Rural Phone and Broadband Connectivity

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

One can only hope, depending on his business, that once the upgrade goes through, Mr Washington will have considerably more than 2 megabits—enough to allow him not merely to run his current business, but to expand it into all kinds of other value-added areas.

My second area of focus concerns the mobile infrastructure project. The situation, it is fair to say, has, after initially high hopes, become disappointing and frustrating. When the sites to benefit from the mobile infrastructure project were first announced in July 2013, the ambition was for them to be acquired and built this year. That has now slipped—officially, at least—to spring 2016. Ten sites were identified in Herefordshire alone, but to date only two in the country, not just in my county, have been delivered. This is a vital area for the Government to focus on.

I very much welcomed the Minister’s announcement on 6 January that the mobile infrastructure project masts would now run 3G and 4G antennae, which is a great step forward. He said that

“we have put a rocket under the MIP”.—[Official Report, 6 January 2015; Vol. 590, c. 69WH.]

Could he be a bit more specific? What we need now is a schedule of all the sites that Arqiva plan to develop, a detailed explanation of what barriers exist to getting the plans delivered and a plan from the Department to recover costs from Arqiva if the contract can no longer be delivered.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I met a group of constituents living at Yanworth in my constituency last weekend, who rely solely for their businesses on satellite technology, which is very slow. They have no broadband whatsoever, so should we not concentrate on the 10% that are harder to reach? I wholly commend what my hon. Friend has just said about the MIP rolling out broadband, so that we can use that for mobile technology at the same time.

[Jesse Norman]

It is to the Government’s credit that they have recognised the importance of the last 10%, 8% and 5%. Some will require bespoke solutions because those people live in such remote areas. We should allow technology to play its role in whatever form is required to deliver the signal that they need.