Football Governance Bill

Tim Farron Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I declare an interest, as a lifelong Blackburn Rovers fan and a supporter of Kendal Town, who are in the North West Counties football league—I am beginning to fear that one day we might end up playing each other at this rate. To prove that football is more about uniting us than dividing us, I have, accidentally, worn claret and blue today, as a nod to our dear friends Burnley. [Laughter.]

I was at Grange Church of England Primary School last week, where a bright year 5 lad asked, “Tim, what sport do you enjoy the most?”. I nearly said football, but then I realised that I do not enjoy football at all; it makes me completely frustrated and miserable, but it does rule my life and occupy most of my waking moments. It is a hugely important thing, as it binds and creates communities, it creates shared experiences and it helps to build what it is to be English and to be British. So I am a thoroughly proud football fan. I love the game and want to stand in solidarity with all other football fans, even those of teams I do not approve of.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Dame Tracey Crouch), who is back in her place, and the fan-led review, which has underpinned the Bill. My party and I welcome the principles behind it and the independent regulator. We acknowledge that football is integral to our culture and that the whole pyramid is vital to the game. Michael O'Neill, the chairman of Kendal Town—his is an unpaid role at a wonderful club that is doing incredibly well at the moment—has said that the

“top of the pyramid would not exist without the foundations”.

He is absolutely right about that, but the foundations include not just the clubs lower down the pyramid, but the youth game and the Westmorland County FA, and what it does for young people, supporting mental health, building resilience and teamwork, and creating community.

I am supportive of part 3 of the Bill, on licensing, although it is an important moment to do some redistribution, taking a proportionate share from each of the clubs to ensure that we fund the additional requirements of meeting the licensing. Part 4 of the Bill, as we have heard, is about owners and directors. I express my solidarity with the supporters of Reading—we think of Dai Yongge and what he has done to that club and community. Not yet so awful—but watch this space—is what has happened with Venky’s, who own the Rovers. Blackburn Rovers is a club in limbo and the question is whether or not we are a going concern, because of the owners’ plight in the Indian courts. We have to ask ourselves the extent to which part 4 will give the regulator power to deal with the Dai Yongges and Venkys of this world and make them put up, pay up or sell up. Nothing more underlines the powerlessness of the fans than situations such as those, and fans of Bury, Bolton, Hull City and Cardiff City would concur.

Part 5 deals with the duty on clubs and competition organisers. I am going to table an amendment, if I am permitted to do so, to bring back the replays in the FA cup and to restructure things so that all competing teams get an equal vote in deciding the organisation and rules of that cup. This situation is an outrage and nothing more underlines the arrogance and complacency of the Premier League than its thinking it can dictate to the rest of the league and the non-league how that glorious and almost ancient competition will be. If my amendment is successful, the Premier League might get away with one year of no replays, but we will get them back the year after when the whole of the footballing establishment actually gets a vote.

My main concern is on part 6—I will not go through every part of the Bill—and the powers of last resort. I am deeply concerned that we have only partial financial oversight. This is where football fans feel a sense of disappointment, and the Government have been a little weak in this regard. It feels like they have listened to the powerful few rather than the clubs, the fans or the volunteers. The financial powers seem to be restricted to simply being a mediator between the Premier League and the English Football League, and actually the Premier League and the championship when all said and done.

The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) has talked about some of the financial division, and let us look at the allocation. Of every £1,000 received in broadcast revenue, £882 goes to premier league clubs and £32 to championship clubs—that is about enough for Blackburn Rovers to buy another pair of goalkeeping gloves and, by golly, we could do with them. If you go down further, 15p goes to national league north clubs, and a fat zero to anything below the national league. If the pyramid is important, then the foundations are important. I want the regulator to have the power to make sure that the Premier League and the championship do not hog all the money, and that they distribute properly and effectively down the division.

I want to pay tribute to Kendal Town—the mighty Mintcakes, as we are known—because they speak for and represent so many other non-league clubs. Five hundred people a week watch the great team managed by Jimmy Marshall. Everybody at that club is a volunteer. What good could be done by a relatively small amount of redistribution of that money down to that level. Kendal Town have hosted 12 cup finals of various kinds at the Parkside Road ground this year. It costs them £8,000 to maintain that ground, and they get nothing for it. A fairer deal is absolutely essential, and, so far, this Bill is the weakest on that fair financial flow. It is important that the Government get that right beyond Second Reading.

