Rural Phone and Broadband Connectivity

Ian C. Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I am grateful for the Minister’s intervention. He is right, and I paid tribute to that.

Back to the missing 5%: the group led by Barry Forde suggested that it would take up the 5% with a not-for-profit social enterprise and deliver hyperfast super-broadband—that is, 1 gigabit—to every property within a defined area. The group approached me as a constituency MP. The group eventually became known as B4RN—Broadband for the Rural North. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) that B4RN does not lie between Lancashire and Yorkshire. It is based in Lancashire, but gives some help to Yorkshire, as usual.

What the members of the group proposed to do seemed incredible at the time, but they have set about doing that since 2010 and have now wired up every single property in the villages of Arkholme, Abbeystead, Aughton, Capernwray, Dolphinholme, Gressingham, Newton, Docker, Littledale, Quernmore, Roeburndale, Wray, Wennington and Tatham, and soon to be connected are Melling, Whittington and Wrayton. The group is looking to wire up 2,500 people with 1 gigabit of speed. Already we have interest from businesses, doing the very thing that my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness hopes will happen, which want to move into the area that B4RN covers because of the potential offered by this hyperfast broadband delivery.

The history is interesting. When the group decided to do that in 2010-11, members applied for some of the funding from BDUK, but the district council and the county rolled up all the funds and gave all the grants to BT, which resulted in B4RN complaining to the European Commission about the use of state aid. B4RN agreed to drop the complaint provided that the county would protect its postcode areas, as against BT’s scheme.

Hon. Members have mentioned the situation of BT, and I have brought up before the near-monopoly that exists.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

It is not a near-monopoly; it is a monopoly.

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I stand corrected; it has all the features of a monopoly. Let me give an example. One of the villages supposedly in the BT area is Dolphinholme, which lies between two villages that B4RN was going to wire up, so its wiring went through the village. Villagers there had been waiting for BT, but it had not yet turned up, so they asked B4RN to connect them. B4RN then began connecting those people who requested it. BT has since moved into the village and, instead of just replacing copper with fibre, is wiring the node all the way through in a way that it has not done anywhere else in Lancashire, and all for a village of just over 200 people. Why is that? It looks as though that multi-million pound business is trying to squeeze out a voluntary, not-for-profit organisation that is proving extremely successful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I beg to differ. Perhaps the Select Committee that looked at it here could recall BT. I have made inquiries about how to get the competition authorities to look at the situation. This is the behaviour of a monopoly: there is no transparency, we are not being told what is going on, and indeed we are being given disinformation.

[Ian Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. Is he, like me, upset by the complacency of those on the Government Front Bench about the monopoly that the coalition Government have constructed?

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

No, because I know that the Minister is not complacent, and I know that delivery across most of Lancashire is extremely effective, as the hon. Gentleman would have heard had he been here at the beginning. What hon. Members here are concerned about is the last 5%. I ask the Minister once again to look at BT’s performance in that remaining area.