Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebatePeter Bone
Main Page: Peter Bone (Independent - Wellingborough)Department Debates - View all Peter Bone's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberOnce we have an Administration in Northern Ireland, there are many plans that we want to implement. We have changed the national planning policy framework and, working with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, we have rural development programme funding. There is also the £67 million nationwide gigabit broadband voucher scheme, which is available to small and medium-sized enterprises and local communities.
Unlike the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), Wellingborough is largely urban. There is a modern housing estate in the middle of the town where 75 people do not have broadband, and there is a small part of a big industrial area that also does not have broadband. I am fed up with the Government’s warm words, so when are they going to do something about Openreach and tell it to connect those people?
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.
As the hon. Lady says, the Government have been realistic about the degree to which our courts are likely to look at the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union, at least until the point at which our law starts to diverge from what will then be European Union law. As I understand it, there was a constructive debate yesterday on clause 11 of the withdrawal Bill in the other place. I hope very much that we will make further progress and that the Scottish National party will engage in that with the proper spirit.
Does the Attorney General agree that one of the advantages of coming out of the European Union superstate in just over 365 days’ time is that decisions will be made by not a foreign court, but our Supreme Court?
My hon. Friend is right. One of the things that we rather suspect led a great number of our fellow countrymen and women to vote for European Union exit was exactly that prospect.