Rural Broadband

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I call Neil Parish to move the motion.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Betts. It is a great pleasure to work under your chairmanship. Do I have to move the motion now?

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Yes, move the motion—that is the new format.

[Neil Parish]

I do not have it to hand, which is not a good start.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

It is arriving.

[Neil Parish]

Thank you for passing the motion to me, Minister. Don’t worry, once I get going, it will be fine.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered delivery of rural broadband.

Next time, Mr Betts, I will make sure that I know the new procedure. It is a great pleasure to work under your chairmanship. It is a delight to have the Minister here this afternoon, and I shall put some questions to him at the end, which I am sure he will be more than able to answer. I thank hon. Members for turning up this afternoon. We are all concerned not only about rural broadband but about the delivery of broadband throughout the country, which is very significant.

The internet is increasingly important to everyday lives, whether for online shopping, for staying in touch with friends or for all our rural businesses, such as farming and tourism, which are keen to have broadband. Despite a public subsidy of about £1.7 billion, too many consumers, businesses and individuals cannot access broadband. Theoretically, until we had to change the system, farmers were expected to deliver payments online, and next year they will have to, but if they do not have superfast broadband or a good internet connection that will be impossible.

BT owns a lot, if not all, of the infrastructure and is the largest retail provider using it. Ofcom is considering whether to propose separating the infrastructure division, Openreach, from the rest of BT, which would create more competition and mean that BT no longer had a conflict of interest in delivering the high-quality broadband that everyone deserves. I do not know whether this afternoon the Minister will want to be drawn on the question of what should happen to BT. An independent Openreach would improve the quality of service and increase infrastructure investment.

There are two elements to the delivery of superfast broadband in most constituencies: the publicly funded programme—in my constituency, Connecting Devon and Somerset—and the commercially funded roll-out of superfast broadband in larger towns and cities. We must remember, however, that Government and council money is all taxpayers’ money, and we want to see value for it. In earlier debates in the House, we have been very concerned not only about the pace of broadband roll-out but about whether it is being rolled out with value for money for our taxpayers.

For the Devon and Somerset roll-out, the first delivery contract was let to BT and is believed to be on time; it has been suggested that it is also within budget. The target refers to 90% coverage of the area by 2016, but that is where the problem lies in many respects. If roll-out across a constituency or a country is in percentages, people automatically roll out to the areas that are easiest to get to and, all the time, we will have to put public money in to get to those hardest-to-reach areas. I have yet to be convinced that we are getting the necessary value for money from many of the contracts.

If we let one contract get to 90% of the population and another to 95%, and if it is the same company rolling out the broadband, what stops the company from not delivering what it should have done under the first contract but delivering it under the second contract and saying, “Of course it is all too hard to reach. We need more money to reach the hardest-to-reach areas”? One of our problems in Devon and Somerset is that there has not been enough competition in letting the contracts. A contract was let to BT, then a further one was to be let to it again. There has not been enough competition, so there are not enough people out there with wireless connections or different types of technology to keep BT moving. BT has been slow at bringing in the new technologies.

Many Members present have constituencies with a hilly topography and many farms, villages and hamlets are stretched out and a long way from the cabinets and the fibre cable. In the end, there will have to be a system not only of fibre cables but of wireless and other technologies to deliver broadband.

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

I cannot stay for the whole debate because I have to go to the main Chamber, but given the very name of my constituency, the High Peak, I want to echo what my hon. Friend is saying. Broadband has very much become the fourth utility, and businesses and farmers need it. The terrain of the area that I represent makes broadband difficult to get, so we need to put some effort into that last 10%, because those people are as important as the first 10%.

