Mobile Phone Coverage (East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire)

Greg Knight Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and to have my hon. Friend the Minister here to respond to the debate. The fundamental reason for the debate is to ensure that the good people of the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire do, in simple terms, get what they are paying for from their mobile network operators. I have brought this debate to the House following a large number of complaints from my constituents about coverage across the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. I myself suffer from this problem, not only in my own home in the constituency but while travelling around the 250 square miles of my constituency. They are 250 square miles of the finest parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, as is broadly agreed. I struggle with my signal at home and with dropped calls and dropped signals when moving from one community to another in the constituency, as do many of my constituents.

I have taken the issues up with mobile network operators. I have written to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State a number of times, and the responses have been very welcome and very helpful. I have also met Ofcom. However, because of the large number of complaints that I received from constituents, I decided to ask residents across the constituency what their views were, so last month I began surveying thousands of residents. We have surveyed about 6,500 residents to get a better picture of what the problems are locally, because some of the information that Ofcom has provided does not necessarily match what my constituents are telling me. I will return to the survey results.

I am pleased that the Government have agreed a legally binding deal with the networks to improve call and text coverage to 90% of the United Kingdom’s landmass. I think that that represents about £5 billion-worth of investment. It is a more ambitious target than many countries in Europe have agreed and it is at least 5% more than I think the Secretary of State originally planned. The Government were right to use the stick of forcing roaming in order to get the networks to act. It is also good news that the new 4G licence auction commits the network—I think that in this case, it is O2—to 98% coverage for residents.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Is not the problem in the East Riding that only about 45% of households have access to 3G coverage at home and, on top of that, those are the very households that do not get superfast broadband, so we are dealing with people who are geographically isolated and also, currently, digitally isolated? Does not that need to be addressed urgently?

[Andrew Percy]

I could not agree more, and I thank my right hon. Friend for attending the debate. The problem in our area is compounded by the lack of good superfast broadband. The Government are dealing with that. Millions of pounds of investment are going into east Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, and broadband is being rolled out as we speak. Last week, I had some nice e-mails from constituents in Burton who have finally been able to sign up. However, people have the problem that they cannot get a phone signal and cannot get on broadband. I argue that that is basic infrastructure that people can expect to have. They expect electricity and gas—unfortunately, it is not always possible to get gas in my constituency—and power to be provided to their homes.