Phone and Broadband Coverage (Herefordshire)

Mark Spencer Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Jesse Norman]

I absolutely concur with that, too. The point is that the Government need to take this seriously, not only as a matter of policy but as a matter of basic humanity and responsiveness to deep social needs.

Let me summarise the situation in Herefordshire. I will start with the mobile side. We have the fourth lowest overall population density in England and the greatest proportion of its population living in “very sparse” areas of any local authority in England. About 5% of Herefordshire by geographic area has no mobile phone coverage at all. As for partial not spots, according to Ofcom’s UK mobile services data for the year before last, nearly 40% of Herefordshire’s geographical area can receive a signal only from one or two operators. That is the highest incidence of partial not spots in England.

That directly damages public services. I mentioned Welsh Water. Even the Royal National College for the Blind, based in Hereford city, has said that its staff struggle to get a mobile signal when assisting their blind and partially sighted students. Everyone in this Chamber would agree that that is absolutely unacceptable.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend’s constituents in Herefordshire are as frustrated as mine in Nottinghamshire. The Government spent an enormous amount of money advertising the fact that broadband is coming, so when people find themselves in a not spot, that almost adds to the frustration that they feel.

[Jesse Norman]

That is certainly true. It is known in the literature as the tunnel effect. If we are sitting in a queue in a tunnel and the lane next to us starts moving, our initial feeling is optimism. If that lane then continues to move and we do not, that optimism can quickly turn to social frustration. I think that that is what we have seen in this case.

There are bright spots. I do not want to discourage colleagues from recognising that. We now have digital exchanges in Hereford city. We have a 3G femtocell in the village of Ewyas Harold. That just shows the power of this technology when it can be properly rolled out, because the people there are delighted with the progress. However, it has been extraordinarily difficult to achieve any real change.

The mobile infrastructure project, which the Department has very wisely and interestingly rolled out, is a case in point. When the sites to benefit from it were first announced, in July 2013, the ambition was for them to be acquired and built by 2015. That has now slipped to spring 2016. Ten sites were identified in the county of Herefordshire. To date, only two sites in the country—forget the county—have been delivered. That illustrates how difficult it is to achieve change.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, Madam Chairman Ladyship, and I put on record your new title, which has been proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman). He is well known in the House as an expert on constitutional matters, so I will not take issue with him on that. As he noted in passing, this is the first outing of the beard, and it depresses me that it took him nine minutes and 42 seconds to mention it. Subject to the nature of the interventions that follow, the beard may or may not survive the week.

We are talking about a serious issue, so I will take a more serious tone from now on. I note that I have plenty of time to set out our position, and I will be happy to take any interventions from hon. Members should they wish to further the points they have made so eloquently throughout the debate. It is fair to say that, given the absence of Labour Members, we in the Government cannot be accused of gerrymandering in the way in which we are tackling broadband coverage. Clearly, it is doing very well in Labour-held constituencies.

[Mr Spencer]

Conservative Members understand that Government cash is limited so the Government should spend their money in the most efficient manner possible. Can the Minister explain to my constituents who cannot raise the funds to get broadband why the Government put a double-page, full-colour spread in the Daily Mail saying that broadband is coming? Would that money not have been better spent on actually connecting a dozen households in my constituency, rather than telling them that it might happen?

[Mr Vaizey]

As a Minister I am also responsible for supporting the national and local press, so I am obviously in favour of anything that we can do to support the Daily Mail. The serious point behind that advert is that we are rolling out superfast broadband throughout the country as part of our rural broadband improvement programme. Although we are using public money to fund it, it is a co-investment with Openreach. One reason why we are doing it is that sometimes, broadband is not commercially viable, and one way to make it more viable is if more people take it up. We have noticed that, even in rural areas where people have cried out for broadband, they are not taking it up when it is there, so we want to encourage take-up. It is worth saying to my hon. Friends that the more people take up broadband, particularly under the rural broadband programme, the more money we will get back under the contracts we have negotiated with Openreach and therefore the more money we can invest in rural broadband.