Oral Answers to Questions

Heather Wheeler Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

The Government are delighted that a public consortium led by the Friends of the National Libraries has come together to seek to acquire the Honresfield library. We hope that the fundraising campaign is successful and is able to realise its plans to allocate parts of the collection to libraries around the UK, for the benefit of the public. We will, of course, keep a very close eye on this and I know that the Secretary of State is planning to meet the group shortly.

[Mrs Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

If he will make it his policy to conduct an impact assessment of the potential financial effect on community organisations of proposals to reform the electronic communications code.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Matt Warman)]

The Government are currently considering the responses to the consultation on the electronic communications code, which closed in March, and we will, of course, carefully consider the impact of our proposals on all stakeholders, including community organisations, which we all value so highly.

[Mrs Wheeler]

I thank the Minister for his answer. He will be aware that thousands of farmers, churches and community groups who host mobile telecoms infrastructure on their land have faced financial hardship because of the 2017 ECC reform, with some seeing enforced rent reductions of up to 90%, as has happened in my constituency. What measures is he planning to support those who face losing these critical sources of income? Will he kindly agree to meet me and representatives of these impacted groups as soon as possible?