Shared Rural Network

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

I thank my noble friend for her question. She describes the North York Moors as “super sparse”; I would say they were super beautiful when I was last there. On using the emergency services infrastructure, I will write to my noble friend if my understanding is incorrect, but where she is absolutely right is that the priority in terms of the use of emergency services infrastructure is for emergency services personnel. Nothing we are planning should interrupt that and there should be no disruption to the emergency services network as a result of this proposal, but we believe that, where it is possible and appropriate, that infrastructure should be made available to share with commercial operators to deliver the coverage improvements that are needed.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness remarked that the impact on your Lordships’ House had not been raised. I would like to raise the impact on my house—I declare an interest in having a property on a hillside in Wales with very limited mobile coverage provided by, I think, one company, and very poor internet coverage. I very much welcome this Statement and I share the concerns raised by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Foster, about the detail of how this is going to happen.

I am not at all clear whether this is just about mobile phone coverage and a gigabit of that, or whether it is meant to solve the broadband problem as well, because that is equally crucial. Secondly, I am not terribly happy about having to wait until 2025, which I think is much longer than was originally thought. Is the Minister considering some sort of interim targets between now and then? Thirdly, I am extremely worried about finding myself in the 5% and not benefiting from this at all when it happens. Can the Minister say what the Government plan to do about that remaining 5%— even if it is only 3%, as she says—because I may be one of those people?

[Baroness Barran]

I will try to clarify those issues for the noble Lord. This Statement is purely about mobile coverage in rural areas. The Government have made a number of other important Statements on broadband investment, again focusing on those parts of the country least well served today, but the two are separate. On interim targets, I can only repeat what I said earlier: we will be getting detailed plans from the mobile operators, and when we have them we will be working to agree targets. I am afraid I cannot give the noble Lord particular hope on the final 5%; there are currently no plans to cover that because of the costs involved.