Matt Warman
Main Page: Matt Warman (Conservative - Boston and Skegness) Broadband Universal Service Obligation
Matt Warman Excerpts
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Broadband Universal Service Obligation.
Today is not the first time that the House has discussed broadband and I suspect it will not be the last. All Members know from their postbags that their constituents have imperfect connections to the internet that is changing all their lives.
Matt Warman
I suspect that those Members who think that they do not have constituents with imperfect connections represent constituencies where the connection is so bad that their constituents do not have the opportunity to tell them.
A universal service obligation is a huge step forward for those constituents in areas—largely, but by no means wholly, urban areas—where superfast and ultrafast speeds are possible: shopping is cheaper, the Government are more accessible, culture is on tap and the NHS can be more efficient. But for those in areas where the current USO of 10 megabits per second is a distant dream, the USO could be a lifeline from this Government, who would help those people to play a full part in the modern world, from drone deliveries to driverless cars.
There is a risk, however—this is why I am so grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate—that that lifeline is not as perfect as it could be. I hope that the debate will send a message from the House that “universal” in USO should mean that it is genuinely available to all, whether businesses or consumers, even if that has to be through a satellite connection or preferably, in due course, a 5G connection; that “service” should mean that the connection keeps pace with the quickening web requirements of the modern era, for upload and latency as well as for download; and that “obligation” should mean that it is provided by 2020 with a road map for each individual premises and a penalty on the provider if it has failed to deliver on time.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. He mentioned 5G. I happened to find myself in a remote west Oxfordshire village recently, where I found 4G available at 62 megabits per second, 50% faster than my BT Infinity at home. Does he agree that it would be appropriate to have 4G everywhere, not least everywhere in the seat of my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts)?
Matt Warman
I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend highlights the patchiness of the network. My hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts) could not be more deserving of that excellent speed, but all of us in this House are equally deserving of such speeds. That is the point of the debate. None of the conditions I just outlined would be controversial in any other regulated industry.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
I ought to point out that although I am very glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) got very good 4G reception in west Oxfordshire, we suffer from patchy and, in some cases, non-existent hard broadband coverage. In areas from Standlake in the south to Ledwell and the Wortons in the north, there is very much a need. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) agrees that we should be rolling out good broadband throughout not just west Oxfordshire but the whole country.
Matt Warman
I absolutely agree. There are calls from across the House for exactly that. I would add that for me, it does not matter whether the USO is delivered through a fibre broadband connection, or 4G, 5G or whatever. The point, at the end of the day, is the connectivity that the constituent receives.
Mr Vaizey
I hope I can help my hon. Friends. I understand the House’s important focus on the worries and concerns of minorities, but perhaps I can help with the tone of the debate. Before concentrating on the woes of those minorities, should not my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) acknowledge the incredible success of the rural broadband roll-out programme, which by the end of 2017 will hit its target of bringing superfast broadband access to 95% of the country? It is probably the most successful infrastructure programme any Government have run in many years.
Matt Warman
I gather it is not correct to invite interventions, but the name of the Minister who was responsible for that programme temporarily escapes me. My right hon. Friend is completely right that this infrastructure project has been delivered with what is, in some senses, a genuinely world-leading speed and to a world-leading extent. We should not forget that, but it is small comfort to the people who do not yet have the connection. No infrastructure project that the Government are involved in is more important than broadband. The speed of delivery in some places has been world leading, but in others it has fallen far short of the standards that our constituents often tell us they expect.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
I totally take on board the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), but the success of the programme has spawned its own issues. In Horsham, we have areas with good broadband. However, kids who live in surrounding villages cannot access the internet and the school curriculum is based around using it. That produces very significant problems for those children.
Matt Warman
My hon. Friend underlines the ubiquitous importance of broadband in whatever area of life we talk about. We have to ensure that it is available not only to homes and businesses, but to schools and the health service. The announcement, that from 2020 everywhere will get 10 megabits, is one of the most welcome the Government have made. It will, however, be met with somewhat hollow laughter from those constituents who have nothing, and, shall we say, sceptical excitement from those who have 1 megabit, 2 megabits or 3 megabits, and think that 10 megabits might allow them to use the iPlayer or whatever else constituents in urban areas regard as absolutely standard.
