Digital Economy Bill

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, this Christmas-tree Bill offers some appealing packages and I hope that when the Minister comes to unwrap them for us they do not prove disappointing, and that some of those that are missing may have been restored by then. I strongly support many of the aims of the Bill, notably wider access to broadband, at increased speeds; better and faster mobile network coverage; expansion of digital public services; and improvement of digital skills. I also applaud the Government’s intention to tackle online pornography and to clarify the regulatory role of Ofcom.

I have several questions and concerns about the specifics of how these issues are addressed in the Bill. In its report of February last year, the Digital Skills Committee, of which I was a member, highlighted two main requirements for enhancing the UK’s productivity and competitiveness in the increasingly digital world economy. The first was having the right physical infrastructure in place in terms of both broadband and mobile capability, and the Bill represents a welcome step forward in addressing both these areas. The second was the need to enhance the digital skills of people across the UK, from basic users to advanced creators of digital systems. I share the disappointment of other noble Lords that the Bill gives not much more than a nod in this direction through the new Clause 87.

Part 1 of the Bill seeks to improve access to digital services through the proposed 10 megabit universal service obligation, with a provision for compensation when performance standards are not met. Of course 10 megabytes would be a great deal better, but I think we are talking about 10 megabits. This should provide a useful safety net or floor to ensure that no one is deprived of a minimum level of broadband access, but its focus should be quite specifically on those areas—increasingly few nowadays but none the less significant—where broadband services even of this low speed are not currently available and on the final few per cent of households which lack any broadband connectivity. The longer-term goal should be to provide significantly higher capacity, so there should be regular reviews of the USO, and the minimum speed will need to be increased over time and should cover upload speeds as well as download speeds, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, suggested.

To keep ahead of our competitors we need to be thinking in terms of ultrafast and even gigabit broadband services, at 100 megabit-plus speeds. The announcements in the Autumn Statement of £1 billion of funding for improved broadband services, rightly based on fibre to the premises, and for piloting mobile networks capable of meeting 5G standards, may be as or more significant in achieving the levels of connectivity and speed we need than the USO provisions in this Bill. I was shocked to discover that only something like 2% of premises in the UK are served by fibre, which is way behind most of the rest of western Europe. The noble Lord, Lord Grade, who mentioned poor mobile phone coverage, may be disappointed to hear that the RAC apparently thinks that we have 4,400 miles of road without mobile phone coverage.

Part 1 also includes a provision to make it easier for users to switch providers. The greatest difficulties in achieving this, as I know from personal experience at my home in London, arise from the fact that broadband and telephony services are often sold as part of a package or bundle of services also including television. I understand that fewer users currently switch from pay TV suppliers, such as Sky, than from telecoms suppliers, such as BT: only 2% against an overall average of 6%, which is itself half the rate for electricity or gas consumers, although the bundled services they receive are similar. Switching should be equally straightforward for everyone, whether moving from a provider licensed as a telecoms or a pay TV operator, and I would expect to see this principle firmly embodied in the Bill. I also point out that from the perspective of my other home in Wales, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, the ability to switch providers at all is something of an irrelevance, since I count myself extremely lucky that I have one supplier of decent broadband services.

Part 2 has the key aim of promoting greater investment in digital infrastructure. The challenge is to provide the right environment to promote investment in new digital infrastructure, particularly for mobile network connectivity, while treating fairly all the different interests involved: landowners, on whose property equipment is sited; mobile network operators with extensive existing hard infrastructure, notably BT; alternative network providers, often smaller-scale companies offering local connectivity services such as the one that provides my broadband service in Wales; and wholesale infrastructure providers—WIPs—which provide electronic infrastructure on a shared commercial basis. These last, notably Arqiva and Wireless Infrastructure Group, provide about a third of the UK’s digital infrastructure, considerably less than the equivalent in the USA, where the figure is more than 80%, and in most other countries. None the less, they provide more than half of all rural infrastructure sites. Typically their facilities are shared by three or four separate networks, providing higher capacity and greater efficiency than structures belonging to individual mobile network operators, so perhaps the Minister will indicate how the Bill will promote this kind of shared approach.

The overall approach of the Bill, it seems to me, should be to promote competition to drive investment in better, faster, higher-capacity digital infrastructure, and to do this by recognising the provision of digital connectivity as equivalent to a utility service. The proposed new Electronic Communications Code takes some important steps towards realising this concept. It makes clear that the definition of land should exclude electronic communications apparatus that may be installed on it and seeks to give infrastructure suppliers easier access to land in order to install their equipment. During later stages of the Bill, I shall be looking to see whether the balance seems right between the interests of established suppliers—notably BT, with its already large portfolio of wayleaves for its own equipment—and those of other providers of digital infrastructure, particularly those offering shared facilities with higher specifications.

All I will say about Part 5 on digital government is to welcome the aim of making government services digital by default and to emphasise the importance of building and maintaining public trust in this process, so as to avoid any repeat of the NHS care.data debacle. There are many potential benefits of sharing government data, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned one in the form of auto-registration for school meals. But there are evident concerns about the disclosure of civil registration information in Clause 39, the possible disclosure of identifiable healthcare information, the need for appropriate controls on government data sharing and compliance with the EU’s general data protection regulation, which comes into effect next year.

In Part 6, I am worried about the proposed new approach for appeals against Ofcom decisions in Clause 75. This involves moving from a standard of review based on the merits of such decisions to a judicial review standard, which is likely to significantly limit the grounds on which decisions can be challenged. In a field as technically complex and fast-moving as this, it seems to make little sense to restrict the scope of appeals in this way, and I am struck by the range of organisations that have expressed concern about this move, including not just BT and Virgin but Sky, Vodafone, industry associations such as techUK and the CBI, and other more specialist players in the digital arena such as CityFibre. I find their arguments that the proposed change would not in fact benefit consumers, nor even be likely to reduce the time and cost involved in appeals—which seems to be the Government’s main reason for introducing this clause—persuasive. This is an area that the Government should look at carefully again before moving to put Ofcom in a privileged position of immunity from merits-based appeals, which I understand would be effectively unique among regulatory bodies.

Finally, I am pleased that Clause 87 has been added to the Bill to address the issue of basic digital skills training. I hope the Government will explain how the extra funding needed for the adult education budget to deliver this will be provided—as the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, mentioned—and will ensure that the training is available right across the UK. This training should be clearly linked to the technical education digital pathway recommended by the Sainsbury skills review and thereby overseen by the proposed new Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. I also agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and others that there is a need to promote demand and take-up for digital services, not just the supply side. I would like to see a lot more in this area of skills training.

I look forward to hearing more from the Minister about how the laudable aims of the Bill will be delivered and some of the gaps highlighted today filled. The Bill should be a key element in enhancing UK competitiveness in the post-Brexit global marketplace, building on the many strengths we already have in the digital sphere but which will need to be constantly improved and developed if we are not to be overtaken by others. I trust it will emerge from the process of scrutiny in this House even better attuned to that aim.