Phone and Broadband Coverage (Herefordshire)

Debate between Mark Spencer and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[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.