Rural Broadband

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Wednesday 13th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that they can make speeches in this debate only with the agreement of the debate holder. Sarah Dyke will move the motion and then the Minister will respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered broadband in rural areas.

It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. Broadband and internet connectivity are integral to modern life, whether that be in education, employment, leisure, healthcare or almost anything else. We rely on broadband more than ever before, and the tasks that we carry out require higher speeds than ever before. Digital connectivity provides us with great opportunities. Small businesses can widen their reach. Health consultations can be carried out online. However, many rural areas are still struggling to realise the opportunities available, because of poor broadband coverage: 17% of rural domestic premises and 30% of rural commercial premises do not have access to superfast broadband.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for bringing forward this debate. She brings really important debates to Westminster Hall, and her contributions on the Floor of the House are much appreciated as well. On the subject of rural broadband, especially for businesses, I, like the hon. Lady, make a plea. Broadband must be dependable as well as fast, and the Government need to ensure that connections are up to date, fit for purpose and able to cope with the intensification that working from home has brought to the need for reliable connection. Does she agree that the Government really need to move on this one?

[Sarah Dyke]

Yes, I agree, and I will come on to that as I move through my speech.

County Councils Network analysis shows that only 21% of county areas have gigabit broadband, compared with 70% of London. Those statistics will not come as a surprise to my constituents in Butleigh, where more than 15% of premises receive lines getting 10 megabits per second or less, putting the area in the worst 10% in the UK. Other areas of my constituency mirror that: 10% of premises in Bruton, Brewham and Cucklington receive less than 10 megabits per second, while about 7% of premises in Curry Rivel, Fivehead, Ilchester, Mudford, Langport, Long Sutton and Martock also receive less than 10 megabits per second. Only yesterday my constituency office in Sparkford lost internet connection during the working day, leaving my team frustrated and annoyed. The same feelings are regularly felt by many people reliant on good broadband to carry out their work in rural areas. The broadband speeds that these premises receive are under the universal service obligation, which Ofcom calculated at 10 megabits per second in 2018. However, it is important to note that as the need increases, broadband speeds must reflect that.

In a survey by the Countryside Alliance, 70% of respondents felt that digital infrastructure was the most important issue to the rural economy. Given that only 58% of premises in Glastonbury and Somerton currently have gigabit broadband compared with the national average of 78%, it is clear that people in rural areas are being held back by poor broadband access.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

The Minister has very kindly agreed to meet me and my Somerset colleagues, including the instigator of this debate. The reducing rate of network expansion across Somerset is absolutely shocking. Connecting Devon and Somerset has been a monumental failure. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to make certain that the exceedingly disappointing performance in getting rural broadband into Somerset has to stop, and things need to accelerate, not decelerate?

[Sarah Dyke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing an audience with the Minister. I hope we can ensure that we get the coverage we need in Somerset, which is largely a rural county.

[John Whitby (Derbyshire Dales) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate. Connectivity is a significant problem for my constituents. My constituency of Derbyshire Dales has the 26th lowest rate of gigabit broadband coverage in the country, and currently only 40% of residents have access to gigabit broadband. Does the hon. Member therefore welcome the fact that the recent Budget allocated £500 million to support the roll-out of gigabit broadband to ensure that we can reach full national coverage by 2030?

[Sarah Dyke]

The funding is very welcome, but we need to make sure that it is fit for purpose and reaches our customers. That is the most important thing. Far too many rural areas are in very hard-to-reach areas, so the money should be fit for purpose.

Openreach’s gigabit economy report estimates that full-fibre coverage could boost UK productivity by £72 billion by 2030 and bring over half a million people back into the workforce. If the Government want to achieve the growth that they have spoken about, they must recognise that there are huge opportunities in rural areas, and adequate broadband coverage is crucial to achieving that.

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

I also represent a very rural area. Despite the fact that it is a stone’s throw away from Bristol, there are people who do not have adequate services. Does my hon. Friend agree that the timeliness of getting the service is also important? If professionals such as doctors wait a long time for the installation, that is as much of an issue as the speeds once the service is installed.

[Sarah Dyke]

I could not agree more. The ongoing spending review must take that into account and must ensure that the remaining unspent funds for Project Gigabit are spent on ensuring that hard-to-reach areas are indeed covered.

I thank the Chamber Engagement Team who provided me with quotes from members of the public in preparation for this debate. The following demonstrates just how damaging poor broadband is to productivity in people’s lives. Alison, a small business owner, said that slow broadband impacts the entire productivity of the business, from accessing emails to downloading and uploading files to suppliers. With more and more people working from home, poor broadband puts rural people at a massive disadvantage.

My constituents in Charlton Adam work in technology and video editing, often from home; but due to poor broadband speeds, they are continually hampered by poor download and transfer speeds. When inquiring about the cost of connecting fibre to their premises for on-demand services, they were quoted an astonishing price of £270,000.