At a time when the division between the divisions has never been greater, I think it is worth paying a bit of attention to the parachute payments. There is a widening not just in quality, but in resource between the premier league and the championship, between the championship and league one, between league one and league two, and between league two and the national league. That reduces competition, entrenches privilege and squashes ambition. One key driver—perhaps the key driver to this division, certainly at the top end of the tables—is the parachute payment, which is a completely unjustifiable disgrace. It is the greatest financial distortion in the game. This Bill ducks that distortion—every football fan has noticed that the Government have ducked that distortion. Therefore, people are deeply sceptical about whether the Government are serious about fairness in the game—

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

rose—

[Tim Farron]

I am happy to give way to a North Ender.

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

The Government have not only ducked this issue, but the Bill itself contains something explicit that precludes a discussion of parachute payments when it comes to the regulator’s powers.

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and I agree with him. That explicitly needs to be mentioned in the Bill, and we need to recognise that that is one way to allay the fears of those people who are sceptical about whether the Government are serious about this—as serious as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford clearly is. Have the Government got the interest of the fans at heart? Will they do stuff that is difficult and challenging for those people at the top of the game, or will they have just listened to lobbyists rather than the fans?

In closing, Blackburn Rovers were owned by Jack Walker, the greatest owner of any football club ever. We say that we do not want billionaires in the game, but we will have people like that any day of the week—not just at Rovers, but anywhere else. He loved his club, loved his town and made a massive, massive difference. Today we are owned by Venky’s. It is alleged that, when it took on Blackburn Rovers, Venky’s believed that it was impossible to lose premier league status. It did not realise that a club could go down. Gutted though I am that we went down and got relegated, I am nevertheless glad that Venky’s were wrong: there should be movement between the divisions; there should be competition; and there should be fairness. Football is for the fans, not just for the powerful few. Let us make sure that this regulator, in its financial oversight, is able to ensure that there is genuine fairness from the top to the bottom.

Copper Wire Telecoms

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the withdrawal of copper wire telecommunications networks.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. Sometime ago the Government decided that the copper wire network—the analogue service—would be switched off in about December 2025. I can understand the reasoning behind the decision that the switchover would be industry led. We can see the sense in that, given how the telecommunications market operates these days. We have come some way from the days when everything was held under the General Post Office, which was the responsibility of a Government Minister. Although I understand the logic, I am afraid I have to bring a fairly simple and blunt message to the Minister this morning: it simply is not working.

It is apparent from the communications that I have with the industry and my constituents that the private companies are focusing on what matters to them rather than the needs and wishes of their customers and the communities we are elected to serve. The Government, after having made the decision that the switchover should be led by the industry, now have to step up to the plate, take charge and make sure that it is done properly. We have until the end of 2025 to get this right, but in terms of Government policy and given that there will be a general election in that period, we know that that sort of timescale can pass in the blink of an eye. This matters to people throughout the United Kingdom. It predominantly causes concern in rural communities because, in the switchover from analogue to digital communications, we have been the ones who have constantly been left behind—although I know that there are also urban communities that will be affected.

In Shetland and Orkney, our particular concern is around the resilience of the digital system—the fibre-optic system to which we will be transferred. For people in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow, power cuts are significant events because they are so rare. For us they are just part of everyday living, especially in the winter months. Occasionally we suffer catastrophic weather episodes such as we had last December, when parts of Shetland were left without electricity for six days. I am not always Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks’ biggest fan, but it really put in a shift along with council workers, the coastguard and other emergency services. It did a remarkable job in getting people connected back to electricity and making sure that those in the more hard-to-reach parts of Shetland were properly cared for.

Such events are occasional but not unknown. As we all suffer more and more catastrophic weather events in future, we have to assume that there will be a growing pattern of disruption for which the new system, when it is introduced to us, has to be fit for purpose; at the moment, with the lack of battery powered back-up, there simply is not that. Having a telephone line that we can plug in to the socket at the wall is very often the only means of communication left to people in such circumstances.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for securing a really important debate. One such incident happened in the lakes and the dales and Eden just a week and a half ago when we had serious snowy weather, which locked people in their communities, and many places— the Langdales, Coniston, Eden Valley and so on—lost electricity. During that time, people lost access to digital connectivity because the electricity went down. Having access to analogue and copper wire telephones gives people the opportunity to get care and reach out for help—to not be isolated. Does he agree that the Government need to get a handle on this issue to make sure that isolated communities are not cut off from the communications they will desperately need in these far too frequent extreme weather events?

[Mr Carmichael]

I absolutely do. By way of illustration, I received an email from a constituent in Walls, in the west side of Shetland, describing what life was like for him, his family and his neighbours during the six-day power outage last year. He said:

“Power was down…Internet was down…Heating was down (Our house has a gas cooker thank goodness)...The roads were impassable to cars for most of that period. 4x4 pick-ups could get through latterly into the week…The local shop was closed because it needed power to price items…Advice from the emergency services was that in the event of an emergency we were to wave down a passing police car. (This rather desperate advice was pretty hopeless, but more hopeless given road condition)…I need to emphasise that during this week an analogue phone with self-powered phone line was THE critical means of external contact with the outside world other than listening to the news on a battery-powered transistor radio.”

