in Cambridgeshire. The Connecting Cambridgeshire programme will get us to 98% of homes, but it has required significant local authority funding to establish the contract with BT and attract the additional Government funding. I know that the Secretary of State will want to respond to him about these matters.