Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

5. What recent progress has been made on the roll out of broadband to rural areas.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

10. What plans he has to roll out next generation broadband to rural areas.

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

11. What progress he has made on his plans to roll out next generation broadband.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Superfast broadband in rural areas offers huge opportunities for things such as telemedicine, home education and working from home. The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts estimates that when this is done, it will have created about 600,000 jobs. The difference between Government and Opposition Members is that when Labour were in government they had secured £200 million for broadband roll-out, whereas we have secured £830 million. I think the public know who is doing better.

[Harriett Baldwin]

The villages of Ripple, Shrawley and Aston Somerville have all been in touch with me recently about the problem of very slow broadband speeds. Is there anything I can say to my constituents now about what can be done to speed things up?

[Mr Hunt]

What my hon. Friend can say is that this Government have committed to this country having the best superfast broadband network in Europe. Labour Members promised 2 megabit access for the whole country, so they wanted us to be in the economic slow lane, whereas we want to be in the superfast lane.