Mobile Phone Coverage (East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire)

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I know you have a strong interest in the Government’s broadband programme. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for securing this important debate. We have enjoyed some trenchant contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) and the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil).

[Mr MacNeil]

Good on you.

[Mr Vaizey]

Perfect Gaelic there. We were expecting an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), but he is a brooding, silent presence, and one can only speculate as to what is going on in that fine mind.

What unites all those who have contributed to this debate is their incredible work for their constituents, but if I were to pick a winner it would have to be my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, who has worked tirelessly with his constituency office over the past few months to engage with his constituents on this important issue, to hear their views—he said that 6,500 constituents have been contacted—and to bring the matter to the House for debate. His constituents will reflect on that hard work as we approach an important date some time in the spring.

One of two things tends to happen in such debates: either we start with the glass half empty perspective from hon. Members who are keen to press for improvements, followed by me putting the case for the glass being half full, or there is a case of violent agreement. My hon. Friends would have a legitimate concern if the case they were continually bringing to the House was that the Government were doing nothing, but my hon. Friends and other hon. Members know that the Government are doing a lot in this area, so my hon. Friends’ case is that the Government are doing a lot but should be doing more or should be doing it better. That is how I intend to respond.

I know this debate is about mobile coverage, but the Government have made great strides on two issues: fibre broadband, which my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole mentioned, and mobile phone coverage. I will be very brief on fibre broadband because it is not the main topic of debate. In the East Riding, £10.5 million has gone to extend superfast broadband coverage to some 42,000 homes. The Government have pledged £5 million for the next phase, phase 2, which will not get the East Riding the extensive coverage that exists elsewhere because of the area’s very rural nature. Some £30 million has gone to Lincolnshire as a whole, which is obviously a bigger area, achieving almost 90% coverage—almost 120,000 homes—and in phase 2 approximately £4.7 million will take Lincolnshire to 90%. There has been extensive progress on fibre broadband, and nationally the programme is fast approaching 2 million premises, which is a real achievement.

The second issue is mobile phone coverage, on which I want to put a couple of points in context. First, the mobile operators are, of course, private companies. They have built their networks without any Government subsidy and, indeed, the Government have benefited from the extraordinary auction of the 3G spectrum, which put £22 billion into the previous Government’s coffers, and the more recent 4G auction that put approximately £2 billion into this Government’s coffers. Those networks have been built with private money, and the operators face a number of obstacles, such as landlords who might be charging significant rent and the securing of planning permission. Indeed, my hon. Friend referred to militant constituents from 15 years ago. They have since calmed down a great deal, but unfortunately we are all old enough to remember a time when the arrival of a mobile phone mast was greeted with horror rather than glee.

[Mr MacNeil]

As well as landlords, the people who own the rights to the masts can be a choke or a bottleneck on other networks adding their kit to those masts. Anything the Government can do there would be welcomed.

[Mr Vaizey]

We recognise all the problems, and we have made great strides because we recognise that there are a vast number of not spots. We have the fastest 4G roll-out anywhere in the world, and all the operators are committing themselves to 98% coverage of premises. That roll-out should be complete by the end of 2015, but the concerns really relate to geographic coverage, because when people leave their home with a mobile phone, they naturally expect their phone, by definition, to work outside the home. We are talking about areas where there is no coverage at all from any operator, a not spot, or partial not spots where there is coverage from only one operator.

We have started the mobile infrastructure programme, under which there is £150 million to build masts in not spot areas. That has proved challenging because we are talking about remote areas, and one has to remember that we cannot just stick up a mast and plug it in; we have to take power and fibre to the mast. We cannot just arrive and build it; we still have to negotiate with landlords and local authorities. Appropriately, the first site went live in North Yorkshire, close to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, in 2013. We are considering 600 potential sites across the programme, and we are currently negotiating on 120 sites. That was stage 1.

Stage 2 was brought forward by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, when he raised the issue of national roaming with mobile operators. National roaming is problematic. To a certain extent, the operators compete on their networks, but there are potential unintended consequences with national roaming, and it will take some time to introduce legislation. We always said that a voluntary agreement would be our preferred solution, which is exactly what he secured at the end of last year. Stage 2 will put a legally binding coverage obligation on mobile network operators to cover 90% of the UK landmass by 2017, which is a massive change in the way that MNOs relate to coverage in this country. It will guarantee £5 billion of investment in mobile infrastructure and get rid of two thirds of partial not spots and half of complete not spots.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole raised a number of other points. One was the measurement of coverage which, again, we addressed through the mobile infrastructure programme, because where Ofcom says there is coverage and where there is coverage in reality can be problematic. As a result of the programme we have massively improved the way that Ofcom measures coverage. We found that around a fifth of East Yorkshire and about 7% of North Lincolnshire have partial not spots, with a small part of both having complete not spots. We expect that, as a result of the agreement negotiated by the Secretary of State, 99% of East Yorkshire and very nearly 100% of North Lincolnshire will have coverage from all four operators by the end of 2017, which is resolutely good news for his constituents.

After this debate, I hope my hon. Friends will troop down to the Terrace Pavilion, where Vodafone is hosting a reception to promote its rural “open sure” signal. I repeatedly say to Vodafone and the other operators that they should offer that signal as a retail offer to parish councils, which might front up some of the money—it could be several thousand pounds—to establish a local mobile network made up of small cells that people can put in their home.

With Ofcom, we are carefully looking at allowing people to switch between mobile operators more easily, and it is still something that we would consider. On the electronic communications code and the issue of tall masts, we are continuing active discussions with the operators to ensure that we get the code absolutely right in order to reduce their switching costs. We have some of the cheapest mobile phone contracts anywhere in the world, but I point out to constituents that a lot of the contract is spent on buying the very expensive smartphones that are now all the rage—the retail price can be £500 or £600, which is spread across the contract. The actual cost of calls and data is relatively cheap and continues to fall, and it compares very well with our competitors in Europe and elsewhere.