Broadband: Rural Communities

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your guidance this afternoon, Mr Dowd. I give huge thanks to the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) for securing this important debate and for making an important and valuable introduction. I pretty much agree with everything everybody has said so far. I want to endorse what is being said.

The reality is that rural communities are not able to access equal coverage—not only broadband, but other forms of modern connectivity. That puts us and our residents at a significant disadvantage. If we think about health, for example, to live in a rural community is to put oneself at greater risk of not being able to access telemedicine. If we think about our general wellbeing, to be more isolated is a dangerous thing. Last week in this place we discussed isolation and loneliness and the impact on the mental health of people of all ages, particularly older people. To be cut off and not able to access modern communications—broadband and other forms of digital communication—is both dangerous and unfair.

When it comes to education in the lakes and the dales, the Eden valley and Westmorland are beautiful and isolated places with schools as small as a dozen or so children in some cases, and high schools with fewer than 200 children. Those young people have to do their homework. They have to be able to access technology at home to be able to research, study and complete assignments on time. That goes for people studying in our area who are at the University of Cumbria, or who are studying elsewhere around the country but living at home in and around the lakes and the dales.

I think about the business community: one in four people of working age in our communities in Westmorland work for themselves. We have a hugely disproportionately high number of people who are self-employed or working for themselves in other ways—freelancing, and so on. It is important not only that people have access to high-quality broadband and other forms of connectivity, but that the access is symmetrical: upload speeds should be as accessible as good download speeds. To say nothing of entertainment, frankly the people of Westmorland and Lonsdale have as much right to be able to witness the indifferent and erratic form of Blackburn Rovers via their television screens as anybody else in the country—hurrah for the three points we scraped last night. To be serious, we are now in a world where it is taken for granted that we have that sort of access. In communities like those of pretty much all of us here today, that is not the case. We are gathered here because we believe that and it is our experience locally.

I have a couple of related non-broadband points that others have also raised. According to Vodafone, my communities are in the bottom 2% for mobile connectivity, so broadband is not the only issue. Others have talked about Digital Voice. I was in the debate this morning led so admirably by my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). Only a week and a half ago, much of Cumbria was completely snowed in and blocked. We had all sorts of impacts when it came to electricity being down. If your electricity is down, so is your router—you ain’t got no broadband; your digital access has gone. Maintaining that copper backstop is a lifesaver. We are used to extreme weather in my neck of the woods and we toughed it out, but there were people who were not vulnerable at the beginning of that experience but became vulnerable by the end of it, simply because so much depends on digital access. When it is wiped out, people are seriously vulnerable.

Let me say something about Project Gigabit. It is absolutely right that rural communities as a whole are left behind when it comes to connectivity of all kinds, and this Government need to bear a significant amount of responsibility for the failure to tackle that. One broadly positive thing that they are doing is Project Gigabit. I do not want to say that there is anything wrong with what the project is doing; I am concerned about some of what it is not doing. There are 61,000 properties in Cumbria within the scope of Project Gigabit. We know that at least 1,000 of those will not get connected within that in-scope area. Those are the very difficult-to-reach places.

Many people in and around the communities of Sedbergh—Sedbergh town itself, and the communities just beyond it—are now deeply concerned that they will be among the properties that are in scope, but not connected, which seems wrong. To go back to what I said about symmetrical access, we also know that the access and connectivity given to many homes connected by Project Gigabit might mean very high download speeds, but low upload speeds, which is a huge problem for people who are studying or in business.

I want to highlight again some of those people who are likely to be in scope but not connected. Hill farmers will almost certainly be among that group, and they have seen a 41% decrease in their income over the last three years under this Government. The very people who have no money to pay for the connection themselves will be in that tiny fraction, but that is still a significant number of people who will be outside Project Gigabit.

In my last minute, I want to talk about those properties that will be in what is called “deferred scope”. They are not being connected via Project Gigabit now, but they may be in the future—the next two, three or four years. I was at a meeting in Murton village hall on that very snowed-in weekend with the communities of Murton, Hilton, Ormside, Warcop and the surrounding areas, which are places in the “deferred scope”.

