Rural Broadband: Installation

Debate between Richard Foord and Ashley Fox

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point. I agree with her and hope the Minister will respond.

We cannot expect businesses to survive, let alone grow, if they are cut off from the digital world that the rest of the country takes for granted. For farmers and small business owners, the issue is especially unfair. They are required to interact with Government agencies, with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and with banks almost entirely online, yet many are forced to do so with unreliable connections, painfully slow upload and download speeds, and constant disruptions.

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

On that point, farmers have been encouraged to diversify their businesses, and Stubbhayne farm in Southleigh has lost countless bookings because people who wanted to stay there found they could not use the internet in the farm’s bed-and-breakfast accommodation. That problem has now been resolved, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that such issues really affect businesses in rural areas?

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that point. He is right that time that should be spent running a business is often wasted waiting for files to load, forms to submit or video calls to reconnect.

My constituent Sue Felstead runs a restaurant at Greenway farm in Wembdon. She had ongoing problems with the farm’s internet service, which had a hugely negative impact on her business. She relied on broadband for the card machine, the music system and other devices, but had a download speed of only 2 megabits per second. That meant that customers who were waiting to pay by card could not pay their bill because the internet would crash, and that music would be cut off midway through a song. The issue got so bad that BT told Sue she would be better off using Starlink. That is an extraordinary thing for BT to tell her, and I hope the Minister will comment on that. In the end, it cost her £1,500 to have Starlink installed.

Asylum Seekers: Support and Accommodation

Debate between Richard Foord and Ashley Fox

Monday 20th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for talking about Europe, because our European neighbours are contending with exactly the same problems as us in this respect. The longer asylum seekers are drawn to the UK, the longer they are drawn into the European Union, so it is in our common interest to address this issue. I will talk a bit more about the EU and its member states later in my speech.

Pundits are blurring the two issues, and while people say that immigration is wrecking the economy, the truth is quite the reverse. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, higher legal net migration is expected to raise our total GDP by around 1.5% by 2028-29, while GDP per capita is likely to be raised by 0.8%.

Migrants arriving with visas tend to arrive in their prime working years, paying more in taxes than they take out in services. According to the Migration Advisory Committee, in 2022-23, the average skilled migrant made a net contribution of around £16,300 to the UK public finances in their first year in the UK. Legal migration is a cornerstone of our economy, and because of our ageing population, it will continue to be so for years to come.

I will now address migration through irregular routes, which is the focus of this debate, and in particular the use of immigration hotels. In May 2025, the Government noted that they would spend £2.2 billion this financial year on migrant hotels. That is an eye-watering sum, but it is part of the £1.28 trillion—or more than £1,200 billion—that the Government spend each year, so we are talking about less than 0.2% of public spending. None the less, £2.2 billion is an enormous sum of money.

The UK counts these domestic refugee costs as official development assistance, and the House of Commons Library reported that in 2024, one fifth of all foreign aid was spent domestically on hotels. That makes me really angry. I am angrier, perhaps, than any of the petitioners on this point, because when we spend that money here in the UK, we do not use it to its full effect or achieve its full purchasing power.

Let us think about what official development assistance has achieved for us in recent years. Between 2013 and 2019, the UK committed £400 million to the eradication of polio and helped to vaccinate millions of children, leading to Africa being declared polio-free in 2020. These sorts of things are partly benevolent, but they are also in Britain’s interests. During the 2014 to 2016 Ebola outbreak, the UK provided £427 million in aid to Sierra Leone to address it. Had it arrived on these shores, we would certainly have had to spend so much more on addressing this absolutely appalling disease.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that it is Liberal Democrat policy that asylum costs should not come out of the foreign aid budget?

Rural Broadband

Debate between Richard Foord and Ashley Fox

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Westminster Hall

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

rose—

[Sir Ashley Fox]

rose—