Telegraph Media Group Ltd: Acquisition

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 30th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

Of course, the Government always keep matters under review. I can reassure the hon. Member that we have a robust system to deal with interference with press freedom. We had that in the Enterprise Act; my powers as Secretary of State under that Act in relation to interference with the accurate presentation of news and the freedom of the press were clear and robust. I took various decisions at each stage to ensure those matters were fully investigated. The hon. Member can also take reassurance from the fact that the legislation that will be coming back to the House this afternoon will put beyond that doubt, and set out that a foreign state cannot interfere with our newspapers. Every hon. Member who has expressed a view across the Chamber is of the view, which I share, that a foreign state should not be able to control, influence or own a British newspaper.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I welcome this intervention that means that the UAE cannot own Telegraph Media Group through RedBird IMI, but there is a suggestion that foreign Governments could potentially interfere with free speech at universities that host institutes partly funded by them. The Government-appointed director for freedom of speech and academic freedom has warned that foreign interference at universities is going on in the UK. What lessons, if any, will be instructive for the Government’s so-called university free speech tsar?

[Lucy Frazer]

I am wholly in favour of free speech and ensuring that people are not shut down for their views. The hon. Member needs to take up his points with those responsible for universities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

My right hon. Friend is a huge champion for his area and for the north in general. He is absolutely right that sport, drama, creativity—all those things—level up an area. I am very happy to talk to my right hon. Friend in the Levelling Up Department to consider how we can continue, across Government, to support the north.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I have recently visited sports clubs in Honiton, including youth rugby, gymnastics and football. They are all seeking support from the local authority, East Devon District Council, on the basis of its 2017 sports pitch strategy. The Government’s multi-sport grassroots facilities programme is very welcome, but does the Secretary of State consider it generous enough for youth sport, given that the co-benefits of sport for young people include a sense of camaraderie, good health and civic pride?

[Lucy Frazer]

Our strategy is helping sport across the board, but I recognise in particular the importance of getting young people involved in sport. We have invested around £1 billion in sport for young people, including £300 million for multi-sport pitches and £600 million in schools so that more children get the required two hours of physical education. We are also investing across the board in youth services to get more young children active in constructive activities rather than in less appropriate ones.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous]

I am sorry to learn of my hon. Friend’s concerns. I will certainly feed that straight back to the hierarchy of the Church and ensure that those meetings happen. However, I am pleased to tell him that following his question to me on this issue last month, the police have arrested a suspect for a series of church burglaries in Barnet, Brent and Harrow, and he is remanded in custody. I have been told that the Metropolitan police is in close contact with the diocese of London and local churches, but there clearly needs to be more dialogue. I will ensure that that happens.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I recently had the pleasure of visiting the Holy Trinity church at Dunkeswell, which sits on the site of the Cistercian Dunkeswell abbey in my constituency. Visiting it is a moving, spiritual experience. Given that some sites such as that are in rural, remote areas where there will simply never be the footfall that the hon. Member describes, can he assure us that we can continue to keep them open in spite of any threat of theft?

[Andrew Selous]

I completely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. Like him, I am a lover of our rural churches. I suggest that he points the churchwardens and the priest to the comprehensive advice on the Church of England website and perhaps has further conversations with the diocese and local police. If there are still issues, I ask him to come back to me about that.

Telegraph Media Group: Proposed Sale to RedBird IMI

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his expert cover for me. We discussed that subject in our handover, when he told me that there was no information that he could share because he was assiduous in his role and made sure that he was not involved in areas that he should not be. He asked about future ownership questions. He will be aware that we are debating the Media Bill after this urgent question. We have looked at some issues in relation to media, in particular the changing media landscape and how the internet has changed it. That has not covered all the issues that will be raised by this acquisition, but I am sure that once that the Media Bill has completed all its stages, we will be able to look afresh at the other holes in the landscape.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

I appreciate that there is a limit to what the Minister can say about the potential sale of The Daily Telegraph to owners backed by the UAE, but are there any lessons for media freedom that the Government might learn from the creation of university branch campuses in the UAE, and what that has meant for freedom of speech?

[Julia Lopez]

I am afraid that is not a subject about which I know a great deal. I shall happily look into it and see whether there are any implications for our media landscape, but I cannot comment in relation to this specific acquisition.

Three and Vodafone: Potential Merger

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Loder]

I thank the hon. Member for his kind intervention. He almost takes the words out of my mouth, as I go on to the next part of my speech.

The case that is being put, as I understand it from the brief received from both Vodafone and Three, is that the merger will support increasing amounts of investment. They go on to say further that the merger will generate £700 million of savings. When we start to unpack it, what we are actually dealing with here is massive job cuts. We expect to see up to 1,600 people lose their jobs in the United Kingdom alone. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill mentioned that, but what he failed to include in his remarks is that a programme of 11,000 job cuts is already going on globally within Vodafone. While I am not the biggest advocate or supporter of Unite the union, I can well understand and agree with the point that the hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) makes.