Were the Government to be flexible and allow the return of the voucher scheme, a wonderful community interest company, which I mentioned here before, called B4RN—Broadband for the Rural North—will be able to provide £33 a month access, with gigabit upload and download for absolutely everybody and with 100% of properties within scope. All it takes is for the Minister to agree to the ask that I have made of the Secretary of State in the last few days: that the Government would, through BDUK, re-offer the vouchers for those communities and be flexible, so that those communities are connected to the best speed at the best connection as quickly as possible.

There are so many pressures facing rural communities—house prices, the loss of housing stock as second homes and Airbnbs take over, a decline in school numbers, and therefore often a decline in communities themselves. We need to tackle all those things separately, but hyper-fast broadband for all parts of rural communities is one way to fight back against the isolation and deprivation in so many of our communities.

Access to Broadband Services

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith), who made an excellent introductory speech, and others who have spoken in the debate so far. In my economics O-level, at the time of the privatisation of BT, I did an essay on Kingston Communications, so this is bringing it all back.

As the hon. Member said, broadband has become something of a necessity in the modern world, in terms of connecting people to the broader economy and, indeed, in terms of safety. I will obviously focus on my rural communities in the south lakes and Eden—let us call it greater Westmorland—and not being able to access decent-quality, fast broadband makes people literally unsafe in terms of their access to emergency services. It also has an impact on their ability to perform in and contribute to the local economy. I have often said that if someone could live in Westmorland and make a living there, they just would, because it is a wonderful place to live. Over time—this includes today, of course—that has become difficult to do. Having said that, with the rise of access to better broadband, people can increasingly make a living working from home. Broadband is one way in which we can make rural communities genuinely thrive, make them economically active and see the return of younger families, with children going to our schools to keep them open. So broadband is massively important, and rural communities should have the same access as urban ones.

I will focus my remarks on Project Gigabit and its pros and cons and on some of the issues we are dealing with in Westmorland and elsewhere in Cumbria. Project Gigabit seeks to ensure that there is wider broadband access for difficult-to-reach communities. It will achieve that to some degree—it is important to put that on the record and to be positive about the good that the project is doing and will do—but it will not do so entirely. The communities that get missed are the kind that I represent in Westmorland.

Many of those homes, businesses and community buildings will remain without a connection, despite Project Gigabit. The procurement area in Cumbria contains roughly 60,800 properties that are in need of connection. Roughly 59,000 are estimated to be in scope of the procurement contract, which means 97% will be connected if all goes to plan. That is not to be sniffed at. That is good news. For all those properties that will be connected, it will make a significant difference to them and to the families and businesses that operate within them.

That leaves 1,800 premises in the procurement area that Project Gigabit recognises as needing connection, but for which no solution currently exists. My criticism of the Government’s approach is that, by giving the contract to a large corporation—in our case Fibrus, which is a capable outfit, run by very nice and competent people—they have marginalised communities and premises that would benefit from a more community-based, agile and bespoke operation that could mean that the 1,800 properties got connected.

It so happens that we have one such operation in Cumbria. I am sure the Minister is aware of B4RN—Broadband for the Rural North. We are incredibly proud of its work and its track record. It is a community benefit society. In the past few years, it has worked with some of the hardest-to-reach rural communities in Cumbria and north Lancashire, especially South Lakeland, to deliver full-fibre gigabit internet to thousands of homes, businesses and community buildings. That work has been an important part of Project Gigabit and, indeed, of the Government’s levelling-up agenda. It has been supported by Government’s voucher scheme. The disappointing thing for me and so many of us in Cumbria is that, over the past year, the Government have greatly reduced access to the gigabit voucher scheme, which has had the—I assume unintended—effect of stifling B4RN’s progress in connecting our rural communities, at the very moment when we should encourage it to move further and faster.

Will the Minister state whether it is the Government’s policy to move funding from successful community organisations such as B4RN, which connect every property in their area, to procurement that does not connect every property and is delivered through large, profit-driven corporations? Or, preferably, will he commit to working with organisations such as B4RN right now, and not defer the decision for a year or two to see how things go, to find ways of enabling it to continue its delivery side by side with those larger procurements? Is he willing to meet me and representatives of B4RN and some of the affected communities, which B4RN would otherwise be connecting, so that we can have the clarification that our rural communities in Eden and South Lakeland need?

I want to be clear: I am not saying that Project Gigabit procurements are bad; quite the opposite. However, the Government and BDUK seem to be taking a blanket, one-size-fits-all approach that will harm many rural communities in Eden in South Lakeland. A better solution, if we are to ensure that communities are connected comprehensively and at pace, would be to allow the large procurement under Project Gigabit to deliver alongside community schemes such as B4RN.

