Asked by: Iain McKenzie (Labour - Inverclyde)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent steps the Government has taken to tackle nuisance calls; and if he will make statement.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
The Government takes the issue of nuisance calls very seriously. It is a priority issue for us. Steps have been taken to tackle the problem through publication of the first ever Nuisance Calls Action Plan on 30 March 2014: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nuisance-calls-action-plan-unveiled. This set out in detail our achievements to date, work underway and proposed actions for the future, which included both legislative and non-legislative measures. This includes having consulted between 25 October and 6 December 2014 on our proposal to lower or remove the legal threshold to improve the ability of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to issue monetary penalties. The Government’s Response to this consultation will be published shortly.Asked by: Iain McKenzie (Labour - Inverclyde)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if he will discuss with his Scottish counterpart the roll-out of superfast broadband for the West Coast of Scotland and those parts of central Scotland which do not yet have access to superfast broadband; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
This Government is committed to the roll-out of Superfast Broadband throughout the UK and I enjoy regular discussions with the Secretary of State for Scotland regarding delivery of superfast broadband in Scotland.
The Government has already contributed £100.80m to projects to increase the provision of broadband in Scotland. I am pleased to note that we have made a further £21m available to the Scottish Government to further extend coverage as part of the second phase of the Superfast Broadband Programme. At the end of October 2014, the Superfast Broadband Programme ‘Rest of Scotland Project’ had provided fibre coverage to 113,000 premises and the ‘Highland and Islands Project’ had covered 28,400 premises.
Asked by: Iain McKenzie (Labour - Inverclyde)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what the decision-making process was for setting the duration of his Department's consultation Tackling partial not-spots in mobile phone coverage, published on 5 November 2014; and whether different durations were considered during the consultation planning stage.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
The Government has been in discussions with stakeholders on tackling partial not-spots since the Spring. The current consultation will build on those discussions and give a wide range of people, and organisations, a reasonable opportunity to comment on the Government’s proposed options.