Project Gigabit

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Westminster Hall

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

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

I should start by saying that I have some sympathy with the Minister, because this is the second time today that he has had to suffer my representations on this subject. He kindly set aside 10 minutes this morning to hear all about Honiton and Sidmouth, and he will have to hear more about it now.

The village of Gittisham in east Devon illustrates the shortcomings of the rural broadband policy that we saw under the last Conservative Government. After four separate attempts by different commercial providers to lay fibre to some parts of the village, the connection still falls 100 metres short of many of the properties—and that is not an isolated example. Across the part of east Devon that I represent, I hear similar things from people in other villages, too.

Three weeks ago, Connecting Devon and Somerset, the local authority-led body charged with connecting commercial organisations, scaled back its full-fibre broadband roll-out. That provider, which four years ago said it would be able to deliver to Gittisham, is no longer able to do so. It was contracted to deliver broadband to over 55,000 properties across Devon and Somerset, but to date it has delivered to fewer than 19,000.

When I spoke with the Minister and his officials earlier today, it was very helpful to learn that, although national gigabit-capable broadband coverage now reaches 85% of the country, in rural Honiton and Sidmouth—the area I represent—we lag far behind at just 61%.

I will bring my remarks to a close, given that I have already had 10 minutes of the Minister’s and his officials’ time today, but I just want them to take this away: if coal was the fuel that powered the 19th century and oil was the fuel that powered the 20th century, then information—data—is the fuel that powers the 21st century, and in much of east Devon we are not getting it.

Rural Broadband

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms (Chris Bryant)]

It is a delight to be here, Dame Siobhain, and I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) on securing this debate. I am not sure I will be able to answer the questions of all the Members who have come to this debate in my speech.

Some Members have raised concerns at DSIT questions as well, and I note that one Member said that I was prepared to have an audience with people, which makes me sound like the Pope. I am not the pontifex maximus— I am not even the pontifex minimus—but my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley (Callum Anderson), who is my Parliamentary Private Secretary, and I are happy to organise meetings with officials to go through the specific issues in individual constituencies. Some of the statistics that have been thrown out are different from the statistics I have, and it may be that mine are a little more up to date, because we have a whole Department to look up statistics for us. That offer is available to all hon. Members. I want to be as helpful a Minister as possible, because—

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

rose—

[Sir Ashley Fox]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I do not want Opposition Members to think that I have had an audience with a Labour Member and not with others. There is a universal service obligation on the Minister here. For most of the issues that have been raised, I think the most useful thing would be to book in a time for officials from Building Digital UK to go through both the mobile and broadband issues that relate to Members’ specific constituencies. We do have more precise maps, and we are able to talk all those issues through.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) is right. One of the first things I did when I became the Minister with responsibility for telecoms was to write to Ofcom to say, “You have to review the way that you look at these issues of reporting.” I am glad to say that Ofcom replied recently, and I am happy to put a copy of that letter in the Library so that everybody can see the correspondence we have had. But it is a good point; apart from anything else, mobile operators would quite like to know where there is good coverage—and good coverage should mean coverage that is actually any use to anybody, rather than something that theoretically says 4G but does not feel like 4G at all.

[Richard Foord]

The Minister has kindly agreed to meet me and some Somerset colleagues later this month to discuss this issue. One thing I want to put on the agenda for that meeting is Connecting Devon and Somerset, which has cancelled three contracts previously and has just cancelled a fourth. I wonder if we have a special problem in Devon and Somerset.

[Chris Bryant]

That may be the case, and that is one of the specific things we can take up with BDUK.

I should explain the whole process first. Of course the Government do not want to have to pay for the roll-out of broadband across the whole of the UK. That would be an enormous big-ticket item. Nor, for that matter, do we want to pay for the roll-out of 5G. We are therefore trying to ensure that where commercial operators can do that roll-out, they are able to do so as cost-effectively as possible. Where it is not commercially viable, the Government will step in. That is what the whole BDUK programme is, both through Project Gigabit, which relates to broadband, and the shared rural network, which applies to mobile telephony. That is the plan.

The hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton mentioned very hard-to-reach places. The truth is that there will probably be 1% of places where it will be extremely difficult—for either a commercial operation or for the taxpayer—to take a fibre to every single property. That could be so prohibitively expensive for the taxpayer that we will have to look at alternative means. That goes to the point made by the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) that we will have to look at alternatives, and some of those may relate to satellite or wireless delivery of broadband.

Digital Exclusion

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Harris. On the subject of digital exclusion, we should also look at the opposite: digital literacy. When I go home on a Thursday or Friday, I am struck by how very digitally literate the next generation is. My children and their peer group are way in advance of anything that I can do online or with computers. I make that point because we tend to think that it is older people who are digitally excluded. Yes, they are, but lots of other people are also less digitally literate. Recent years have seen a rush, even a stampede, in company boardrooms towards moving services online at the expense of doing things in person. That has been to the detriment of many older people, particularly in rural and coastal communities, such as those I represent.

I want to highlight one specific example and give voice to a constituent. Brian, who lives in Weston, a small coastal hamlet that is tucked away on the beautiful east Devon coastline, wrote to me to explain how he lives somewhere where there is such poor 4G mobile phone signal and internet access that he is completely and utterly dependent on a landline. As has already been said, losing copper will have a profound effect on some people in our rural constituencies.

Finally, another constituent, who lives in the village of Luppitt, has no mobile signal or fibre broadband connection, and is concerned about the landlines being phased out. He writes:

“Think of all those who are unaware, infirm or technically naive. Will we be cast adrift and simply forgotten?”

Science and Technology Framework

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. This highlights how the Department will be working hand in hand with other Departments. On this agenda, we will be working closely with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. It is our Department that will be focusing on innovation and the technologies of tomorrow, but it is incumbent on us to work with the other Departments to deliver them in time to be ready for tomorrow.

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

The issue with Horizon is that UK-based researchers were able to take more from the scheme than the UK Government contributed to it. The Times reports today that the Prime Minister is said to be sceptical about Horizon:

“He thinks it’s a very expensive way to fund a lot of small academic collaborations which don’t really change the world.”

Does the Secretary of State recognise that science is an international endeavour, that incremental developments in science do change the world and that the UK would be a net beneficiary of Horizon if only we could associate?

[Michelle Donelan]

The entire point of our announcement yesterday was that we believe that science and technology can change the world. We also believe that they can change people’s lives here in the UK, and that is why we made our announcement on the actions we are taking now and on the long-term framework, so that we can be proactive as well as reactive. As I have said on Horizon, our position has not changed.