Sadly, B4RN is currently being managed out of the area, despite the transformative connections it has already achieved. Its track record is second to none. Communities including parts of Sedbergh, Kaber, Murton, Long Marton, Winton, Warcop, Ormside, Hilton, Hartley and Bleatarn are being forced to wait longer for their connection and will have poorer, less comprehensive coverage because the Government and BDUK are not following the more intelligent twin-track approach that would have allowed B4RN to provide some of the solutions.

We heard about telegraph poles, which are a significant issue. B4RN is a community-run organisation and it can build a fully underground network. It can do that because it is a voluntary organisation and landowners allow it on to their land to dig the trenches. I have been there myself. In Old Hutton, I was digging the trenches—not laying the cable; they would not allow me to do that. Getting dirty and digging holes is just about within my field of competence. However, those landowners will not allow access to their land for free to a commercial, multibillion-pound organisation. Consequently, there is the Fibrus operation and Project Gigabit, whereby large parts of the procurement would use telegraph poles. As Storm Arwen proved, telegraph poles are vulnerable to extreme weather events, which happen often in Cumbria. We are used to weather in the wild, and sadly, with climate change, we expect it to get worse and more intense.

In the interests of having greater resilience in the network, more and better access to broadband in every part of our rural county and supporting community groups that already know what they are doing, I ask the Minister and BDUK to re-examine their approach so that B4RN can meet the needs of communities that Project Gigabit will leave connected only partially or not at all. Rural communities often feel ignored and taken for granted by this Government. This is an opportunity for the Minister to listen and put that right.

Project Gigabit

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Dame Angela Eagle (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. Please give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the Chamber.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Project Gigabit and community-led internet service providers.

It is a massive pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela. I also offer a massive welcome to the Minister. I am hugely grateful for the opportunity to raise a massively important issue to rural communities. This is a half-hour debate, yet it is great to see friends and colleagues from Cumbria and beyond who share my concerns.

We want to talk about the extremely urgent issue of Project Gigabit. The deadline for applications for the broadband voucher scheme is in three days. After that, the Government plan to cancel, or at least park, the scheme for now. Every day we become increasingly dependent on digital technology, not only for leisure but for work. The covid pandemic has led to more of us working from home, so access to quick, reliable and affordable broadband has never been more important than it is today.

In my community, one in four people in the workforce works for themselves. The impact on small businesses, particularly start-ups, of a very high quality broadband connection is utterly transformational—or something that can delay their access to the world of commerce. I welcome the Government’s Project Gigabit on paper, with its promise to deliver at least 85% gigabit-capable coverage across the UK by 2025. However, I am alarmed that this well-intentioned scheme will, in practice, result in thousands of rural homes, many of which were on the verge of being connected to hyperfast fibre-optic broadband, missing out altogether.

I am talking about towns and villages that have been working with the community-led internet service provider, Broadband for the Rural North or B4RN—known to most of us as “barn”. I am delighted that Michael Lee, the chief executive of B4RN, is with us today in the Gallery. B4RN has brought hyperfast broadband to more than 9,000 properties across Cumbria, Lancashire and Northumberland. It offers 100% of properties in a community a fibre connection to the premises, no matter how hard they are to reach, and with no additional cost passed on to the individual. It even offers free connections to schools, churches and village halls.

It has been able to do all of that through the Government’s various voucher schemes. In the last quarter alone, B4RN has connected 587 more properties to the network, though its plans for the next few years have been put into serious doubt because of Project Gigabit’s procurement process. B4RN’s business model gathers vouchers from households in a rural area and then pools them to deliver a scheme that connects every home, including those that are the most remote and difficult to reach. It then delivers immensely fast broadband at speeds that BT will only deliver if customers pay through the nose, and they would be lucky even then.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman on bringing this matter forward for debate. The fact that there are representatives here from many parts indicates the importance. Does he feel that, when it comes to funding, the hardest-to-reach parts of the UK find the cost of installing as a group project an issue, as it is for some of my constituents? Then it can be extended to the smaller parts of communities and further afield. Does he feel the Minister should respond clearly to what he has said, and ensure that all parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can benefit?

[Tim Farron]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. For us, B4RN has done something unique from a not-for-profit angle, to fill in the gaps from the grassroots up. That is a model that we should see emulated in other parts of the country, rather than have it accidentally—I would say—snuffed out by a good idea at Whitehall that turned out to be a bad idea in practice.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He is making a very good speech. The problems facing my vast, remote constituency are similar. Does he agree with me that the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ proposed scheme of broadband catch-up zones is much to be commended? Does he also agree that the UK Government would do well to take that on board, to avoid rural communities in our constituencies and other parts of the UK playing perpetual catch-up with urban communities?