Poor broadband also impacts farming and agricultural businesses.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

This issue has a real impact on rural farming businesses. As a vet I spend a lot of time driving around the Meon valley and places such as Chilcomb, where not only is the broadband terrible, but a mobile signal and 3G, 4G and 5G barely exist. It is not unusual for me to be trying to find a property at midnight to attend an emergency—which can affect someone’s business if it results in the death of a cow or horse—and be unable even to make a phone call or look on Google Maps to find my location. We lack not just broadband, but connectivity on every level. If we can get a landline to every single property in the UK, we should be able to do the same for fibre.

[Sarah Dyke]

I wholeheartedly agree, and will say more about the implications for rural businesses, farmers and vets.

Farmers rely on the internet for multiple purposes, such as sustainable farming incentive and other grant applications, animal monitoring and the security of their property. Vanessa, a farmer, told the engagement team that she could not connect her burglar alarm to her mobile as her broadband was too weak. That is very concerning for farms, especially in the south-west, where the cost of rural crime rose 41% last year, costing farmers £7 million, according to the National Farmers Union’s “Rural Crime Report”. Even if equipment is fitted with alarms, it takes the police time to respond due to the remote locations of farms and rural businesses, but reliable broadband and smart wi-fi products give farms proactive and reactive security.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister needs to find a suitable alternative for our constituents in Somerset, after the failure of Connecting Devon and Somerset and Airband?

[Sarah Dyke]

As I said, we must work harder to resolve some of the problems that CDS has left us in Devon and Somerset.

Farms are also hindered by poor mobile connectivity. An NFU survey revealed that only 21% of farmers had reliable mobile signal across their whole farm. That is especially important in farming, as it is Britain’s most dangerous industry and accounts for 20% of all deaths in the workplace. Farmers often work alone, so it is vital that they can contact help if there is an incident.

We must make progress on the shared rural network. Although the recent funding announcements are welcome there is still more progress to be made, especially in the very hard-to-connect areas that make up about 4% of Glastonbury and Somerton. I have spoken to Connecting Devon and Somerset, and the challenges to connecting those premises are clear. If there is physical infrastructure access, a build can cost £20 per metre, but without it prices can go up 10 times. If the landowner does not give permission, the costs rise even further. Project Gigabit has been targeting homes and businesses not included in broadband suppliers’ plans, and has helped to reach those hard-to-reach communities. It is important that we recognise the project’s successes, which I hope will continue, but we must not forget the final few per cent of people who will struggle to get good broadband coverage.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate. Several villages in my constituency depend on outdated legacy copper lines. Areas such as Darrow Green Road in Denton and Ringsfield common rely on copper connections that can be a couple of miles from the cabinet. They struggle with broadband speeds that are abysmally inadequate for the needs of modern life. Those areas have no indication of when they will get upgrades. Will the hon. Lady join me in calling on the Minister to set out transparent timescales for supporting those villages and hamlets?

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

Order. This is Sarah Dyke’s debate, and she can conduct it as she wishes, but it seems to me that it may be more appropriate to ask for a longer debate because of the number of interventions she is accepting and the difficulty that may cause the Minister in responding.

[Sarah Dyke]

I take your point, Dame Siobhain, so I will hesitate to take any more interventions.

The previous Government launched a consultation on reaching very hard-to-reach areas, and to their credit began important work in this sector. The new Government must take the opportunity to re-establish that work to ensure that those areas are not left further behind. This is a once-in-a-generation project, and I fear that, if we do not focus on providing adequate coverage now, it may never happen, as it is highly likely that these areas will not be commercially viable for providers to connect in the future. When speaking to Wessex Internet, which has both the local authority and the Project Gigabit contracts for Glastonbury and Somerton, it is clear that there are changes that could help it to provide coverage in hard-to-reach areas. More flexibility is required from Building Digital UK to add additional properties to the contract and to ensure that premises that have been missed are brought into scope again, while also providing a route to subsidy funding that would help to boost coverage.

Many providers face struggles in accessing land, with the electronic communications code sometimes necessitating taking a lot of time to grant the provider access to private land to build, thus creating a barrier to rural network build. The electronic communications code could be streamlined to speed up that process, reduce costs and provide more communities with access to gigabit broadband faster.

That would be welcomed by my constituents in Fivehead who wrote to me before this debate to reveal that they were reliant on the slow speed of 5 megabits per second, which is hardly adequate to meet modern demands. Fibre build to the premises may never be feasible for some rural areas due to the huge cost and logistical challenges involved. We must therefore look at alternative solutions, whether that be fixed wireless or, in the most rural areas, satellite coverage. As technology develops, opportunities arise, and we must be prepared to take full advantage of that. The Liberal Democrats are committed to ensuring that gigabit broadband is available to every home and business, and we support local bespoke solutions to achieve that.

I look forward to the Minister’s comments, which will be short, on how this Government will ensure that these most-difficult-to-reach places are not forgotten. Now is the opportunity for us to move further and faster and to simplify processes to deliver gigabit broadband to every community. We must not leave rural areas behind. Otherwise, I fear they will never catch up.