Richard Drax
Main Page: Richard Drax (Conservative - South Dorset)
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I, too, would like to congratulate the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) on securing and opening the debate. The question I want to address is why, as we are hearing from the debate across the Chamber, this roll-out is proving so disappointing. [Interruption.] The Minister says it is not, but one simply has to listen to the contributions made from Members from rural and urban areas to realise that there is deep disappointment about what is happening.
I think that the essential problem—the Minister knows my view—is that Ministers have lost sight of the lesson that competition needs to be at the heart of telecommunications policy. We have heard lip service paid to competition since 2010, but have seen no serious attempt to drive forward competition in telecommunications —and now we are paying the price, as seen in the complaints aired in this debate.
Earlier this month, there was a very interesting leading article in The Financial Times, pointing to the willingness of the Conservative party
“to cosy up to corporate champions and established business interests.”
It continued by saying—Conservative Members should listen—that the Conservatives’
“penchant for protecting corporate interests is not healthy. With productivity still the UK’s biggest economic challenge, their instinct should be to promote competition. Politicians of the Thatcher generation must be astonished that the lesson still needs to be learnt.”
I think The Financial Times is absolutely right.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I am delighted to hear an Opposition Member talking about competition. If the right hon. Gentleman’s new leader has anything to do with it, there will be no competition—there will just be the state.
Stephen Timms
I simply refer the hon. Gentleman to the many examples of the effectiveness of competition in telecommunications policy—perhaps most strikingly in the design of the 3G spectrum auction in 2000. That auction was structured to make absolutely sure that there was a new entrant, and one of the licences was taken up by a company that had not previously been in the market. I think we would all agree that over the last 12 years that new entrant has had a dramatic impact on reducing prices, improving quality, extending coverage and promoting innovation. There is no shortage of examples of the beneficial impacts of competition.
As I said in my intervention, it remains astonishing to me—I raised the issue with Ministers at the time—that no effort was made to ensure that there was at least some diversity of provision in the publicly funded roll-out of superfast broadband. Instead, all the money has gone to BT. The consequence today is that BT has Ministers over a barrel. Ministers have no levers whatever to address the problems we are hearing about from Members of all parties—and they are getting progressively worse—relating to our disappointing position on superfast broadband roll-out.
I make no criticism of BT, which has simply done what any effective company would do when presented with a gift horse—it has accepted it. It is now recognised that BT was overpaid for the infrastructure it provided, so it has to start paying back some of the handout it received. Usage of the infrastructure has been a good deal higher than predicted, so BT is paying back some of the windfall it has enjoyed, but I believe only half of it. As with the 3G spectrum auction, this exercise should have been structured to make sure that there was at least some diversity of provision. Other companies bid; BT beats all of them every time. We therefore have nobody else with which to compare BT’s performance, no alternative approaches to consider and no levers at all through which the Minister could try to promote better services in the future.
In a few minutes, the Minister will do his duty and assure us that everything is fine with the roll-out of superfast broadband, but the reality, as this debate is making clear, is otherwise. What Ministers need to do even at this very late stage is to relearn the lessons embraced by their Conservative predecessors and to find ways to inject some competition into this market—a market that, as we are rightly being reminded, is very important for the productivity and prosperity of Britain.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I am most grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to slip in here so that I get the extra minute. May I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) for securing this timely debate? I pay tribute to the Minister, who has listened to me and to colleagues from all parts of the House for many months. I am afraid that my message now is that he will have to go on listening for many months more until we all get the broadband that we so desperately need. In general, I agree with nearly everything that has been said and the concerns that have been expressed.
I wish to focus briefly on a tiny museum in a very beautiful part of my constituency called Kimmeridge—I am sure that some Members have been there. At the moment, the staff communicate by using smoke signals, a Coca-Cola can and some string or flags. In fact, they have to use anything they have to hand, as the lack of communication is so serious. Steven Etches, who has been a plumber all his life and who is now in his mid-50s, is one of the world’s most renowned collectors of fossils. He has dedicated those fossils to a special museum, which won lottery funding of some £2.5 million. In addition to that remarkable achievement, he has also won an MBE—and rightly so. He was promised that, in 2017, a wonderful state-of-the-art museum would be built. It would attract people into South Dorset, educate both grown-ups and children about what used to stomp across our cliffs—no, not the Liberal Democrats—millions of years ago and help us learn all about our history. It was to be properly provided with internet broadband. Unfortunately, he has now learned that that is not the case, and the building work currently under way has been plagued with problems. John Woodward is the project director. He says the project has no broadband and virtually no mobile signal. The contractors who are used to dealing with suppliers and architects by telephone and email have been cut off. Consequently, the entire design team has been forced, at extreme expense and time, to come down to Kimmeridge to ensure that things are going to plan. This is what is happening in 21st-century Kimmeridge in South Dorset.
Mr Woodward tells me that BT appears to be totally unable to upgrade the village landlines, and indeed, recently, the entire village was cut off. The museum has asked BT for nine telephone lines, but Mr Woodward is not hopeful. He says that BT can provide temporary lines by pairing with existing ones, but for permanent lines it would have “to do something”. In the end, the fossil museum, local farmers, businesses and private individuals will be piggybacking on the new VoIP—voice-over internet protocol technology—to be installed by French oil firm, Perenco. That will give a signal of 30 megabits and will cost £99 a month. BT was quoting somewhere around £100,000. Without private enterprise, this particular scheme would not have met its deadline. Something has to happen. Something can happen with a little imagination, competition and flair. Let us get off our backsides and jolly well connect up the country.