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend knows all about remote and rural communities, which make us in Cumbria look bijou, concentrated and urban by comparison. Yet, obviously, the challenges we face are very similar. Yes, understanding that the most difficult-to-reach parts of our country broadband-wise are the ones where we should start, rather than the ones we fill in after the fact, is something that we have pressed successive Governments to take seriously. B4RN tackles that.

The great shame is that the Government’s decision to end the voucher scheme in just three days’ time, while the procurement process takes place, will basically turn Project Gigabit into “Project Pull the Plug” for many of our towns and villages. Rather than allowing B4RN to carry on connecting our communities, the Government will instead allow big multinational companies with a track record so far of failing to meet rural need in Cumbria with a free shot at connecting properties in our communities. The difference between them and B4RN, however, is that they will not connect 100% of the properties. The Government will say that they are only obliged to connect 80% of properties—which they could probably have connected commercially anyway, but have not. We all know where the other 20% will be, do we not? They will be the most rural, the most remote. The communities that B4RN offered hope to will now be victims of “Project Pull the Plug”.

Successful community providers such as B4RN have pulled people together, strengthening communities in the process as volunteers literally go shoulder to shoulder to dig trenches and to connect homes and businesses. Personally, it was a real privilege for me to join residents digging in Old Hutton and to build lasting friendships in the process. Landowners large and small had waived payment, because they know that B4RN is not for profit and that the beneficiaries are their local neighbours. Communities such as Old Hutton, once the least connected place in Cumbria—I tell you, Dame Angela, that is saying something—now have world-class connections, thanks to B4RN and to Ministers in the past who listened.

Today’s debate will give us an insight, if the Minister will forgive me for saying so, into whether she will be one who listens. Her predecessor was a very nice man, but on this he did not listen. He visited Mallerstang in the constituency of the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) and met Michael Lee, the chief executive of B4RN, who explained why removing the voucher scheme would kill off so many schemes that could connect rural communities in Cumbria. The Minister came, got his photograph and must have left behind everything he was told—or, he let it in one ear and let it slip out the other ear on the train ride back south.

The Government’s plan for rural broadband bears all the hallmarks of one of those great bright ideas dreamt up in Whitehall—a bright idea that, in reality, does inexcusable damage to rural communities, all the more inexcusable because so many of us have explained patiently and in detail why that is so. However, it does not need to be that way, and the Minister has the power to fix it today. If communities where B4RN is demonstrably engaged and actively planning are moved into the deferred procurement scope, and if voucher application remains open for those communities during the procurement process, B4RN will be able to continue to help level up remote rural communities through the delivery of future-proof fibre-optic infrastructure.

Our rural communities are under enormous pressure. The Government’s failure to restrict second home ownership and continuing to permit innocent tenants to be evicted so that landlords may quadruple their income through holiday lets mean that the very survival of many of our villages is at stake. Access to fast broadband is one way to ensure that local families can afford to remain in our area and to make a living—to run their businesses, to maintain a foothold in Cumbria, and to be able to stay there and raise their children there, keeping schools open and communities alive. For the Government to pull the plug in that way would be either cruel or foolish, or both. They may no longer pretend that that will be an unintended consequence of their plans, because we have shown them clearly what the consequences are.

Even if we believe the Government when they say that the voucher scheme might be replaced in a year or so, that will be too late, because all that might be left to connect will be the 20% of properties that BT and co chose to ignore. The voucher scheme will be of little use then, because B4RN depends on pooling funding from the vouchers of all the community in order to connect all the community. By securing the business of the towns and villages, it builds up the money to connect the homes, farms and hamlets that are most rural and otherwise financially unviable. The Government’s procurement plan, which abandoned the hardest-to-connect 20%, will be the death of the B4RN business model. When the Government designed the plan, they did not know that—fair enough—but now they do and they have no excuse. The Conservatives will be killing off rural broadband in Cumbria. They know that, and today we will find out whether they care.

The Minister will need to look these communities in the eye, especially those that the Government choose to dump, and explain why she has chosen to pull the plug. Hot off the press today I can reveal the communities that the Conservative Government have chosen to pull the plug on: Kirkwhelpington, Great Salkeld, Storth, Woodburn, Sedbergh, Kirkby Lonsdale, Nateby, Lazonby, Melmerby, Brough Sowerby, Crosthwaite, Hugill, Far Sawrey, Kirkby Ireleth, Hawskhead and Claife, half of Skelwith Bridge, Ackenthwaite, Whassett, Broughton-in-Furness, the Rusland valley, Lowick, Great Langdale, Skelton, and 548 properties in the village of Burneside. There is a list of other communities still hugely at risk because of Project Gigabit’s procurement plan, but B4RN will do everything it can to deliver within a year. I make the decision on the hoof to not name them because it would take acres of time and I do not want to blight them. There is a massive chance that they will succeed because B4RN will do everything it can, despite all the odds stacked against it.

