Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion
Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

My hon. Friend is right that mobile coverage, while unrelated to the Bill, is an essential part of the connectivity solution. We have committed to the industry concluding its negotiations in the first 100 days of the Government, which takes us to the middle of March, and we are on track for that. On measurement of a network, we have historically been lumbered with standards that are not terribly useful. We need to do more to ensure that we provide the right kind of information to consumers; Ofcom and the Advertising Standards Agency have a hand in that, alongside Government.

If operators are to achieve our ambitious target, they need to get on and deploy their engineers and civil contractors, and to keep them moving to maintain momentum. They cannot afford to keep their teams idle while they wait for a response from a landlord that never materialises; from a commercial point of view, it makes more sense to bypass the property and its residents and deploy elsewhere to prevent that situation. The Bill will create a new application process in the courts that will allow operators, when faced with an unresponsive landlord and with a resident requesting a service, to apply to the courts to gain the rights to install.

It is important to make it clear that the new court application process is a last resort for operators. The key goal of the legislation is to increase the response rate to operators’ requests for access. The Government have always believed—and continue to believe—that the best, most efficient way for operators to install equipment in a property is through a negotiated agreement being reached between the operator and the landlord.

In December 2017, this House passed the Digital Economy Act, which among other things updated the electronic communications code. The code provides a regulatory framework for the relationship between landlords and telecommunications operators and includes provision for the operator to use the lands chamber of the upper tribunal, or its equivalent in the devolved Administrations, to have rights imposed in situations where a landlord is unresponsive.

To the best of my knowledge, as I speak, operators have not sought to use that power to address an unresponsive landlord, in part because they estimate that it will cost £14,000 per application, including legal fees and administrative costs, and take six or seven months in practice, and the outcome would by no means be certain. However, there are estimated to be 450,000 multi-dwelling units in the UK, housing some 10 million people. If operators’ current 40% failure-to-respond rate is projected across the country, we are talking about 180,000 cases and some £2.5 billion in costs. I am sure that Members will agree that the money and effort would be better used delivering better connections. The new process proposed by the Bill is proportionate and balanced, and places an exceptionally low burden on the landlord and a high evidential requirement on the operator.

An operator will be expected to have a tenant in the property who has requested a service. They will have issued multiple requests over 28 days and, thereafter, a final notice that explicitly says that the court may be used to gain access, and they will be able to show evidence of all the above to the courts. A landlord who wishes to take themselves out of the policy’s scope need respond to only one of the operator’s multiple notices. I am sure that hon. Members will agree that responding when someone writes is simply a courtesy. The expectation is that applications made to the tribunal through the provisions in the Bill will allow judges there to make decisions based on operators meeting an evidential threshold. This will allow decisions to be reached quickly and efficiently. Discussions are still ongoing about how we can make the process even faster.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

The Minister has said that landlords will have opportunities to respond. If, for whatever reason, they do not respond, and they find themselves in the tribunal, will any costs fall upon them?

[Matt Warman]

The charging landscape will be set in collaboration with the tribunals and—I suspect that the hon. Gentleman will care about this in particular—the devolved Administrations, but the whole point of this regime is for it to be faster and far more affordable than the current regime. As we work with our colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and the devolved Administrations, we will have that at the front of our minds.

If applicants are successful, they will gain interim rights under the electronic communications code in relation to a property. Those rights will allow them to install, maintain and upgrade infrastructure for a period no longer than 18 months and will be accompanied by strictly defined terms regarding their use. These terms, which we have committed to consulting on publicly, will set out the standard to which works must be completed, and will make it clear that care must be taken to minimise the impact on other residents. If an operator wishes to continue providing a service to the building after the interim code rights have expired, and the landlord continues to be unresponsive, applicants may use provisions in the electronic communications code to apply for full rights. Time-limiting the rights to a maximum of 18 months incentivises operators to continue their efforts to contact landowners so as to avoid the cost, time and uncertainty of making a further application to the tribunal. It also ensures that where a landowner does engage, there is sufficient time for negotiations to take place and an agreement to be reached without disruption to residents’ broadband service.

To conclude, this is a technical Bill that achieves a specific purpose, but it does that in the context of the Government’s significant scale of ambition in this area. Gigabit broadband will be the enabling infrastructure of the next century. It will turbo-charge businesses, facilitate innovation and change how we work, live and engage in society, and how society engages with us. It is good for every part of this country, for our economy and for the public. The Government will support every home—every family wanting to shop online, and every pupil wanting to do their homework—whether it is in the middle of a city or the middle of nowhere, and whether it is a mansion, a terraced house or a block of flats. The Government will help them all to be part of this country’s gigabit future. I commend the Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s experience and knowledge of the digital sector, which makes her very aware of the importance of ending the current digital divide. I shall say more about that in a moment.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I was glad to hear of the hon. Lady’s expertise in the building of infrastructure. The situation in rural Wales is particularly dire. I could name a host of villages in Carmarthenshire, including Abergorlech, Pont-ar-goth, Brechfa and Llansawel, where there are cables coiled along the posts which have not been connected. Will the hon. Lady please have a discussion with her colleagues in Cardiff so that some progress can be made in improving connectivity in the villages in my constituency?