I will progress my remarks to talk about the effect on the consumer in respect of prices and mobile phone bills. It is right that we consider what has happened in the past few years in Australia, where Vodafone has undertaken a merger with TPG. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report showed that Australian prices all rose and that investment fell. I understand that the rise in prices is contested by some operators, but I could not find it contested that investment fell—and not just by a little bit, but by 45%. That is a considerable amount, and it gives me cause for concern when looking at this situation. We have to ask ourselves: to what extent do we believe what we are being presented with? That gives me even greater concern when I consider the national security matters that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill raised.

My constituency of West Dorset has 400 square miles and 132 parishes, and we have ropey coverage, to say the least. I have had to look in the mirror and ask myself, “Will this merger help the 82,000 constituents who depend on mobile connectivity increasingly every day?” Some 97% of the businesses in West Dorset are small or micro-sized. They do not have enormous amounts of cash to put in substantial investment, so that question is important.

For me, given what I have seen so far, it comes down to a question of trust. That is why I have a slight problem with what is being presented to us. Vodafone’s coverage map for my constituency is wrong. I have contested it, and I have gone to the regulator about it. Vodafone says that most parts of rural West Dorset have a signal. I am sorry, but the places that it indicates do have signal do not. That shows how weak the regulator Ofcom is in dealing with this issue. It is allowing operators to get away scot-free under the guise of a universal service obligation that is not delivering what is necessary for those people. We find it not just once or twice, but time and time again.

I went to visit the small village of Stoke Abbott, which is on the outskirts of the beautiful town of Beaminster, earlier in the year. I was pleased—it was somewhat surprising, I thought—to have secured a number of commitments to improve that village’s appalling level of connectivity. Regrettably, Vodafone had to correct itself, because it had misled me. It would no longer continue those improvements, and it went on to say that it believed that the problems would be solved by improved 4G coverage. Well, I am afraid that those improvements have not happened to date. As I said, this comes down to trust. Vodafone did apologise for its somewhat disingenuous statements, but that shows what we are dealing with here, and it also exposes the weakness of the regulator in addressing these issues in a meaningful way.

Given my personal experience of the organisation and how it treats my constituents, why would we want to afford it the ability to become larger and more dominant in the market? In my opinion, it has such a bad record of customer service to local people. I do not know if anyone else here has the joy of being a Vodafone customer, as I do. Its customer service hotline is known as 191. If I ring that number, it is virtually impossible to speak to someone to get help. Many of my constituents have had the same experience. It is just incredible that, if they are fortunate enough to get through to someone who can help them, they are directed to what they call the director’s office, which is just a shambles. It takes months to resolve the slightest difficulty. The situation that I outlined earlier, whereby coverage is not as some say it is, is appalling.

One of my fine constituents from Maiden Newton got in touch with me only a few days ago to share her experience. In fairness to Vodafone, she is a customer of Three, which, by and large, provides its customers with a reasonable service. My constituent put it well in her email:

“How can we level up as a rural community when it’s hard to tune in to digital radio or make a phone call? As a small business owner I often have to do business on the move, but find I can’t access anything as the signal is too poor.”

She goes on to say that, clearly, something has happened in the last six months. The network provider had told her that work needed to be done on a mast in the area, but that still has not been sorted. These issues just go on and on.

I was grateful to Three and Vodafone for providing me with the briefing. I thought it was reasonably interesting, but I was looking for the word “customer” in there, and I could not see it once. If anybody else was able to find it, I will stand corrected, and I may need to get my eyes tested again. That indicates to me the real drive behind the merger. The briefing that we have been provided with, for which I am grateful, shows what this is about.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

The hon. Member and I are neighbours, and I congratulate him on talking about the rural character of his constituency and how the merger might affect his constituents as customers. I also suggest that it would affect his and all our constituents as citizens because, should the merger take place, it would make users of this phone service subject to China’s national intelligence law, article 7 of which states:

“Any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work”.

That will be the obligation on CK Hutchison and its employees. Does he agree?

[Chris Loder]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind intervention. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill made a lot of those points, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), and I agreed with them earlier in my speech. This area needs much greater scrutiny. I remember not long after first coming to this House a few years ago, we had considerable concern about the behaviour of companies that was taking place, or could take place, that would put our national security at risk. That is why I support the comments made earlier by both right hon. Gentlemen.

Broadband: Rural Communities

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd.

The internet has plainly revolutionised the way we live our lives and the world we inhabit, but the trouble is that it is increasingly a tale of two halves: those people who have fast, superfast or ultrafast broadband in urban areas, and those of us who live in rural areas, who go without. In huge swathes of the countryside, people find it hard even to get a mobile phone signal, so this is exacerbating a problem that we have already.