Mr Baker
I would just like to take this opportunity to invite my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) to come and visit Wycombe. He is very welcome to address my constituents in Hambleden Valley, particularly in Fawley and Turville, where they would be extremely grateful if they had 4G, never mind fixed broadband.
Antoinette Sandbach
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that a number of innovative firms, such as ITS in my constituency, are rolling out wireless technology that allows some communities to band together and fill the gaps that the current programme, unfortunately, has not reached?
Matt Warman
I agree, and I will come on to that in a moment. The USO must enable those innovative solutions, otherwise it will not fulfil exactly the ambitions I know my right hon. Friend the Minister has for it.
In my constituency, despite having the least well-funded police force, an enormous rural road network, and very strong opinions on the EU and immigration, broadband is the single biggest issue in my postbag. My local superfast connection figures are still 6% below the national average, and for the neighbouring constituency of Louth and Horncastle they are 13% below the national average. All Lincolnshire’s MPs know from their respective constituents the importance of this issue, even though our county council has delivered its projects ahead of schedule and under budget. I think all Members agree that the USO is a huge opportunity to make an economic impact, narrow the gap between the urban and the rural economy, and reform Government services.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is an absolute disgrace that Which? found that Scots have access to 4G signal only 54% of the time?
Matt Warman
I would say that wherever 4G has not been delivered to the extent operators often claim it is, we have a huge problem. The hon. Lady is right that it is particularly in the rural areas to which she refers that the availability of this service could make the most difference. In that sense, we are clearly not doing as well as our constituents would demand.
Antoinette Sandbach
It is not just rural Scotland that suffers. In fact, most of my constituency has only a 2G signal—we do not even have 3G. Ofcom has launched a very useful app, which people can download to their mobile phones, that feeds data directly to Ofcom. I encourage everybody who suffers from poor signal to download it, so that Ofcom can have real-time information on the appalling quality of service some of my constituents are getting with their mobile phone coverage.
Matt Warman
I thank my hon. Friend. I will come to the importance of data in a moment.
Ofcom has not yet defined the “U” the “S” or the “O” bit of the USO. We must acknowledge that there will be areas that it is not economical to connect, just as we do with water or electricity, but that underlines the importance of a USO that is technology-neutral, minimising the need for ubiquitous fibre but planning for a fibre spine that powers wireless connectivity and in due course allows a genuine 5G revolution. By the time that 5G is around, the USO must also have risen with what we might call digital inflation, because 10 megabits per second is barely good enough today and certainly not good enough in perpetuity. In the manner of the Low Pay Commission, Ofcom should make recommendations each year to see the USO rise incrementally, and the Government might occasionally make a point of surpassing those recommendations, as it has with those of the commission.
Assuming that this USO is like those in other industries, in that it allocates a reasonable budget per connection, it will be vital that communities can pool their funding, in the manner that my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) mentioned, in order to encourage private companies such as those she mentioned to take innovative paths. This effectively would create a voucher scheme of the sort that the Minister talked about in a recent debate. It is certainly important that we explore the avenue of allowing communities to club together rather than leaving individuals to fend for themselves.
Connecting the final few per cent. of the UK will require an unprecedented host of diverse solutions, from satellite broadband to, I hope, full fibre. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury will agree, however, that one size will not fit all, however marvellous the companies she mentioned might be. A single company might not necessarily be the right approach to provide a backstop for a USO. I suspect that many will express views on BT in this debate, but in reality even that one enormous company will not be providing every part of the solution.
Robert Courts
My hon. Friend mentions the one big family, BT. In my constituency, there are excellent companies, such as STL Communications, which provides data, IT and broadband solutions across the entirety of west Oxfordshire and London. Does he agree that there might be ways in which all sorts of companies can be involved in the provision of a 100% broadband solution?
Matt Warman
Yes.
