Eric Ollerenshaw
Main Page: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)(9 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow yet another Yorkshire MP. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on instituting what I think has become an annual debate, with the annual roll-out of the Minister.
I am sure the Minister has a good idea of some of the things I am going to say, but before I go into what are essentially concerns about rural roll-out, I will add my voice to the view expressed by my hon. Friends the Members for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) about the need, if we are building these thousands and thousands of new houses to try to make up for the previous Government’s failure, to make this fourth utility part and parcel of the build scheme. It seems incredible to me that it is not. I understand that the Government are looking into it, but it should already be in planning policy that these connections should be part of future building schemes.
At the moment in Lancaster, where we have large regeneration schemes going on, people are moving into flats or houses and discovering that they have no connection and that individually they have to find a way to get connected. That is amazing in the 21st century, especially in apartment and flat-style properties, and it is something the Government need to get a grip on through planning policy.
Caroline Nokes
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is surprising that developers are not more keen to ensure that their properties have the capability to be connected to the network, which is a selling point?
Eric Ollerenshaw
I agree, but that is not happening. The market is not yet delivering. Where it is not delivering, the Government should be delivering, in terms of planning regulations at the very least.
On the roll-out of broadband, to be fair, the Government took the decision in 2010, which we all welcomed, to do something for that section of the rural community that had been left out for so long, as my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) pointed out. Villages in Lancashire are being connected. It may be fast or slow in certain areas, but some of those contracts are being delivered. As the Minister knows, I, like other hon. Members, was concerned about the missing 5%. I was approached by a group led by Professor Barry Forde of Lancaster university, who said that the BT contracts could not work because of the copper to fibre issue, so BT would be unable to deliver the speeds that it had promised. [Interruption.]
Mr Vaizey
I would be happy to offer my hon. Friend a glass of water for his cough, but we are out of water. I see that the military prowess of my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) has kicked in—he is bringing a glass of water.
As you well know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I was up in your constituency just this week, and a beautiful part of the country it is.
Mr Vaizey
I am sorry—last week. The weeks tend to blend into one. Some £50 million, 98% coverage in Lancashire, and 150,000 premises—that has to be something to shout about, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) will do so once he has had a drink of water.
Eric Ollerenshaw
I am grateful for the Minister’s intervention. He is right, and I paid tribute to that.
Back to the missing 5%: the group led by Barry Forde suggested that it would take up the 5% with a not-for-profit social enterprise and deliver hyperfast super-broadband—that is, 1 gigabit—to every property within a defined area. The group approached me as a constituency MP. The group eventually became known as B4RN—Broadband for the Rural North. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) that B4RN does not lie between Lancashire and Yorkshire. It is based in Lancashire, but gives some help to Yorkshire, as usual.
What the members of the group proposed to do seemed incredible at the time, but they have set about doing that since 2010 and have now wired up every single property in the villages of Arkholme, Abbeystead, Aughton, Capernwray, Dolphinholme, Gressingham, Newton, Docker, Littledale, Quernmore, Roeburndale, Wray, Wennington and Tatham, and soon to be connected are Melling, Whittington and Wrayton. The group is looking to wire up 2,500 people with 1 gigabit of speed. Already we have interest from businesses, doing the very thing that my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness hopes will happen, which want to move into the area that B4RN covers because of the potential offered by this hyperfast broadband delivery.
The history is interesting. When the group decided to do that in 2010-11, members applied for some of the funding from BDUK, but the district council and the county rolled up all the funds and gave all the grants to BT, which resulted in B4RN complaining to the European Commission about the use of state aid. B4RN agreed to drop the complaint provided that the county would protect its postcode areas, as against BT’s scheme.
Hon. Members have mentioned the situation of BT, and I have brought up before the near-monopoly that exists.
Eric Ollerenshaw
I stand corrected; it has all the features of a monopoly. Let me give an example. One of the villages supposedly in the BT area is Dolphinholme, which lies between two villages that B4RN was going to wire up, so its wiring went through the village. Villagers there had been waiting for BT, but it had not yet turned up, so they asked B4RN to connect them. B4RN then began connecting those people who requested it. BT has since moved into the village and, instead of just replacing copper with fibre, is wiring the node all the way through in a way that it has not done anywhere else in Lancashire, and all for a village of just over 200 people. Why is that? It looks as though that multi-million pound business is trying to squeeze out a voluntary, not-for-profit organisation that is proving extremely successful.
Guy Opperman
The thrust of what my hon. Friend is saying is that BT will do anything it can to drive out alternative providers in our local areas.
Eric Ollerenshaw
Absolutely. As we have heard hon. Members shout from across the Chamber, it is the behaviour of a monopoly.
Another characteristic of a monopoly is a lack of transparency. Let me give another example. Two weeks ago a resident of the village of Scorton, which was to be wired up by BT, approached me to say that he was having problems getting in touch with BT to find out what was going on. He runs a medium-sized engineering company from home with national contracts. I took the first step of any constituency MP and asked BT what was going on. I was told that there were technical difficulties. Eventually, I went to meet the resident in Scorton and found that he had been told that BT was now de-scoping the area because it was too difficult—I had been told one story, and he had been told another.
I am still waiting, three years down the line, for BT to hand me a map showing exactly what it is doing. Let me explain to hon. Members that these are villages up in the Pennines. Then there are places, such as Glasson Dock, which lies on flat land on the coast just beyond Lancaster, that BT is not wiring up, even though there are more residents there than in Dolphinholme, where it is delivering fibre, fibre, fibre. I know that the Public Accounts Committee has looked at the situation, but I would ask it to look again at the BT situation.
Eric Ollerenshaw
I beg to differ. Perhaps the Select Committee that looked at it here could recall BT. I have made inquiries about how to get the competition authorities to look at the situation. This is the behaviour of a monopoly: there is no transparency, we are not being told what is going on, and indeed we are being given disinformation.
Eric Ollerenshaw
No, because I know that the Minister is not complacent, and I know that delivery across most of Lancashire is extremely effective, as the hon. Gentleman would have heard had he been here at the beginning. What hon. Members here are concerned about is the last 5%. I ask the Minister once again to look at BT’s performance in that remaining area.