Jo Churchill
Main Page: Jo Churchill (Conservative - Bury St Edmunds)
Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
I, too, would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) for securing this debate. I will keep my comments fairly short, because I think my voice might expire before my three minutes are up. I reiterate the comments made by my hon. Friends the Members for Salisbury (John Glen), for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), for Wells (James Heappey) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) and by the hon. Members for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless) and for East Lothian (George Kerevan): whether we are talking about broadband width, rural farmers, the nodule—whatever it happens to be—it affects us all, and it affects us all in the same way.
The word “superfast” is lovely, but parts of my constituency would be glad just to have broadband. We have been told that 90% of the UK will have superfast broadband by 2016. Indeed, Better Broadband for Suffolk hit 80% in August this year and received an extra £3.9 million as a result of the uptake, for which I thank the Minister, because that kind of incentive is most welcome. However, we have suffered a little slippage, as the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee highlighted in its report of February 2015, and are currently ranked 513 out of 650 in the country.
We live in a digital age, unless we live in Bacton, Buxhall, Pakenham, Old Newton, Botesdale, Stowmarket or Bury. Suffolk is now a net contributor to the Treasury, but businesses are looking to move out of my constituency because they cannot grow. If we are serious about using technology optimally, we must not accept 90%, or even 95%. I am afraid that we must hold the Minister’s feet to the fire—and BT’s and anyone else’s—in order to get to 100%. Broadband is going to be the fourth utility, and the Minister is going to deliver it.
Simon Hoare
My hon. Friend is obviously right to hold the Minister’s toes to the fire, but does she agree that there is now a golden opportunity for local government also to play a part, given the announcement about business rates? It will be able to plough some of that into investing still further in broadband provision for the commercial community in her constituency and elsewhere. That will help while also taking some of the pressure off the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Jo Churchill
My hon. Friend makes a valid point about using what resources we have in a much more intelligent way.
We need to ensure that at the planning stage there is communication between deliverers and providers and that we lay service ducts for broadband as housing and commercial developments are built, a point that several Members have alluded to. The Government are demanding digital platforms for most services, including tourism and education, so we need these things to be happening.
The word “rural” has been repeated in this Chamber time and again today. We should not be disfranchised simply because we have the pleasure of living in England’s beautiful counties. It is right and proper that our cities should have high-speed broadband, but it is not right that we should not.
Jo Churchill
I will indeed. I thank the Minister most kindly for it. However, I also point out that there are still many houses and businesses in my constituency that would be grateful if that largesse reached them too.
Broadband is also needed to deliver medical facilities in a 21st century fashion. A leading medical practice in the constituency has just started trialling the delivery of healthcare online. If we are to save money across the board, we need to take these technologies forward.
Furthermore, the mobile technology in my constituency is also not good. I am lucky enough to have some of the best “not spots” in the country, so we are championing greater coverage down in Suffolk. The A143 has some of the worst connectivity in the country. I recently surveyed my constituents, much as my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) is doing with hers, and found that 30% feel their connectivity is either poor or very poor. When someone is without broadband or mobile coverage and then BT fails, it really is grim.
Jo Churchill
Indeed I will. I see that I have run out of time. I will follow the Minister wherever he drives us to ensure that we have 100% mobile connectivity, as France will have by 2020.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I, too, commend my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) for securing this debate, which I am pleased to support as a vice-chair of the all-party group on broadband and digital communication.
I will, of course, focus on my own patch of Taunton Deane. We have the Connecting Devon and Somerset superfast broadband programme, which has been mentioned so eloquently by other fine Somerset speakers. I give credit to the Minister and the Government: this £90 million project is the largest broadband roll-out in the country. Things are going pretty well to get to the 90%, but—there is always a “but”—Devon and Somerset are the only two counties in the UK without a 95% minimum phase 2 broadband contract in place.
I held my own mini-summit on Friday night up in the Blackdown hills, an area of outstanding natural beauty. I am afraid the event drew together a whole room of disgruntled people from Bishopswood, Otterford, Churchinford, Churchstanton and Pitminster—I sound like Clement Freud on “Just a Minute”—who were all concerned about when the second phase of the contract will be signed to get them from 90% to 95%. They fear they are going to be left out.
Representatives from Connecting Devon and Somerset appeared at the meeting, put on a good show and said they were in negotiation with 15 people who might bid for the contracts, but they will not do so until the new year, which means, realistically, that the work will not even begin until June. That will be a year after the contract negotiations with BT collapsed, and there is still no indication as to whether many of the people affected will be included. I would be really grateful if the Minister would comment on that and on how he sees the situation progressing.
I know that time is short, but I would like to pass on a few more comments that were made at my summit in the Blackdowns. I ask the Minister whether value for money could be considered on a slightly different basis. Perhaps investing in broadband could be looked at in terms of how much rural businesses give, meaning that it would become not a numbers game in terms of people, but a business game. The more businesses that are connected, the more the economy will get going, which is something this Government support.
Jo Churchill
May I suggest that my hon. Friend ask her summit attendees to provide the Minister with feedback and helpful information on the potential impact of the lack of broadband on their local economy?
Rebecca Pow
I thank my hon. Friend for that useful comment. I was going to continue feeding in a few more comments from my mini-summit. Many have already mentioned this, but can we be clearer about which communities are outside the scope of the current roll-out? That would at least allow residents and businesses to take decisions on whether they wish to pursue other options such as satellite broadband connection.
Above all, attendees wanted assurances that rural properties will continue to be connected by whatever means—poles, wireless, satellite, fibre, fibre to the remote node or anything else the Minister might come up with. Community fibre partnerships might be relevant, although that would mean that people would themselves have to pay. There are rumours that the Minister might send vouchers wafting their way, but they are not terribly keen on them, for various reasons. Similarly, when the clouds come down and the rain rushes on to the Blackdowns, satellite does not work terribly well, but perhaps we should consider it as a temporary measure.