Three and Vodafone: Potential Merger

Debate between Richard Foord and Chris Loder

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

Debate between Richard Foord and Chris Loder

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[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.

Railway Ticket Offices

Debate between Richard Foord and Chris Loder

Wednesday 13th September 2023 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Davies. In rural communities like the one where I live in Devon, ticket offices play a role that extends way beyond selling tickets. By being able to speak to a real person and talk through journey options, it means that people can avoid online vendors ripping them off. I would like to hand my platform over to a couple of constituents who have written to me about how the changes will affect the four stations in my constituency: Axminster, Honiton, Feniton and Tiverton Parkway.

I received an email from Marian. She lives with a visual impairment and is deeply concerned about how these changes will impact her and other people who are blind or partially sighted. She wrote to me:

“Without ticket offices, we will have to purchase tickets online or through vending machines at stations. These are often inaccessible, so improving this basic accessibility should be the first priority, not ticket office closures.

Ticket Office staff are usually my first point of contact at my local…station where staff are exceptionally knowledgeable and helpful, taking time and trouble to be as informative as possible.”

[Chris Loder]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the bizarre things about the proposal affecting Axminster is that its station will actually get more staffing hours rather than a reduction?

[Richard Foord]

People who live in Axminster recognise that the station will be poorly served, and they as constituents will be poorly served by the changes. They will mean that blind and visually impaired people such as Marian will not know where to go in the station concourse.

Another constituent, Josie, describes herself as an “active pensioner”. She wrote:

“The staff provide an invaluable service, giving accurate up-to-the-minute information especially during disruption of trains due to adverse weather, cows on the line, bridge damage, engineering work and strikes. They provide reliable advice in advance for other services and for fares. They print out timetables and have at hand leaflets for obtaining railcards.”

Those are just two testimonies, but they show the real, human impact of this appalling proposal to close ticket offices in rural places such as my corner of Devon.