Shared Rural Network

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend very much indeed for his comments, and pay tribute to him for campaigning on this issue and encouraging other Members to work together to ensure that my Department was rightly put under some pressure to make sure that we delivered on it. He will be interested to know that since I have taken over the Department we have been working very closely with the Home Office and got the agreement about the emergency services network, but I accept his challenge, and the conversations with the Home Office will of course continue.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

East Lothian has been let down by Governments north and south of the border, who have ended the LEADER programme, as well as the Community Broadband Scotland and R100 funding. If it were not for East Lothian Council and local companies such as Lothian Broadband that have found imaginative solutions to this problem, East Lothian—its businesses, constituents and the children who are just trying to do their homework—would be in a desperate state. Between the Palace of Westminster and East Lothian, which will win the coverage war?

[Nicky Morgan]

I will leave the hon. Gentleman to have his fight with the Scottish Government, but he makes a good case about how slow some progress has been under their ownership. I pay tribute to those in East Lothian, including businesses and local authorities, for the work done locally. We are talking about a shared rural network, but this is also a shared endeavour to ensure that we have good connectivity. I would like to think that the more we can all work together, the more likely it is that this announcement will turbocharge connectivity in East Lothian.

Problem Gambling

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

First, I acknowledge the hon. Lady’s gracious comments about the Lionesses. I appreciate that she would not have enjoyed their first match, but I hope that she enjoyed the subsequent matches much more.

The hon. Lady is right that we are considering a public health problem. As I said a moment ago, the Government are approaching it as such, and further action will be taken in the NHS plans to deal with problem gambling, for both adults and children. She is also right about the significant overlap with mental health problems, which of course we need to address in parallel. The money we are discussing is to enhance and add to that provision, not to replace it. It is important to say that. It is £100 million that will be diverted to treatment over four years and I hope that it will add considerably to what can be done for people who suffer from those serious problems.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I invite the Secretary of State to consider a mandatory levy from a slightly different point of view. In the statement, he rightly said that the five companies represent half the British commercial gambling industry. Would it not be fairer, under a mandatory levy, to spread that contribution across the whole industry, bringing everyone on board sooner rather than later, rather than expecting those five to pick up the bill for others, including overseas companies?

[Jeremy Wright]

The point is that those companies are taking the action voluntarily. I welcome that positive step forward. However, no one in the House has said that that lets anybody else off the hook—quite the reverse: it demonstrates that if those five companies can do it, so can others. It is important that all others across the industry look carefully at the proposals and that we hold them to account for producing a similar commitment. If they are unwilling to do so, I have made it clear that we do not put away the prospect of further action.

Leaving the EU: Mobile Roaming Charges

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

My hon. Friend is entirely right about that, and this is exactly why many of those mobile network operators have said that they have no intention of doing as he describes.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

Given the disaster of no deal and the apparent inability of this Government to ensure that our holidaying constituents have the same benefits as they do at the moment, does the Secretary of State agree with Alex Neill, the director of home services at Which?, that companies must be “absolutely clear” about the extra costs they are going to pass on to the consumer? How much notice should they give, as we are only a few weeks away from the Easter holidays?

Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

I heartily endorse my hon. Friend’s sentiments. The changes that we have made to the national planning policy framework propose that local authorities should now prioritise full-fibre connections to all existing and new developments.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

Aberdeenshire is currently the only area in Scotland that has been chosen for the Department’s pilot scheme to roll out 1 gigabit per second connections. Will the Minister consider extending that to East Lothian, which more accurately reflects the roll-out problems across both Scotland and the United Kingdom?

[Margot James]

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that we are developing the pilot into a national scheme, and the local full fibre networks programme will have another wave of offers later in the summer. I congratulate the area of Scotland that managed to win in the first round.

Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

That is an interesting proposal. We supported the Baroness Kidron amendment. I welcome it and I think that we have made some progress. Of course, this issue is broader than just data protection, so we have to ensure that we get the legislation right. That Bill can only cover data protection, which is not the whole issue. Also, it would be a backwards step if the Bill gave the impression that the generality of measures did not apply to children because we have specifics that do. I am happy to talk further to the right hon. Gentleman and to work on this because it is clearly an area on which we need to make progress.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

11. What steps his Department is taking to improve digital infrastructure.

[The Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Margot James)]

£1.7 billion of public funding has been invested to deliver superfast broadband across the UK, and a further £1.1 billion to support the next generation of digital infrastructure, including 5G test beds and trials and a fibre infrastructure challenge fund. We have also reformed mobile planning laws in England and reformed the UK electronic communications code, removing barriers to deploying infrastructure.

