Broadband (East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire)

Nic Dakin Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

There will be no mention of Lancashire, Mr Deputy Speaker, which I know will disappoint you.

My hon. Friend’s point was a general one about the whole country. Many of our schools cannot access the educational tools they wish to access because of poor broadband speeds. Access to those speeds makes such a difference. The double whammy in my area is that schools have lower funding compared with schools in other parts of the country. Investing in more impressive kit therefore becomes more challenging for them.

It is estimated that small and medium-sized enterprises with superfast broadband continue to grow by 4.7%, compared with 0.6% for those without. My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe recently collected an award on behalf of Scunthorpe because it has the fastest-growing online retail business.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour on securing the debate. He is quite right that the Google award for retail, of which people locally are very proud, went to Scunthorpe last year. He importantly underlines the value of broadband in not only retail, but business generally, health, education and other services. I was pleased when he said that he will urge the Government to bring forward the 2015 date for rolling out broadband in north Lincolnshire and look forward to him getting to that section of his speech.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for his intervention. He is right. I visited a business in West Cowick on Saturday that wants to grow but that is currently restricted by its broadband connectivity. It attracts many corporate clients—we need that kind of cash in our part of the world—but it will struggle as it tries to expand because of its poor broadband connectivity.

That brings me to one solution and my first main point: the potential for wireless broadband to help with the roll-out. I was unaware of the amount of wireless availability in the area. Jibba Jabba, whose catchy name will resonate with anybody who used to watch “The A-Team”, is part of Lakeside IT and based in Doncaster—we will forgive it for being just over the border in south Yorkshire—and Quickline, which is based in Hessle, are two locally based companies that currently offer between 10 megabits and 40 megabits, which is roughly equivalent to the speeds experienced by urban residents with carbon fibre connections. Their services are available across the whole of east Yorkshire and north Yorkshire and are expanding to cover north-east Lincolnshire.

I met the companies a few weeks ago and told them I would be interested in trialling wireless broadband alongside my fixed-line broadband to see how it works and have been staggered by what happened. I have done a number of speed tests in the past couple of weeks. In the small village of Airmyn, just outside Goole, where I live, I record speeds of about 2.5 megabits for downloads and 0.5 megabits for uploads on my fixed-line broadband. I cannot do a great deal with that—it is just enough to stream iPlayer and such, and sending files is incredibly time consuming. Speeds on my wireless broadband, which is simply a small box on the side of the house, have gone upwards of 28 megabits for downloads and about 18 megabits for uploads. Those numbers are currently reduced because something is being done to the mast, but they will increase.

In many other parts of the world, wireless broadband is being used as part of the roll-out, but it is not part of the delivery plans here. My argument to the Minister is that we need more of a push on wireless broadband. People in the whole of my constituency can achieve significant speeds through wireless broadband, so we need to give it more importance, because we will struggle in parts of the country to roll out fixed-line broadband by 2015.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers]

I certainly do not wish to test your patience, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I welcomed the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), who, as always, spoke words of wisdom.

[Nic Dakin]

rose—

[Martin Vickers]

I will gladly give way.

[Nic Dakin]

All infrastructure is crucial. As the hon. Gentleman says, the specific infrastructure that is being argued for so urgently this evening is crucial for the development of business, and broadband is an important part of that. I welcome his comments.

[Martin Vickers]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. One of the important consequences of the campaign for broadband in northern Lincolnshire is the teamwork that has developed between my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, the hon. Members for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), and for Scunthorpe, and me. I believe that we are known locally as the A team.

The importance of broadband to small businesses in my constituency cannot be overestimated. We have developed considerably since the dark days of 20 years ago and the decline of the fishing industry in the neighbouring constituency of Great Grimsby. The development of that industry has actually been encouraged by broadband, and by sales throughout the UK and abroad.

I shall now conclude my remarks and await the comments of the Minister, who I know will have positive news for the people of northern Lincolnshire.