I would like to give the House some examples of situations that I have encountered in Devon. In Northleigh, a small village outside Honiton, fewer than half the residents can access full-fibre broadband. One constituent, a surgeon, has written to tell me that because of the stuttering delivery of the Project Gigabit vouchers, he has wi-fi so bad that he is unable to download crucial scans the day before an appointment. The Government say that they are trying to wrestle with the waiting list of 7.7 million operations that is bringing this country’s economy almost to a standstill. If that is the case, addressing wi-fi has to be one of the places where we start.

The 900 residents of Kilmington have had a dreadful experience. They often use the village hall, so they tried to get a business broadband service for it. When they got in touch with various internet service providers—I have all the correspondence here—they were not informed about the universal service obligation and the funding to which it entitled them.

Meanwhile, the parishioners of All Saints, near Axminster, have taken it upon themselves to appoint a broadband champion. So great is the issue for people in the village that they feel that that is necessary to give the matter some status and authority.

Those are just three examples, but I could give many more from my part of Devon. The south-west in general has dreadful download speeds. The UK average is 111 megabits per second. In the south-west, we have an average speed of about 99 megabits per second, but in my corner of Devon it is more like 57 megabits per second, which is half the national average. Even some of the towns in and around my patch, including Axminster, Seaton and Sidmouth, have some of the worst speeds in the country and are in the bottom 10% for download speeds. The contrast with the urban areas is stark.

Openreach has written excitedly to constituents in Tiverton extolling the virtue of ultrafast fibre to the premises, which it claims will have download speeds of more than 1,000 megabits per second. Yet Devon homes and businesses should not hold their breath, as there is a target of 25 million by 2027. We heard from the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) that it will be difficult to reach that extra 5% and that perhaps those people living in rural properties in those places should simply wait for 5G. I am sorry, but I do not feel that we should accept that. If there is a universal service obligation, we should, as a country, make sure that that is rolled out everywhere. It is not just affecting people’s social cohesion or their feeling of connection to others—

[Selaine Saxby]

Could I correct that statement? I did not say that people should just wait; I said that we should be looking at how we can connect them. Like the hon. Gentleman, my Devon neighbour, I agree that there is a need to speed up, but I encourage him to speak to Connecting Devon and Somerset to better understand the work that has already gone on and which premises are affected. It has detailed stats available and will be able to update him.

[Richard Foord]

I am grateful for that clarification. The hon. Member mentions Connecting Devon and Somerset; I have heard from constituents about how CDS did not draw down funding from Project Gigabit and has missed out on substantial sums of money that it could otherwise have garnered.

[Chris Loder]

Will the hon. Gentleman, my neighbour, join me in welcoming the Government policy to set aside £8 million to help those who are in the most difficult positions—down country lanes and so on—with the satellite options? Does he think that that is a good move that will help his constituents, as it will help mine?

[Richard Foord]

The simple answer is yes—I welcome any and all interventions that support our rural constituents to get them broadband—but the reality of what our constituents are feeling and finding on the ground is very different. We can talk about any sum of money we like, but the reality is that the pledges that have been made, including in the 2019 Conservative manifesto, are not living up to the reality for our constituents. The Conservative Government have been promising for years that we will see a mass roll-out of gigabit broadband of at least 85% by 2025, yet rural areas are once again left lagging. It is very much true for Devon, and it is very much true for the west country: we are being taken for granted.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Foord Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

5. What discussions she has had with the BBC on the proposed changes to local radio services.

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

17. What discussions she has had with the BBC director general on planned changes to local radio services.

[The Minister for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries (Sir John Whittingdale)]

I remain disappointed that the BBC is planning to reduce part of its local radio output. This is a matter for the BBC. Ministers met the BBC chair and director general towards the end of last year to express our concerns about their plans, as did I in a previous capacity in this House. I will raise the issue again when I meet the BBC director general soon.

[Sir John Whittingdale]

The BBC is under a duty under the charter to serve local communities. Obviously, how it delivers that is a matter for the BBC, but it is also subject to the oversight of Ofcom. I understand exactly the point that the hon. Lady makes, and I encourage her to continue to put it to the BBC.

[Richard Foord]

The former Culture Secretary, the right hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), froze the licence fee until 2024. A constituent from Tiverton wrote to me recently about a blind friend who is likely to be left isolated and depressed by changes to local radio, where we are seeing the merger of some programming. The constituent wrote,

“Devon and Cornwall are not the same.”

Could the Minister explain to his right hon. Friend what effect the BBC income freeze is likely to have on her afternoon appearances on Three Counties Radio?

[Sir John Whittingdale]

Again, that is a matter for the BBC. I would say that the decision to freeze the licence fee was to reflect the significant pressures on the cost of living for many people—it would have been wrong to expect them to pay a significant increase at that time. That period is, of course, coming to an end shortly, but nevertheless the licence fee delivers a very large amount of money to the BBC. How it spends it is a matter for the BBC, but in my view, local radio remains an important part of the BBC’s output.