[Martin Whitfield]

Given the Government’s commitment to deal directly with local authorities in Scotland in the near future on digital infrastructure, would the Minister agree to meet me, the local authority and, more importantly, disruptive local providers who may be able to give answers to some of the problems that we face?

[Margot James]

We do need to reduce obstacles and costs in the commercial deployment of digital infrastructure. That is what our reforms to the code were about. The Scottish Government have introduced the first stage of their planning reforms. I hope that they can build on that and introduce reforms for their designated areas, albeit they have fallen behind Wales and England and indeed Northern Ireland. I agree to meet the hon. Gentleman and his local authorities.

Dr Elsie Inglis and Women’s Contribution to World War One

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

It is, as always, a great honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on securing this timely and important debate.

Dr Elsie Inglis made an enormous contribution to humanity. She set up hospitals that helped thousands of injured men, woman and children, combatants and civilians, who were caught up in the horror of world war one in Serbia. She battled to improve hygiene and cleanliness against typhus and other diseases. It is also beholden on us, however, to give credit to her political thinking and the women’s suffrage movement, in which she became involved in the 1890s to protest about the grossly inadequate medical facilities available to women at the time. That led directly to her founding the medical school for women.

We have heard Members speak eloquently about Dr Inglis, a woman who led in making a better world, but I will take this opportunity to discuss a colleague of hers, Bessie Dora Bowhill, another woman who organised and improved others’ lives. She was the daughter of a prosperous farmer in Berwickshire, then part of the constituency of the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont). She was born on 12 April 1869 at Marygold in the parish of Bunkle and Preston.

[John Lamont]

May I correct the hon. Gentleman’s pronunciation of “Marygold”? I wish to ensure that the official record is accurate.

[Martin Whitfield]

I am grateful for that intervention. Bessie’s parents retired to Dunbar, which was then part of the constituency of Berwickshire but is now part of East Lothian. Bessie embarked on a nursing career that took her not only all over Scotland, but on two major overseas adventures. She trained in Edinburgh in the 1890s and she was night superintendent at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary until May 1900, when the Boer war started. She enlisted in Princess Christian’s Army Nursing Service Reserve and was sent to the No. 13 Stationary hospital outside Durban in South Africa, where she served for the duration of the Boer war. On her return, she worked in hospitals in Falkirk, Dundee and again in Aberdeen before being appointed matron of Perth Royal Infirmary in 1909.

After the outbreak of world war one, she volunteered with Dr Elsie Inglis in the Scottish women’s hospital in Serbia, where she retained her senior position as matron of the unit and served until 1916. When she returned home, our local paper carried Bessie’s report of her ordeal, “Dunbar Nurse’s Experience in Serbia A Tale of Privation and Adventure”, in her own words, including the following account:

“At night the Prussian Guards simply walked into the town without any fuss whatever, and took it. Dr Inglis and her staff were told to prepare beds for 50 Germans, and next morning we received orders to leave the hospital to them. Only half-an-hour was given to us to get out, and all we were allowed to take was our beds and bedding.”

Bessie was awarded the British War Medal and the British Victory Medal for her work in Serbia. She was also awarded Serbia’s Cross of Mercy.

After that, Bessie slips from the historical record. Perhaps she was unable to carry on in nursing after what she witnessed in Serbia. I have found only two subsequent mentions of her: on 26 February 1916, the minutes of the Scottish Matrons Association record that its members agreed to send her a telegram to express their admiration for her heroism; and on 10 June 1916, she hosted tea at her nurses’ home. She died in York on 12 September 1930, aged 61.

I raise Bessie’s case today to highlight the enormous contributions made by women, which far too often go unnoticed and without thanks, but which have been crucial to shaping and deciding the future of us all, and often illuminate and focus the true meaning of moments in history. I think of the strength of the contribution made by women during the miners’ strike of 1984-85. The roots of the strike go back to the aftermath of the devolution debacle in the 1970s. The Labour Government fell in 1979, when they were defeated by one vote in a vote of no confidence; Scottish National party Members were among those who voted against them. The result was the 1979 election and the victory of a Conservative Government under Britain’s first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. In 2014, in moving a motion in the Scottish Parliament on the miners’ strike, Iain Gray said:

“With so much at stake, it was no surprise, then, that when the dispute came, it was not just any strike... In East Lothian, the Labour club was turned over to the strikers as their headquarters and soup kitchen. The Co-operative was generous to those who were its members as well as its customers. The Royal Musselburgh Golf Club felled its trees for fuel and the council set up a hardship fund.

