Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Bill

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 10th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

It may well help, but the universal service obligation is the thing that will really help those people, because it means everybody will have a right to a high-speed broadband connection. Some of those connections will be delivered by the next-generation full fibre connectivity and some of them by the existing technology, but our whole package of measures to deliver better broadband and quicker connectivity will ensure that we reach those people who, frustratingly, can be just a few yards further away from a box—or, indeed, who see the fibre go down in the road in front of their premises—but who do not have a connection.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I welcome the Bill, which is essential for moving the country forward and making our businesses as strong as possible, but even in the centre of Taunton Deane and the county town of Taunton there are areas where people still cannot get fast broadband. Will the Minister tell them how quickly they might be able to take advantage of this new service?

[Matt Hancock]

The universal service obligation is in law to ensure that everybody can access the service by 2020, but that is an end date, a deadline. As I said earlier, we have now reached 93% of premises. Crucially, that is 93% of premises having access to broadband—they still have to take it up. In fact, everybody who takes up the service in a subsidised area puts more money into the pot so that we can give more people access to superfast broadband.

Just 42% of the country had superfast broadband in 2010, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage took up the reins of delivering it, but now 93% have access to it. We are on track to get to 95% at the end of the year, and then 100% of premises will have access to high-speed broadband by 2020. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) can see, we are rolling that out. Crucially, that is delivering today’s technology—it delivers the needs of an average household today—but we also need to make sure we are ahead of the curve on the next generation of technology.

The idea of the digital investment fund is that it supports the commercial finance of alternative developers so we get more players into the market, rather than just having BT and Virgin, the two big players. The Government’s investment will be at least matched on the same terms by private sector investments so we expect it to capitalise more private investment and bring more than £1 billion of investment overall into full-fibre broadband, getting the really high speeds that some people need and want now, but many, many more will need and want in the future as these demands increase.