The Government’s indication that, in the hardest-to-reach areas, connections will be provided on request, rather than by default, is a pragmatic economic response, but communities should be incentivised to go further. I would, however, caveat this approach—that it be demand led—by saying that the USO should surely be extended to all major roads, not just motorways, and to railway lines and stations as soon as possible. I know that the Department for Transport is working on this, but building it into the USO as well would be progress.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
Over the many months I spent on the HS2 Committee, I tried very hard to insist that we included an obligation to provide broadband all the way up the line and that we gave affected communities access to it. I also think that for every development of over 20 houses we should insist that the developer put in superfast broadband. What does my hon. Friend think about that?
Matt Warman
I absolutely agree with both points. It is daft that we are not fibring up every new housing development by default, and it is short-sighted of developers, because we know that superfast broadband connections add value to the houses. There is virtue on both sides.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), I would go slightly further than Lord Adonis’s National Infrastructure Commission did recently, and say that we should be slightly more creative in identifying areas of default provision.
Crucial to all this is the issue of data. There would be a real risk of cherry-picking if we were to publish simply a bulk set of every single connection and how fast it is; actually, that might provoke the sort of anti-competitive behaviour that none of us would like to see. However, it strikes me that publication of address-level data will provide constituents with an accurate picture of their broadband speeds now, and it should also provide them with a road map for the future, so that it would allow not only prospective purchasers of a house to see what speed they might get and what their upgrade path might be, but communities to pool their own data so that they can identify whether they should be going out to other companies to try to attract investment or whether they might be able to wait a little while because they know that a solution is coming.
Antoinette Sandbach
Does my hon. Friend agree that Actual Experience provides free software that can be downloaded on to people’s computers at home that feeds into Ofcom and provides real-time data? I am trying to encourage communities in my constituency that do not have access to 2 megabits per second broadband to use that free software so that we can gain greater and more effective data on this issue.
Matt Warman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Actual Experience, which has worked with Ofcom, provides an invaluable and often free service from which all our constituents could benefit. It is precisely that data that allows communities to join themselves together and work out whether they can go to companies and point out that they are an attractive place to invest, or indeed whether they need to persuade, as has happened in many parts of the country, a friendly farmer to help them dig the trench. It is a useful thing.
Patricia Gibson
The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way. Does he agree with me that the heart of this issue is not that Ofcom does not know where the gaps are; it is that provision in rural areas is challenging? It is a challenge that companies do not find conducive to taking up and we have social exclusion as a consequence?
Matt Warman
I agree that communities that are not connected are not connected to the modern world. That is precisely why we need to make sure that a USO is genuinely universal. I do not agree with the idea that data will not help those communities. I think the more data we have, the more we are able to go to prospectively innovative companies and ask them what they can do, and the more we can see how those communities can get together. It is a two-way street.
In the end, it will be communities themselves, I believe, that drive the universal service obligation. As BT and others have pushed the roll-out of existing broadband further and faster than originally predicted, the howls of protest from those who are left behind have grown only louder. Without the USO, Britain’s digital divide will become too wide to bridge. With it done properly, however, it will be the foundation for a truly digital nation. Enabling that is enabling a new industrial revolution, which is a prize that I think we would all agree—whatever our party—is more than worth fighting for. I hope that this debate will enable the Minister and others in the industry to gain a wider perspective of the views of this House, so that we can build the best possible universal service obligation for all of our constituents. I commend the motion to the House.
Matt Warman
I have 80 seconds to sum up this debate, and it is fair to say that there is absolute consensus that Britain must be ambitious if we are deliver on the potential. As the Minister said, the universal service obligation is a starting point, not an end point, for speed and the transformational possibilities. Whether it is wi-fi or fibre that will provide the universal service that we all believe our constituents deserve, I am pleased to see clear agreement that diversity is an important part of the solution.
The Minister is right of course not only to point out that Britain has made huge progress in relatively recent years, but to be ambitious in trying to make even faster progress as the next years creep up on us. We know that our competitors are putting huge amounts of money, time and research into what will be a transformational period in global history, which will be powered by the internet. That leaves me with seven seconds in which to wish the whole House and, in particular, you, Mr Deputy Speaker, a very merry Christmas.
