Asked by: Mike Hancock (Independent - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether he has regular discussions with BBC management on the sources from which the BBC receives external financing.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
My Right Hon Friend the Secretary of State has had no regular discussions of this kind. The BBC is operationally independent of Government and it is a duty of the BBC Trust to exercise rigorous stewardship of public money and keep the BBC’s financial needs under review.
Asked by: Mike Hancock (Independent - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what comparative assessment he has made of superfast broadband coverage in (a) Hampshire and (b) other counties in the UK.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
Ofcom monitors the availability of broadband in the UK, including superfast broadband availability, and publishes comparative data on its web site, which can be found at http://maps.ofcom.org.uk/broadband/ . Ofcom's 2013 report provides the following comparative data on the availability of superfast broadband in Hampshire compared with the UK average.
Local Authority | Superfast broadband availability |
City of Portsmouth | 96.4% |
City of Southampton | 91.7% |
Hampshire County | 78.3% |
United Kingdom | 73% |
The full Ofcom data table can be found at http://d2a9983j4okwzn.cloudfront.net/downloads/ofcom-uk-broadband-speed-data-2013.csv