[Neil Parish]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. There have to be other initiatives, or other existing systems. Can we use church towers or mobile phone masts, if there are any? Do we need more of those, or do we need to link the broadband or internet connection to other systems? Otherwise, we seem to be getting only to those areas that we can get to and not to the hardest-to-reach areas. I am not yet convinced, even with the latest contracts, that we are getting where we need to be.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct about reaching the hardest areas. A key driver for the final 10% is getting more competition into the market for broadband provision. Was he as concerned as I was to read in The Times this week that BT Openreach had been referred to Ofcom? The article claimed that it was to some extent fiddling figures to avoid having to proceed as quickly as possible with the installation of fibre-optic cables. That must be of concern to him and to rural residents in my constituency, in places such as Water, Lumb, Lower Darwen and Whitworth, who have been waiting a long time to be remembered as the final 10%.

[Neil Parish]

Yes. If we look at the contracts with BT in particular, there is money that is supposed to be delivered into the contract, but that always comes at the end. I do not know what the situation is in my hon. Friend’s area, but there is certainly little under the Devon and Somerset contract.

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

My hon. Friend is altruistic, so he will not mind me commenting on other constituencies. He mentioned what the situation was in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), so I am sure he will welcome the fact that broadband will reach 98% there under our scheme, and High Peak 93%. That is good news—thousands of our constituents being connected, thanks to this superbly successful broadband programme.

[Neil Parish]

I thank the Minister for his intervention. It is all very well to talk about the great delivery of broadband in those areas, which is fascinating, but it does absolutely no good to many of my villages, which have only 25% of people connected. The more he keeps on about how much other areas have got broadband, the more it annoys those who have not got it. That is the problem with rolling out statistics.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. Although I welcome what the Minister has said about percentages for individual constituencies, the great concern for my constituents in Dorset will be that last 5% to 10%, as they are the hardest to reach and are clamouring the loudest to make sure the broadband is actually delivered.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. Also, the last 5% is probably not 5% around the whole country but 50% of particular areas of very many of the constituencies of Members here today. Believe it or not, I have some sympathy for the Minister—

[Mr Vaizey]

No!

[Neil Parish]

Occasionally, on a good day. To be serious, the people who have broadband are very happy and we do not hear much from them; the issue is the people who do not. I repeat that the more we talk about all those who have it, the more it drives on those who do not.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I am sure my hon. Friend will recognise that those of us who represent coastal communities face a real barrier to the delivery of infrastructure, better known as the sea, which rules out some of the options he has talked about. I welcome the Minister’s announcement in a previous debate that Torbay would have 100% coverage, but sometimes in an urban area it is the site that most needs to be covered—a business park or a development park—that is left out, even though nearby housing has been covered.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. That is part of the trouble and is hard to understand. When someone knows that people right next to them have a good connection but they themselves have not it seems a huge anomaly. BT has so much fibre-optic cable that where it is rolling out the contract it tries to deliver broadband with that cable, but sometimes it simply will not work. I do not think that BT is necessarily deploying the other technologies that we need as fast as it should be.

[Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)]

It is interesting to hear the hon. Gentleman say that the areas that are of most concern to him are the 5% who are not going to get broadband if the 95% target is hit. What about my constituency? Fermanagh and South Tyrone has coverage for only 55% of the population; are the other 45% not as much disadvantaged as the 5% in the areas with 95% coverage, or even more disadvantaged?

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Gentleman stresses the point that people in a large area of his constituency are not getting the connection that they should be getting. That is the problem. We have done well in the areas we can get to reasonably easily, but given the amount of public money going in to deliver to the areas that are harder to get to, I feel coverage is not getting there fast enough and there is not enough concentration on that problem.

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. Many businesses are looking to relocate to rural areas, which presents us with a big problem. Those businesses do not want to be confined to industrial estates; many looking to relocate to my constituency of North Cornwall are food based and want to have access to broadband on farms. What can be done about that?

[Neil Parish]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I also thank him for elevating me to the status of right honourable; however, I am only an hon. Member. To be serious, we talk a lot about infrastructure and about roads. It is right that the Government are doing a lot about our roads, and I fully support that.

[Mr Vaizey]

And broadband!

