Digital Economy Bill

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for introducing this important Bill. I declare that I feel a little wrong-footed in this instance by finding myself so high up the batting order and having the honour of opening for these Benches.

My interests are in the register. I am a landowner and a landlord to two code operators and one community air band operation. I am also a landlord to several businesses and residential tenants who very much rely on broadband—as I do myself as somebody who has worked from one end of my home for the last 28 years. I am a chartered surveyor with some knowledge of the compulsory purchase and compensation aspects, so it will be no surprise to your Lordships that my interests are primarily in Parts 1 and 2. However, I confess straightaway that I am no expert on digital matters, as will probably become apparent.

I know what it is like to be in an internet not-spot and to conduct a business in an area with no mobile coverage. My Sussex office, for instance, suffers from a declining broadband service. About 14 years ago I was told that I could get about 4 megabits, and it was pretty much at that level. Then BT came along and—hooray—said that it was going to upgrade me to an 8-megabit system. Since then the coverage has gradually declined from about 3.6 megabits. It now hovers at around two and a bit and sometimes gets to 3 megabits but is often below 2. At that level, things start not happening, which is a very serious impediment. My good lady wife uses a mobile network that might usefully be termed “nothing anywhere”. I commend that to the marketing people.

Naturally, all this matters because of the increasing demands on the system: the data stream, cloud computing, all the large data transfers, voiceover internet and so on. The volumes would have been absolutely eye-watering 12 or 14 years ago. The Minister referred to the need to manage the resource and I totally agree with that. But I would be a little more convinced by the Bill if it made clear that what is actually important is service delivery at the point of use; in other words, the values measured at the incoming modem connected to the socket on the wall in the home or the office. For all the claims of fibre to the exchange, to the cabinet or even direct to the home and the configuration of what I understand is traffic shaping—“demand management”, in layman’s terms—the actual experience is often different by nothing short of a country mile.

Ninety-five percent availability might mean that it is available at the exchange or to the green cabinet—but downstream, to the consumer themselves, often lie bundles of tired old copper or, worse, aluminium pairs no doubt joined in boxes liable to water ingress. The delivery really must deal with the infrastructure and attention to the permanent way, including that local loop or final mile. If, in addition to that, we have ISP network congestion or traffic-shaping effects before it ever gets to the consumer’s internal wireless network or shared users, something needs to be done to look and see where we measure these things from. So my first point is to advocate a universally accepted and accurate basis for measuring communications performance; otherwise, in 10 years we will be no further forward than we are today in this contest of salesman’s puff. The universal service obligation principle in the Bill is much to be commended, although I agree that the level is not sufficient. I also think that somebody must be empowered to make absolutely sure that these traffic-shaping and other management issues do not stand in the way.

We all know that broadband now is an essential service, like water and electricity. I would perhaps prefer a little more concentration on the communication quality and a little less on tariffs, although I agree that tariffs are an important matter. I am among those who happen to think that BT’s insistence on having a phone line with a broadband connection is mainly about it using its virtual monopoly over the permanent way and its liking for telephone-subscriber income. I recall that, some years ago, BT was awarded a huge sum of money—I forget the precise amount and other noble Lords will probably know more than I do. I understood that that money was to deal with defective parts of the hardwired system, but I am entirely unclear that there has been a proper return to the taxpayer on that.

I can, however, speak to the enormous courtesy and patience of BT Openreach staff, who I often encounter either parked in my gateway or inspecting my hedges to find out where their junction boxes are because they are never told anything about what to expect when they are sent out there. I usually end up having to tell them where to find their junction boxes and what the likely problem is that they will discover—that is after many years of experience. It really is rather like the Flanders and Swann song about the gasman coming to call. Noble Lords will remember that, in the song, each successive trade undoes something that was done previously—it is just like that. It would be funny if it was not so serious. For example, one of my tenants had their service reconnected only for the other tenant to have his second line disconnected in the process. One cannot go on like this.

Across the country, 20% of the population live in a rural area—as do I. I worry about 95% coverage nationally because that might easily mean that the remaining 4% or 5% are those in the hardest to reach rural areas, and that possibly 20% or 25% of rural householders and businesses will not get a decent service.

I point to the growing phenomenon of the absent network coverage and of ISP server downtime. I also question what standards of corporate social responsibility are deployed by some of the larger operators. I am particularly concerned that several community broadband schemes were set up and substantially undercut and made unviable by organisations such as BT. That should stop. Ofcom should be empowered to step in and deal with that sort of thing. If communities get together and get a critical mass to set up a community air band or similar mast, nobody should be allowed to come in and undercut that model, just like that, especially because the unwillingness to deal with the thing in the first place was the essential cause of the community getting together.

On Part 2, what I know about co-providers tells me a good deal about their economic power and confidence that they can, if necessary, influence government to suit their purposes. I am concerned that the operation of market forces that so far has allowed the rolling out of the mast sites across the country now seems to be in question and that the Government appear to be prepared to abandon that customary approach and compensation based on market value, appearing to ignore the Law Commission recommendation that market value should apply, so that we get some sort of compulsory acquisition-lite. I am not at all happy with that, so I shall return to that subject later in the Bill.

There are many other processes to do with the granting of rights, the perpetuation of them, their propensity for enlargement and unqualified rights to assign, which I would point to in relation to that. These things are not simply a matter of saying, “It’s the greedy landlord versus the greedy code operator”. This is a can that is being kicked down the road and will have to be picked up at some later stage when it starts to cause serious impediment to people’s reasonable aspirations and the optimal use of property.

So I have a number of reservations about the Bill, but I welcome a number of other aspects. I certainly welcome the concept of protection against underage exposure to pornography. I am less sure that data sharing is adequately framed. I am sure that I am not alone in welcoming a code controlling direct marketing and a control of the infamous bots. So while on balance the Bill is welcome, it will, I fear, need a good deal of further adjustment as we proceed.