The wider labour movement mobilised too, in practical ways, collecting food and money to keep the miners—”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 20 March 2014; c. 29224.]

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Order. I have given the hon. Gentleman a little latitude, but he seems to be straying from the title of the debate; the miners’ strike is quite some distance from Dr Elsie Inglis and the contribution of women to world war one. If he got back to the subject, I am sure we would all be grateful.

[Martin Whitfield]

I accept your guidance from the Chair, Mr Davies; I merely wished to reiterate that the contribution made—often silently—by women during world war one and subsequently has often gone unheard in a history written by men.

Millicent Fawcett, an English suffrage organiser from Dr Inglis’ time, described the suffrage movement, in words that are still so apt today in the fight for justice and equality for all, as

“like a glacier; slow moving but unstoppable”.

We must remember and celebrate the bravery, intelligence and service of women such as Dr Elsie Inglis and Matron Bessie Bowhill, of women who supported the miners’ strike by setting up the soup kitchens, and of women today.

[Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

Dr Inglis, like Keir Hardie, supported the suffragettes; that is where the link with the miners may come in. Both opposed the war, but both were there to help out when the time came.

[Martin Whitfield]

I am grateful for that intervention.

We must remember women such as Dr Inglis, but also women today who suffer under universal credit, zero-hours contracts and ill health, but fight for others before themselves. Whether through imaginative thinking, fighting typhoid or promoting cleanliness, they have always supported and served others before themselves. I hope that the battle will be won for women sooner rather than later.

Rural Communities in Scotland: Broadband

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

As always, it is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth.

I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), on securing this debate. He has spoken eloquently about the importance to his constituency and Scotland of the roll-out of broadband. Unfortunately, I believe some others—possibly people who have superfast broadband—trivialise this matter.

Let me say, however, that no one should downplay the force of the statistics for Scotland as a whole and the figures for my constituency of East Lothian. Fewer than half of our rural communities—46%—have access to superfast speeds. Some 37% of premises in rural areas are unable to receive download speeds greater than 10 megabits per second. Closer to home, 80% of rural constituents in my area said that they were dissatisfied with their internet, and the median download speed in East Lothian—the constituency that lies just south of the central belt—is just 14.1 megabits per second. Those figures should rightly be viewed as a catalyst for change and although I welcome the UK and Scottish Governments’ commitment to the roll-out of superfast broadband, I think those on all sides can agree that an enormous amount of work still needs to be done.

Another notable figure that struck me and came to my attention during the campaign is that 12% of my constituents work from home. That is not only above the Scottish average, but well above the constituency average for the whole of the UK. There are in fact only 34 constituencies in the UK where there are more home workers than in East Lothian. Herein lies the problem: business owners who work from home in rural areas, dependent on broadband, are resigned to travelling to cafés and coffee shops just to email or download information. That is a situation that I know many business owners across East Lothian regrettably recognise.

In East Lothian we have Lothian Broadband Networks Ltd, which started as a community company that offered access to the internet in areas not served by BT Openreach. These social entrepreneurs used innovative technology to beam access from transmitters to individual houses, via dishes, to allow people to access the internet. They form part of the third sector that competes with BT Openreach and Virgin Media. Many of those third parties are members of INCA, the Independent Networks Co-operative Association, and in its response to Ofcom’s wholesale local access market review it pointed out that current policy appears to highlight a mysterious absence of these third parties in solving the problems that face whole communities.

[Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)]

Like many constituencies in Scotland, Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock has very poor coverage of broadband. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are many fragile communities in Scotland with falling school rolls, poor transport, shops closing and pubs closing, and that an efficient level of broadband is essential to secure the future of those fragile rural communities?

[Martin Whitfield]

I wholeheartedly agree. Broadband is now an essential; it is not a luxury. It is one of the things that matrix together our communities, particularly those that are facing other challenges such as school closures, community cuts and local authority cuts.