[Neil Parish]

Yes, and broadband, but the issue is the speed with which we are getting the broadband out. There are individual areas with quite a lot of really good businesses that want to stay, but some are considering whether they will have to relocate if they do not get broadband quickly. That is the conundrum. I therefore echo what my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) has said.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining this debate and on his elevation to the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. He is very well placed to debate this subject and has been a champion for rural broadband. The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott) indicated that his constituency has low coverage. We are talking about the last 5%. As has been said, the Government are encouraging innovation, and encouraging farmers to diversify, yet there is still not the broadband coverage that is needed. Surely as well as investing, we need to think outside the box. Whether we are using church towers or whatever, we need to be innovative in our thinking.

[Neil Parish]

One question I will be putting to the Minister is whether we will need to use some form of voucher system to enable the hardest-to-reach areas to do their own thing. In Devon and Somerset we often get BT starting on part of an area, which stymies work for the rest of it, and then nobody else wants to come in to finish the job. We have to get to grips with those sorts of issues. It is good to have the Minister here because we shall get such clarity when I ask him my questions.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. We are continuously talking about this subject and are edging the Minister forward; he realises how serious this is. In my constituency, the Blackdown hills, which border the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), are a harder-to-reach area. Might it be possible to consider giving that area special designation, such as Dartmoor has, when the contract process for phase 2 of Connecting Devon and Somerset begins? It could then be considered for one of the new different methods, so that those hill people could be catered for. Will the Minister comment on that?

[Neil Parish]

I thank my hon. Friend and new constituency neighbour. It is great to have her in Parliament—she really speaks up for her area. We have treated Exmoor and Dartmoor as a special entity, and most of the area will have a wireless connection. I think that we should look at the same sort of treatment for the Blackdown hills. I know that the Minister is not keen on the benefits of not having signed the contract with BT earlier this summer, but one benefit of looking at a new contract for Devon and Somerset is that there is some competition out there. Other companies are prepared to come into the area and so may be prepared to come in to the Blackdown hills. The Devon and Somerset contract is probably one of the biggest in the country—

[Mr Vaizey]

It is the biggest.

[Neil Parish]

I thank the Minister for that clarification. I think it is too big in some respects—[Laughter.] No, I do. It is too big, so it is unwieldy. Some of the other companies providing broadband are not of the same scale and size as BT, so because the contract is so large it is almost tailor-made for BT and no one else. If the Minister wants greater competition, I suggest that a smaller contract could be the way forward.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in the conversation about superfast broadband we should not lose sight of those people who do not have broadband—by that, I mean a connection at a speed of 2 megabits per second? Cheltenham is not wildly rural, yet there are people there who are on dial-up speeds. It is no good saying that 93% are on superfast broadband, as that could obscure the fact that lots of people really have no broadband at all, as is the case in my constituency. Funding has to be sent towards those people in e-poverty as a priority, to take them out of the digital dark age.

[Neil Parish]

If my wife was here, she would be reinforcing exactly what my hon. Friend is saying. Every time she gets on to our computer and it does not dial up properly or get any connection, she says, “What are you doing about it?” so hon. Members can see how I have been encouraged to hold this debate. He is right; what is driving everybody so crazy is that some people have superfast broadband, some people have some form of connection and some people have either a very slow connection or no connection at all. As we get towards 2 megabits, the argument then will be whether it is 24 megabits, 50 megabits, or 100 megabits. I am not the most technical man in the world, but I imagine that those are getting faster—but seriously, this is a problem and we somehow have to get everybody on to a reasonable speed and connection for broadband before we drive everything forward. Otherwise, people will be treated doubly badly as a result. That is what we are all worried about in our individual constituencies, and I am sure that the Minister is taking note of that.

[Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. As a new Member of Parliament, I find that the question of broadband is one of the biggest in my inbox. My only problem is that in the village in which I live, I have a very slow speed, so I cannot get back to my constituents as quickly as I would like to.