Every one of the communities that I have listed will rightly feel that they have had the rug pulled from under them by the Government. Those communities were pulling together, voluntarily giving up their time and energy, and working with a tried and tested B4RN model to deliver to some of the most remote parts of our country. Getting connected is a matter of life and death for some of those communities. It is about the ability to learn, trade and communicate. It is the difference between communities thriving and being sustainable and being cut off and therefore unsustainable.

[Jamie Stone]

Is there not an international aspect to this? If the United Kingdom is to compete and succeed on a world trade stage, it could mobilise the skills and abilities in some of the remotest parts of the UK as part of that victory.

[Tim Farron]

That is absolutely right. Traditionally, it is hard to earn a living in remote areas, but with high quality broadband we can live in a glorious place. I often say that if someone could live and raise their kids in South Lakeland and make a living, they would. We have an opportunity to do so. That applies to many other people and Members who have similarly glorious constituencies.

The Government’s decision to end the voucher scheme this week will be a body blow to the communities I have listed and to the others that I have chosen not to list for now. It is all the more cruel because of the real hope that our communities were offered that, through the B4RN model and the voucher scheme, they could and should have been connected. When B4RN comes to a community, it does not just build a world-class fibre optic network; it builds a community. It becomes a focus of energy, endeavour and a collective triumph against the odds. Communities that have been through the B4RN process are glued together with new friendships, new common interests and a new sense of community.

The Minister should know that the damage her decision will do to our communities goes far beyond the technology and to the very heart of those communities and community life. Those of us who have been through the experience and are proud to vouch for B4RN and for the hundreds of volunteers who have delivered the connections are at a loss as to how the Government can ignore that lived experience.

I have two simple solutions to solve the crisis, and then I will draw my remarks to a close. First, will the Minster commit to ensuring that all properties in areas where B4RN is already demonstrably engaged are given deferred scope procurement status? That will ensure that those areas are not part of the initial procurement scope of the regional supplier and that a B4RN build supported through voucher funding will still be available.

Secondly, will the Minister allow any pre-registered packages associated with deferred scope areas to remain open through the rest of the procurement process to ensure that the B4RN build programme is not disrupted? How can the Government claim to be levelling up when they are removing the chance for people living in the most rural areas of Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumberland and elsewhere to access hyperfast fibre-optic broadband in their homes?

This is a model that the rest of the country could learn from and emulate. Instead, it appears that Ministers—at least so far—have not been interested in learning from success and instead want to impose failure. That is why I am very grateful for the opportunity to speak today and to plead with the new Minister to listen to B4RN, to local MPs and, more importantly, to our communities, and not to be the Minister responsible for promising Project Gigabit but delivering “Project Pull the Plug”.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Julia Lopez)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela. I thank the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for securing this very important debate and for making what I thought was a compelling speech. I wish today to assure him, for the very same reason: we want to do the right thing for his constituents and for all residents and business owners in rural and hard-to-reach areas. We want to make sure that they are not left high and dry in the nationwide gigabit upgrade.

The hon. Gentleman highlighted that access to high-speed broadband is important for schooling, for businesses and for building communities in more rural areas, and we all understand this from the very difficult past 18 months. I know that that determination is shared by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) and other colleagues in the Chamber today, including those from the highlands. The Prime Minister promised to end the spinning wheel of doom and he keenly follows the progress we are making to connect the country to lightning fast, reliable gigabit broadband. I will set out some of the progress we have made before I turn to the situation in Cumbria.

Working with Ofcom, we have given the commercial market a long-term framework that supports investment in gigabit broadband. We have reduced the barriers to roll-out, alongside further legislation that will help even more with issues such as wayleaves where we can get the infrastructure laid. We have also introduced active incentives for financial investment. As a result, our plan is working and gigabit-capable broadband is rolling out rapidly. Since January 2019, the UK’s gigabit-capable coverage has increased from 5.8% to nearly 50%, and that is expected to rise to 60% by the end of December. In addition, the Government and major providers’ joint investment of more than £1 billion is filling those gaps in rural 4G coverage.

There is a lot more diversity now in the broadband sector. I appreciate the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale’s comments about larger providers, such as Openreach, but our local full fibre networks and rural gigabit connectivity programmes have awarded contracts to multiple operators, many of them smaller providers such as Gigaclear, Airband, Fibrus, Axiom, Quickline, Truespeed, Full Fibre and Wessex Internet. Our gigabit broadband voucher scheme has suppliers actively providing connections to communities in rural areas in every part of the UK.