[Christine Jardine]

The Scottish National party Government in Scotland have set themselves a target of 95% of homes with superfast broadband by the end of this year, and the other 5% by 2021. While I and the Liberal Democrats welcome that 95% target, we would say that the remaining 5% is perhaps the 5% that was the most difficult for the very reasons that the hon. Gentleman is outlining. Perhaps the priority was wrong, and that 5% should have been looked at earlier.

[Martin Whitfield]

I will come back to that point later, but I agree with the sentiments behind it.

In its response to Ofcom’s wholesale local access market review, INCA talked about copper switch-off, which is coming and has to come. It needs to be considered along with the rural local loop unbundling. It needs to be addressed, and the suggestion at the moment that BT is possibly released from its LLU obligations and its sub-loop unbundling obligations might not solve the problem, but might inadvertently stifle the competition to challenge this and to address the 5% that seems to be being missed.

All of these challenges will not be solved by silo thinking, with one discussion about households, one about business and one about wireless. The answer must come from joined-up thinking. Whether working from home or operating from private premises, people in rural areas of East Lothian demand solutions that provide access to fast, reliable broadband.

Behind these figures there is the real-life impact of digital exclusion, which I wish to address as I come to the end of my speech. I worry that participation and digital inequality could be two of the defining features of the near future. We must start to see connectivity more as a household utility than as a luxury. Our future generations will be fully engaged in a digitised economy, so we must ensure that they are fully prepared and no one is left behind. Location or income inequality cannot be a barrier to digital inclusion; indeed, universal credit—what would a debate be without mention of universal credit?—requires access.

I wholeheartedly agree with the aspiration of the Scottish Government to build a “world-class digital nation” by 2021—four years away—but I believe we have a long way to go to achieve that, in a very short space of time. The infrastructural weaknesses in rural connectivity will have long-term effects, and the answers are there. With the success of all sectors—the communities, the local authorities, BT Openreach, the third-party sector and the leading companies such as Lothian Broadband in East Lothian—that is achievable, but we need to move from silo thinking to joined-up thinking.

Rural connectivity should be transformative for all the communities across Scotland. I reiterate my support for this Government’s commitment to provide superfast broadband, but that must move from being a commitment to a reality. The roll-out cannot be capped at certain areas. It must not cut off communities in East Lothian and in other rural parts of Scotland. Digital inclusion is not an indulgence, but a necessity.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Six people have indicated that they want to speak and we have roughly 30 minutes left. If you do the maths, we ought to get everybody in without imposing a time limit, but if necessary I will impose one. I call Kirstene Hair.

The Arts: Health Effects

Martin Whitfield Excerpts

Wednesday 11th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) for securing this debate. Art underpins community and our society. We have heard many great contributions about its effect on individual constituencies, and first I want to draw attention to the Scottish diaspora tapestry that was displayed in Westminster Hall earlier this year. That art brought together 800 people from around the world to create a world-class tapestry showing the spread of Scotland’s diaspora. In that, something important lies: art is for everybody. It is a universal language, from cave paintings all the way through. If we weaken our link with art and leave art out, we greatly endanger our communities and the coherence of our society.

The value of art to health is best summed up by my constituent, Grace Warnock, a young girl who has had far too many encounters with the health service in her short life. In that time, she has used art to express her feelings. She will not forgive me for this, but she drew her own intestines to show the surgeon where they hurt. She went on to create Grace’s Sign, a toilet sign for those with invisible disabilities, so that she does not have to feel left out, offended or upset if people look at her badly when she comes out of a toilet that she needs to use.

One of the groups that helped her in Edinburgh’s sick kids hospital was the Teapot Trust, which Parliament knows of. The Teapot Trust was set up in 2010 by Dr Laura Young and her husband following the tragic death of their daughter. In 2016, Laura was awarded an MBE in the new year’s honours list for her work. Their volunteers and art therapists go into hospitals in Edinburgh and London to bring hope, trust and faith to children and their families so that they can engage with some of the most difficult periods of their life, not through verbal explanation, but through the empathy of art. As a community, we have moved away from that.

It is great to have this debate today, particularly following the APPG’s report, to show that art in its wider sense must sit throughout our community. It is for all Ministers across the Government to pay attention to this, as it is for all Members to promote art and to remind people that it is not about money. It is about society, empathy and the people that we came here to serve.