I thank the Minister for coming to Brecon and Radnorshire during the election campaign. He had a look at broadband in the town of Brecon and I am delighted that Brecon now has a good speed. The problem is in Brecon and Radnorshire. The county is vast—the largest constituency in England and Wales—and it is very difficult to get to many parts. We need to think outside the box. In a part of my constituency called Elan valley, 27 homes are not even on mains electricity, so how we are going to get them to mains broadband, I really do not know. However, I would be grateful if the Minister looked into such matters. We have a long, long way to go in rural broadband, but please look into this issue. Like the rest of the Members here—and, I am sure, Members who are not here today—I find that business and social elements in my constituency are being stifled. Broadband has to be pushed further up the scale and the delivery of rural broadband has to be a top priority.

[Neil Parish]

I welcome my hon. Friend to Parliament, and I am sure that he will do a great job for Brecon and Radnorshire. My brother used to live in Lampeter, so I drove quite regularly through the Brecon Beacons. Brecon and Radnorshire must have some of the most hilly and mountainous country in the nation of Wales and in the United Kingdom. I therefore suspect we will have to use lots of different methods of getting broadband and internet connections to those areas—I expect the Minister at least to provide my hon. Friend’s constituents with generators where they do not have electricity. In very drawn out constituencies that are difficult to get to, we will need different technologies. I am sorry to labour the point so much, but I do not think that it has had enough focus, and it is what my hon. Friend will need more than anybody. I and many other hon. Members will need it as well, but my hon. Friend’s constituency will need it in particular.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Is not one of the problems the fact that BT will not be open about which premises and cabinets will not be connected, particularly in relation to its commercial programme? It has been extremely difficult to get information from Connecting Cheshire because it says that it is prevented from releasing that information under a freedom of information request, because of BT. Many of the communities that are not connected, if they knew they would not be connected, would be willing to band together to try and find a solution if they could, and if there were some sort of voucher scheme.

[Neil Parish]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and welcome her to Parliament. She is right. I do not know whether Cheshire is the same, but Devon and Somerset signed a confidentiality clause with BT in the first contract, so that has made it doubly hard. The situation has got better and in Devon and Somerset, websites have been set up and people know roughly where they are going to be. The people at BT argue that is a commercial matter, and if they say they are going to be in a certain place at a certain time and they do not arrive, they leave themselves open to a legal challenge. However, it is still very frustrating for people. I am a little concerned that BT is inclined to move faster when it thinks somebody else might move into the area. It is just a feeling of mine, but I think it is probably shared quite a lot in this Chamber. Perhaps we can ask the Minister about that: does he actually like the confidentiality clauses in these contracts, and would it be better if we did not have them? It would be interesting to see what he has to say about that.

In 2010, Ofcom put regulation in place to allow competing broadband providers access to Openreach national infrastructure and access to passive networks, so that their own fibre to the cabinet or fibre to the home superfast networks could be deployed. That has been helpful for non-BT providers such as Sky and TalkTalk. The majority of superfast investment comes from BT and Virgin Media, and both are investing in upgrading their existing networks. We need, all the time, to keep as much open access as we can.

I turn to Britain’s digital future. The UK has one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world, with lower prices than most other European countries. Once people actually get access to the internet and broadband, they get a very good deal, but it is about making sure that we can get people connected in the first place. The UK has an ambitious digital plan, which will help the economy and result in world-class connectivity, so we are going in the right direction—I thought I ought to put something in this speech to make sure that the Minister felt that I have listened to what he has said. This will help to decrease business costs as well as reduce the cost of public services and help our long-term economic growth. Indeed, it might even help our long-term economic plan, might it not? However, the current market structure is letting Britain down.

There are over 500 different telecom companies, the majority of which depend on Openreach. It is worth remembering that when other sectors were privatised, such as the electricity sector or the rail network, they were prevented from simultaneously owning the infrastructure and being a retail provider. Ensuring that Openreach was independent of BT would help to extend internet coverage, which, in turn, would help to support small local businesses. In addition, that would help to cut back on the red tape and ensure that the process of installing broadband across the country is much more transparent.

