Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend is a keen advocate and supporter of the businesses of Solihull. My understanding is that, by the end of the current roll-out period, 91% of properties will have been reached by superfast broadband. However, the Bill will incentivise providers to roll out more direct fibre services to all parts of the country. Hopefully, businesses and individuals in Solihull will also benefit from the provisions in the Bill.

Through these powers, we will target the relief on operators of telecoms networks who deploy—I have reiterated this point a number of times for the sake of clarity—new fibre on their networks. The proposals will incentivise and reward operators who invest in the fibre network.

These concepts have not been defined before for business rates. The powers in the clauses will therefore allow us to develop definitions with experts in the telecoms and business rates sectors. By taking this approach, we can ensure that we accurately capture in the relief only those parts of the telecoms network that comprise new fibre, which has been a significant concern of right hon. and hon. Members.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The Minister knows that I am as keen as he is to make sure that all the blackspots in our urban constituencies are broadband-enabled as soon as possible. For some time, my concern has been that if new developments do not get fibre connections, there will be a continuing gap, and that every time Ministers stand up and say they will get 95% or 100% coverage, there will be new places without coverage. I am pleased that the Minister’s colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), wrote to me saying that Openreach will “provide FTTP”—fibre to the premises—

“to all new developments with more than 30 plots for free.”

That is great news, and it means that Ministers do not have to consider the option I was recommending of enabling local councils to make it mandatory for new developments to have fibre connections. However, will the Minister say something about developments with under 30 houses, because part of the regeneration of all cities is getting small plots redeveloped with housing, and that may involve developments of fewer than 30 homes?

[Mr Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. He is absolutely right that it is extremely important that new housing developments serve well the people who purchase the properties in relation to superfast broadband. He is right that it is a requirement for developments of under 30 dwellings to have a broadband connection and for developments of over 30 properties to have a superfast broadband connection. In bringing forward those requirements, which started this January, the Government had to make a very challenging decision in getting the balance right between making sure that people are properly served with the latest technology and that we build the homes required to deal with the housing shortage in our country.