Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Lords Chamber

We all know that connectivity is vital in today’s world to enfranchise and enable all UK citizens—indeed, the Prime Minister has said this on many occasions—yet the Bill is mysteriously cautious. Finally, I enjoin the Minister to test whether the Bill is reasonable. I suggest substituting “broadband” or “connectivity” in the Bill with “electrical connection”. If the Minister were to do this, it would be immediately clear that the Bill’s equivocation, qualification and lack of ambition do not add up to the Government’s stated goal for the United Kingdom. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I too wish to make a Second Reading point which I would have made if I had had a chance to speak at Second Reading. I am speaking on the proposed new clause because I want to query the meaning of

“achieving access to 1 gigabit per second broadband”

and explain why it is meaningless without a guarantee of minimum speeds.

Most of us probably already have superfast broadband, defined as download speeds of at least 24 megabits per second, but has any colleague ever had that? If one logs on at 3 am, one might get close to that, but in the main it is bogus. That is nothing to do with the Government except that we let ISPs get away with claims that their system delivers “up to 24 megabits per second”.

The Government’s commitment is to build “gigabit-capable broadband” nationwide by 2025. That is a sensible change from the May Government’s terminology of “full fibre”, as it will permit 5G and wireless technology rather than trying to run cables to extremely remote locations. However, I, and I suspect millions of others, do not want or need to download a high-definition, overlong two-hour film—as many seem to be these days, as modern directors are incapable of sensible editing—in 20 seconds. That is not important. I suggest that we need better connectivity for our Zoom and Teams conferences, and reliable speeds for the exchange of business information and PowerPoint slides. Of course, some specialist companies will need to send gigabit video files, but the main users, or abusers, of that will be kids downloading films and games. Therefore, I come back to the point that most of us will never get one gigabit constantly, since the airwave or cable space will be taken up with rubbish films being downloaded by children.

The correct solution would be a differential charge for the amount of material downloaded. I endorse that, but I believe that it is strongly opposed by powerful internet activists who demand any amount of material at the same price as for those who send only a few emails. I ask the Minister to deliver a minimum guaranteed floor by the internet service providers. I do not care what it is, but I want consistency. I for one am fed up being ripped off with “up to” speeds. I do not necessarily want one gigabit; I will happily pay for 100 megabits, 250 megabits or 500 megabits, but I want that speed all the time, 24/7, and not just for two minutes of the day at 3 am.

A commitment to a guaranteed minimum speed is far more important than access to a theoretical speed which most of us will never need and those who do will never get, since millions of unnecessary films will block up the system. Therefore, although it is not in the Bill, I would love to hear my noble friend the Minister say that she will introduce a measure to compel internet service providers to deliver a minimum speed, no matter how low that might be so long as it is guaranteed 24/7.

[Lord Adonis]

I do not follow the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in seeking to make moral, let alone ageist, judgments on different users of internet services, but I completely follow him in his point about the need for a universal service obligation that is both universal and an obligation. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, spoke about the parallel with electricity, but the more relevant parallel may be with the development of the postal service, which was done nearly two centuries ago. The principle of access on an equal basis to the most remote parts of Britain was at the centre of the postal service that Anthony Trollope and others developed in the mid-19th century. Irrespective of what people chose to put in the envelopes, the principle was that you would get a delivery at least once a day everywhere for the same price.

The bit that the Government keep ducking is turning this into a universal service obligation; they keep talking about targets for increased rollout. The steps being taken in this Bill are welcome because they will make it possible to get more gigabit coverage to more people quickly. But there is no definition of a universal service obligation, and if it is not in this Bill, then sometime soon Parliament will have to grapple with the issue of a universal service obligation that provides coverage at around the 1 gigabit level to all premises in the United Kingdom. We would then map out how to do that in exactly the same way as we have done with utilities in the past.

However, the bit that I do not think anyone can question is that this is now a utility-type service that people require. We need only to look at the most advanced nations in the world that are doing best with their internet services, led by South Korea and many east Asian countries. Some time ago, they regarded high-capacity networks of this kind as universal services and put an obligation on someone—whether the state or private providers—that they had to meet. We are still behind the curve. We cannot claim that we are building world-class networks while we refuse to define a universal service obligation. This Bill provides a good opportunity for the Government to do so, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reasons why we should yet again kick the can down the road.