I have emails in my inbox from businesses that feel like they are being let down by the Government not getting broadband to them fast enough. I know that the Minister is working hard on that, but it is what people are concerned about. Over 200 businesses have been in touch to say that they do not have the internet connectivity that they need to be able to run their business. Indeed, 75% of Federation of Small Businesses members say that the internet is vital to their businesses. One particular business said that as a result of the internet, its sales increased by 40%, and 46% of members would like faster internet provision. It is extremely important that businesses have good internet speed and access so that they can promote themselves online. It is essential for tourism, shopping and market research.

In rural areas, Broadband Delivery UK intends to roll out superfast broadband to 95% of the UK by 2017, with universal access to broadband speeds of up to 2 megabits. The final 5% is primarily made up of rural areas, which is mostly what we have been talking about today. Although that is only 5% nationally, it probably means that in many of our constituencies, up to 50% of our areas will not be covered. Rural areas also have slower superfast broadband coverage. There are also related technical issues, as rural areas tend to be further away from the cabinets. That means that companies and the Government should be looking at more efficient and cost-effective solutions, which we have largely covered this afternoon. We appreciate that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has announced a £10 million fund to pilot technologies such as satellites to address the problem, but we would like to see more speed due to the negative effect on businesses and constituents. I want to labour this point for a third time. We have not concentrated enough effort and resources, and certainly BT has not, on the different technologies. We will not by 2020, 2021 or 2022 get to the hardest-to-reach areas if we are not using the better and newer technologies to get to them now, because all these things take time. That is what worries us. We are very pleased for all those who have the broadband connection, but we are very worried about our constituents and businesses that do not have it.

Finally, I come to my questions for the Minister. Can he extend competition to keep the pressure on BT to deliver on its contracts more quickly and effectively? Can he persuade BT to use extra technologies, especially in the harder-to-reach areas, to ensure that BT is delivering on its contracts as promised? Will he encourage other companies to bid for contracts to deliver superfast broadband, especially in difficult to reach areas, so that there is local competition in the marketplace? Can businesses and individuals be given vouchers that would go some way towards paying for broadband, which in many cases individuals have to fund privately, out of their own pockets, instead of through the huge taxpayer subsidy that BT is already receiving? Will the Minister keep up the pressure on BT to ensure that it keeps its promises, as already too many people in rural areas do not have broadband and that is only adding to the problems of rural isolation?

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Six hon. Members have applied to speak. I shall restrict the Front Benchers to nine minutes, rather than the usual 10, to allow everyone else five minutes to speak. It is a five-minute time limit, including any interventions, because obviously we are restricted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

Thank you very much, Mr Betts, for calling me to speak again and if my wife is listening I am sure that she will hear immediately.

I thank the Minister for his straightforward replies and the work that he is doing. He can judge by the number of Members who are here today and by the number of interventions that were made that there is still much concern about this issue. Naturally, because he is a good Minister, he will put forward a very good line that everything is working well, and we accept that much of it is working well. However, many of us in Westminster Hall today represent areas in which there is much more to do. What pleased me about the Minister’s answers is that they showed he is listening to us and working hard on those areas.

The Minister made the point that there are now competitors to BT out there that can deliver to people in the last 5%, and that BT itself is now rolling out these different technologies that can get us to the last 5%. What has been frustrating for so many of us is that we have felt that BT was just not moving fast enough.

I am reassured by the Minister that he is working to get to the last 5%, that there is greater competition and that broadband will be delivered. However, I also assure him that I and many Members in Westminster Hall today will be back here again regularly, just to make sure that he and the Government are delivering on their target. That is because in the end—we have made this point many times before—our constituents are not worried whether it is BT or another company that delivers their broadband; they do not care who delivers it. But they want broadband and if they are living next door to a house that has it when they do not, that is hugely frustrating.

Of course, the one political point that we all know, whichever party we represent, is that those who have broadband are not necessarily the ones rushing to come in and tell us they have it; it is those who have not got broadband who come to us. We must make sure that we work hard for those people, and I think the Minister has received that message loud and clear.

I look forward to greater competition and to the Minister keeping the pressure on BT. He should look at universal coverage. Much can be done to ensure that BT delivers broadband better than it does at the moment, but I thank the Minister very much for his response.