Rural Broadband and Mobile Coverage

Eric Ollerenshaw Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who has pressed this issue on our behalf and who has got us to this stage. His enthusiasm and eloquence is being listened to by the Government. I do not call myself a technical expert, unlike my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). I want to focus, following on from what the hon. Lady said, on the law of unintended consequences, but regarding general strictures about what has happened over the past 13 years.

I, as a new Member of Parliament, and all of us have fought in our areas on behalf of the rural sector of our constituencies. We might have fought on behalf of the local pub, of the last remaining village shop or of the last remaining small village school. As my hon. Friend said, this is a once in a lifetime chance to get things right and to reverse what is happening across the country and in all our constituencies. Villages and hamlets are either becoming distant dormitory suburbs of a town or a museum piece showing a long-lost England. In fact, historically speaking, they were the centres of business and enterprise, and for many of us the internet provided many people in those villages with a huge opportunity to restore something to village life. If we miss it, as hon. Members have said, we have missed it for a generation.

Let me give an example from my constituency. A community group came up with its own idea to revive the area, right in the hills of deepest rural Lancashire. The group got the whole community together with a programme that covered a number of villages. The plan was to cover Over Wyresdale and Quernmore with an extension through the small hamlets of Littledale and Roeburndale to the distant villages of Wray, Melling and Wennington. Only 1,000 properties were going to be provided with high-speed optic fibre. The group applied for a £750,000 grant from the rural development programme—that was all. As everyone knows, optic fibre is costly and the community planned to get over the cost by digging the ducts. The farmers gave permission because it was a community enterprise.

The people involved, who lead busy working lives, went through the whole process because they saw farmers in the hills of Lancashire having to travel miles every month to find the nearest internet access to fill in the Rural Payments Agency’s licence and registration forms for every sheep and every cow. Children travelled miles to find the nearest internet access because the homework for certain courses required internet access, which was not available in the hill-top villages. For all those reasons, the whole community got together and made some progress on the project for just £750,000—not a great deal compared with the sums that have gone missing over the past 13 years. Then, for the best of reasons the Northwest Regional Development Agency decided in its dying days this year to give the county council £20 million for broadband access across the whole of Lancashire. One might say that was an absolute positive, but what happened to our £750,000 programme? It somehow got trapped in the bureaucracy and it has been swept up into the £20 million. For the best of reasons, the county council, which has more than my area to deal with as areas all around want broadband, has to put the contract out to tender to commercial companies. The people who have worked hard on this—I pay tribute to two people in particular in my area, Barry Forde and Chris Conder, who have worked tirelessly—have estimated that if commercial companies come in, it will cost more because they will not get free access across fields. After all, why should a farmer grant free access to BT, Vodafone or whoever? They would have to charge them and the cost would be about £5,000 to £10,000 per property. Given the 1,000 properties I have mentioned, the cost for my small area alone would be £10 million, so where is the £20 million going to go?

To be fair to the county, it has the best of intentions and I give credit to the coalition Government for trying to drive this through. I know that Ministers, especially the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), understand both this issue and the urban-rural divide. However, in my area we are possibly going to lose a whole big society project. Rural communities, who have always felt isolated and separated, have almost got to the point of accepting that this is how things are—that the towns get everything. They think that the towns are where their children will move when they grow up and that perhaps one or two of them will come back to retire; that is how we end up with the dormitory villages that so many of us recognise. The big society project in my area has been swept away along with all it had brought in terms of community and social contact across the hills and valleys and between hamlets. There is also a possibility that because of the cost local people will not get the superfast broadband they need for the next generation.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

I must declare an interest because I am still a Lancashire county councillor. As such I have quite an interest in the hon. Gentleman’s comments. The BT contract that has been struck by the Conservative administration is taking a very top-down approach and it has been criticised for that. I understand why he is speaking out for his constituents, but it is within his party’s hands to do something about this issue, as it is the top-down approach of Lancashire county council that is being criticised.

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

It is a pity that the hon. Gentleman has to reduce this matter to party politics given that there has been a genuine attempt across parties to get it right. I remind him that for 13 years nothing at all happened except the decline of those villages. I said that those involved had the best intentions and were trying to get the best results, as are the Government, and many of us are still working to do that.

We might lose our big society project but, more importantly, although the broadband that will come to the hills of Lancashire will be great and will mean that children and farmers in my area will finally be able to get on to the internet, it is estimated that most of that will be down copper wires or by satellite, so when the next stage comes, as the technical experts my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central understand far better than I do, we will end up, yet again, with the same divide between rural and urban England.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify something? I understand that Lancashire county council is probably the first local authority to put such provision out to tender. Has it tendered on the basis of coverage being provided by one operator for the whole county or has it left open the possibility of different operators providing services in different parts of the county?

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

My understanding is that it is one operator, but I stand to be corrected on that. It is also my understanding that it is attempting to take into account my concerns and those of the villages in my constituency.

Everyone in this arena is trying to get this done. We all understand what the issue is and that it needs to be dealt with now. All I am trying to do is explain the examples from my constituency. We may well get something in rural Lancashire, but it might be something that in a couple of years’ time prevents us from getting to the next stage. I hope that we do not miss that bus and end up with yet another division between rural and urban areas. I hope that the Government will understand that as they plot to achieve the 98% coverage that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border wants to see. We must take into account the communities and the fact that they themselves want to contribute to achieve something. If we get that right, we will get it right for more than a generation.