[Chi Onwurah]

The hon. Gentleman paints a disturbing picture of rural communities that have yet to have the connectivity that they require, but it is also very true of the country as a whole. Telecommunications are not a devolved matter but the responsibility of the UK Government, and we need to look to them to ensure that we have the environment and the investment that are necessary to deliver fibre for everyone.

Sadly, our wasted 10 years in telecoms are not limited to fixed infrastructure. As we have heard, mobile and the softer infrastructure of regulation have also been left to languish, and that will have an impact on the effectiveness of the Bill. Conservative Governments have entrenched the digital divide in the UK: 11 million adults lack one or more basic digital skills, and 10% of households do not have internet access. At this rate, there will still be 7 million people without these skills in 2028, which is tantamount to leaving one in 10 of our population permanently disenfranchised. It is a real issue of social justice: for instance, the West End food bank in Newcastle receives many visits from parents who have been sanctioned because they cannot sign on online.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Edwards]

The hon. Lady is raising an important point about mobile, which has huge potential. We have the technology to bring broadband into the home, but the big issue is the size of the data packages. Families find mobile prohibitive because it uses up their data allowance within a matter of days. Should not the Government work with the mobile companies to ensure these products are far better suited for family use?

[Chi Onwurah]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and affordability is a consequence of the level of competition, of the profits that mobile operators are making and of network capacity. The Government can address all those things, but they are apparently choosing not to do so.

The Government claim to be supporting infrastructure competition, and the “Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review” says that infrastructure competition is most effective at delivering investment. Where is the support for infrastructure competition in this Bill? What requirement is there on landlords and internet service providers to support infrastructure access for more than one telecoms operator? Residents will not be able to choose their supplier, leaving them liable to be fleeced by a single provider.

This is particularly important because of the wasted decade we have seen, which has allowed the re-monopolisation of the broadband network to take place. The last Labour Government delivered infrastructure competition in first generation broadband. It survives to this day, which is why people can get decent broadband from providers such as TalkTalk, Plusnet and Sky, as well as BT, but the Conservative Government gave BT hundreds of millions of pounds of public money, to establish, in effect, a monopoly on second generation superfast broadband. The Government were warned at the time, and not only by me, that that would entrench BT’s monopoly, but Ministers refused even to use the word “fibre”, as if by ignoring it, they could make demand for it go away. Other countries require shared access to building infrastructure. Have the Government examined case studies in other countries, such as France, which has a much higher proportion of MDUs than we have and much better infrastructure access competition? Speaking of MDUs, the definition in the Bill seems to imply that the situation is the same for a two-flat house conversion as for a block of flats with 100 apartments in it. Is that really appropriate?

The Minister mentioned new build. In 2008, I ran Ofcom’s consultation on fibre access for new build, and since then we seem to have made absolutely zero progress. What recommendations or guidance for new build apartments, and what other policies, is he proposing to ensure that new build houses have fibre access? As has been suggested, the huge question overshadowing this is the relationship between leaseholders and freeholders. Leasehold is broken. Labour has promised to end it, but, unfortunately this Government appear to have no meaningful proposals.

In conclusion, telecoms companies need to be able to deploy infrastructure quickly and effectively. Absentee and bad landlords can deprive residents of decent broadband by not co-operating, but telecoms companies should not be able to fleece residents or crowd out smaller competitors, and savings must be passed on to consumers. There is much the Government could be doing to deliver the infrastructure we need. We support the aims of this Bill but fear that the measures are not properly thought through and will not make a significant difference. We need a proper plan to overcome 10 wasted years.

When, last week, I said that Big Ben was the only telecoms infrastructure the Government could plan for, the Minister told me off, saying that, “as an engineer”, I should know that Big Ben “is not telecoms infrastructure”. He clearly does not know his telecoms infrastructure, as bells and beacons were our earliest forms of telecoms, which is, in essence, communicating at a distance, as the Spanish Armada found out. They were supported by public investment—[Laughter.] The Minister laughs, but he knows that we want to make sure that we have public investment to support the telecoms infrastructure, which provides a public good. It is sad that although the Government are happy to leave our infrastructure stuck in the past, they refuse to learn lessons from it. Under the Conservative party, one wasted decade may become two, and the British people will be the biggest losers.