BT Service Standards

David Nuttall Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Corri Wilson (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (SNP)]

My constituency of Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock is predominantly rural, although it hosts a number of small towns, the biggest of which is Ayr, where my constituency office is located. Ayr is home to some 47,000 people—the eighth highest population of any town in Scotland—and is less than 40 miles from Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow. We have a lot to offer visitors and businesses alike, but unfortunately an adequate phone and broadband service is not one of them.

It is astonishing that a town such as Ayr should be unable to provide small businesses and households with a reliable telephone and internet service, but that is the case, and Ayr is not alone in this in my constituency. I receive many complaints from residents and businesses, from places ranging from Barr to Ballantrae, Coylton to New Cumnock and Dalrymple to Dailly. There are villages in my constituency with no mobile phone signal from any provider and no broadband capacity, either. Ofcom states that more than eight in 10 UK premises can now receive superfast broadband. That may be true in the rest of the UK, but it is certainly not the case in Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock.

My constituency office, for example, has not had a reliable working telephone line or a reliable internet connection for the past seven months. After working out of temporary premises since May, I wanted to retain the phone number and set up internet access—a simple request, one would think, but apparently not. I was advised by BT that the number would be transferred over without any disruption to the service. That smooth transfer did not happen. Both offices, old and new, were without a phone line and internet connection for well over a week. It turned out that there was no live line into the building, and thus there was a further delay while one was installed. During that entire period, almost every phone call to BT resulted in a new account being set up and a new hub being posted out. The number of accounts has reached double figures, and I am not sure what I am expected to do with the mountain of hubs in the office.

Next, the parliamentary IT team came in to set up the computers—and on that day, BT chose to disconnect me again. It seems that in an attempt to rectify the growing number of accounts, it tried shutting some down and left my team uncontactable for another few days.

All the while, I was receiving bills, both paper and online. Some days I would receive three or four bills, all for different accounts and different amounts. It seemed that the bills were multiplying faster than the accounts being opened. Although helpful and polite, the customer service staff were at a loss as to which bills were valid, which accounts were active and which hubs should be connected. Customer service even called us on a number that it claimed did not exist. We had the irony of BT leaving cloud voice messages, which I received via email, stating its frustration that it could not get through to my office.

We took BT at its word and bought into a package. The cloud phones are now plugged in—although not actually connected—to a further new line that BT had to install. All our IT equipment regularly drops out of service. In some cases, staff have even had to use their own broadband connections at home. Just yesterday, staff yet again arrived at work to find the whole system down and BT support again at a loss to explain what had gone wrong and how to fix it. This morning I have staff connected to two different hubs to access the internet. One of them is not even plugged into anything, so I do not know how that works. I have no idea how many accounts I currently have with BT, and neither does BT. Although customer service staff continue to be helpful, no one seems able to see the big picture, and we get moved from the broadband department to the cloud department to the telephone department to the maintenance department—and then we start all over again. My staff have wasted hundreds of man-hours on this issue, and that is not to mention the number of dissatisfied constituents who are unable to get through to my office for help.

If that is the level of service received by the MP for the area, it is little wonder that my constituents are at the end of their tether, too. My case load continues to grow with similar problems, and we have no sight of resolutions. As an MP, I have a job to do, but my ability to do it well is being hampered by BT’s inability to solve these issues. I feel powerless to help constituents with their BT issues when I cannot even resolve my own. It seems to me that BT has a long way to go to reach an acceptable level of service for the people and businesses in my constituency and, as this debate demonstrates, I am clearly not alone in that belief.

[Mr David Nuttall (in the Chair)]

I intend to start calling the Front Benchers to sum up the debate at about 10.30 am. I do not want to impose a time limit, but I will have to if hon. Members speak at great length. If contributions are about five minutes long, we should be able to fit everyone in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall.

The importance of the internet is hard to overstate. Its availability has an impact on small businesses, children who want to do their homework and people who want to engage in social media. If someone does not have superfast broadband, they do not just feel disconnected; it is almost as if they feel disfranchised.

The position in Cheltenham, which of course is not a rural constituency—it is the home of GCHQ, for goodness’ sake—is that in this day and age we still have pockets of real broadband blight. In Old Bath Road, Grace Gardens, Tommy Taylors Lane, Tivoli and Pittville, people are living in what I have described as e-poverty.

I am the first to accept that BT has connected up a huge number of people, but the real concern is that the e-rich are getting richer but the e-poor are being left behind. There are people on 24 megabits per second, for example, who are now being offered ultra-fast broadband. They have extraordinarily good internet connectivity, but there are significant pockets of people who are being left without any decent broadband at all. That, fundamentally, is the problem.

When we liaise with BT about the issue, it effectively says, “Well, look, it’s very difficult for us to go and deal with these ‘not spots’.” However, through Broadband Delivery UK and our local equivalent in Cheltenham, which is Fastershire, taxpayers have the money to step in and say to BT, “Right, go and fill in these ‘not spots’”, but that is not taking place. So this is not an issue of funding—the money is there, as is the will and the political backing—yet the logjam is not being broken. Consequently, we have this strange stand-off, with politicians saying to BT, “Look, there’s the public funding, these are the areas; we can explain to you which parts have not been connected, so please go ahead and do it”, yet it simply does not happen.

Meanwhile, MPs who have bulging postbags on the issue are given mixed messages. I was told in an email from BT this morning, “Don’t you worry. There are zero areas in Cheltenham that have less than 2 megabits per second.” That is simply not correct. I recognise that a huge amount of work has been done, but that kind of messaging from BT causes a great deal of irritation. As I have said, this is not simply about people being inconvenienced. It is about people in my constituency saying that they will have to move, or that they will not be able to employ people, or that their children cannot do their homework. That kind of breezy disdain from BT is inflammatory and causes real difficulties.

I end with a plea. Given that the funding from the taxpayer is there and given that BT has the wherewithal to step in, I really hope that heads can be knocked together so that the remaining areas in my constituency can be covered. As I have said, Cheltenham is the home of GCHQ, and consequently somewhere that people might expect a decent broadband service. The time for action is now.

[Mr David Nuttall (in the Chair)]

Before I call Calum Kerr to begin the Front-Bench speeches, I remind Members that I would like the mover of the motion to have a couple of minutes to sum up at the end. I ask the Front-Bench spokesmen to bear that in mind when making their remarks.