Rural Phone and Broadband Connectivity
Debate between Jesse Norman and Richard Drax(9 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Jesse Norman
That is absolutely right. We are looking at a concatenation of problems, economic and social, across all age groups.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I am listening with interest to my hon. Friend’s passionate speech. May I add culture to the list of things that are missing out? In Kimmeridge, a remote part of South Dorset, they will be building, with lottery money, a new museum for fossils collected over 30 years by Mr Steve Etches MBE. They were promised broadband for this new, all-singing, all-dancing museum in 2016, but they have now been told that they are not going to get it. The effect on this small community is devastating.
Jesse Norman
I am sorry to hear the case my hon. Friend describes, but it is emblematic of a much wider problem. I certainly share his view that culture should be added to the list of deficits created by lack of coverage.
Phone and Broadband Coverage (Herefordshire)
Debate between Jesse Norman and Richard Drax(9 years, 10 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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Jesse Norman
I am grateful for that advice. On the fixed line side, the situation is almost as bad. I was delighted when, in the company of the Minister, we had a great summit in Herefordshire in July 2010 and shortly thereafter won one of the first four fast broadband pilots. That was a great moment for the county. I know that the Minister—on whose growing beard I congratulate him; he has succeeded in the beard-anuary bet—has been tireless in his work on the project, as has Herefordshire council. The whole thing has been delayed by the need to get EU clearances, by slow procurement and by very slow implementation by BT. As a result, my county is still, nearly five years later, one of the very worst places in the UK for fixed line internet speeds.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
Dorset has a problem similar to that in Herefordshire. In the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, we took evidence the other day from a senior director from BT, and from listening to him or reading the transcript we get the impression that all is dandy. Will the Minister put more pressure on BT to meet those targets? If we listen to BT, those targets are going to be met, but clearly they are not.
Jesse Norman
That is unfortunately true. BT lives in a Pollyanna-ish world in which all is for the best in this best of all possible internet worlds, but that is simply not the case in the real world. The truth of the matter is that more than half the wards in Herefordshire are in the bottom 25% of England and Wales for average download speed, and only one ward in the entire county is in the top half. House of Commons Library analysis shows that rural village wards in Herefordshire have substantially slower broadband speeds than average, which makes it difficult or impossible to use voice over internet as a substitute for the mobile phone signal that nobody receives in any case. Even some commercial premises in Hereford that were recently upgraded to digital exchanges do not have decent broadband coverage, which is simply unacceptable and a great depressant on local economic activity.