However, we have to accept—as we do—that the market will not go everywhere, which is why we are backing Project Gigabit with £5 billion so that hard-to-reach communities are not left out. That is how we want to level up and ensure that our rural communities have the same chances and opportunities as our urban towns and cities. We are adding to the half a million rural homes and businesses already covered by Project Gigabit, thanks to our support. Through Project Gigabit, the Government are going to provide support to ensure coverage is available to the final 20% of premises that the market will not reach. That is a considerable undertaking that is going to involve everybody, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border said. It is very important that we work together on that.

As part of Project Gigabit, we are investing more money—up to £210 million over the next three years—in gigabit vouchers. That builds on the success of the previous voucher programme that began in May 2019, which has subsidised the cost to connect more than 88,000 homes and businesses to gigabit-capable broadband so far. Our nationwide task is a lot larger, and if we are going to reach every home and business, the Government have to subsidise broadband networks to around 5 million premises. We have already made great strides with that objective, but we still have the most challenging parts of our four nations to reach. If we are going to get that done quickly, the lion’s share of the work has to be done through Government procurement contracts, working with both local and regional suppliers. I am very pleased to say that Cumbria is scheduled to be the first area to go into the procurement process. Provided that suppliers confirm the proposed project is viable, the procurement will get under way within the next few weeks.

While residents and businesses in Cumbria will be the first to benefit from our programme, it means the county is also at the forefront of our learning and understanding. Far from being cloth-eared, as I know the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale has stated in his local paper, I want to reassure him that we are listening hard to people’s concerns and we continue to be open minded about the best approach. I hope this debate is the opening of that conversation, certainly with me in my new role.

My officials have met B4RN several times and examined each project it has put forward in a lot of detail. I am pleased that the chief executive is here today and, in fact, I understand that my officials are going to meet him later today. Not only that; my excellent predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), visited Cumbria last month and met communities in the midst of the broadband build. He also met B4RN and listened to the concerns, and I shall be happy to keep that conversation going.

I cannot stress enough how much the Department admires and applauds B4RN in its unique community-minded approach. As a network provider, it is almost unique in the UK. We do not want to dampen that enthusiasm or that business model. I have come from a position in the Cabinet Office where we were looking at how to transform the UK’s procurement regime now that we have left the European Union. One of our key drivers is looking to get more social value into the money the Government spend, as well as diversifying supply chains and encouraging small and medium-sized enterprises to get involved. I certainly do not want to crowd people out.

Residents involved in every one of B4RN’s projects tirelessly work to drum up support and interest and to persuade landowners to grant permissions to cross their land and so on. That is seriously impressive community work. I welcome that the vouchers have been used to provide coverage to 3,500 premises in Cumbria. I hope that that number will continue to grow, but our task—let us be honest here—is to help in the region of 60,000 premises, so the procurement approach has to do the heavy lifting when it comes to the Project Gigabit programme.

[Tim Farron]

I apologise for interrupting the Minister’s helpful speech. The 60,000 figure is very important, but does she recognise that as things stand, unless she defers the deadline for the voucher scheme on Friday, the communities that I have listed, which I got from B4RN, will be in limbo at the very least? While they could have looked forward to a connection very quickly, over the next year or so, they will now be at best put back several years. Can she not think of a way of doing both: of ensuring that she connects the 60,000 she talks about, while not dumping and pulling the plug on those communities that I just listed?

[Julia Lopez]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concern for those communities. We all appreciate the importance of broadband in those places. I think the best thing to do from this juncture is that the meeting between officials and Mr Lee goes ahead, and I ask for an update from that meeting and we talk about the best approach going forward.

My team in Building Digital UK has undertaken extensive work, along with the local authority teams in Cumbria and other areas, to get ready for the first procurements. A detailed consultation has been undertaken with the commercial market to identify the least commercial areas in which to subsidise build. That will ensure that taxpayers’ money is fully focused on levelling up the communities that would otherwise miss out. We know that some suppliers will be able to provide coverage more quickly with vouchers to communities where they are already active with projects. We will therefore accommodate that as far as we can in our approach.

However, not all planned voucher projects get off the ground and result in the intended coverage. It is important to ensure that the procurement process is ready to pick up those areas rather than leave anyone behind. We need to ensure that the existing voucher schemes really are credible. For that reason, we are structuring the procurement so that we do not slow down current voucher projects, while providing a back-up option through procurement so that residents and businesses do not miss out. It is about ensuring that there is a balance between supporting early coverage in areas where there are firm plans using vouchers, while ensuring that communities do not get left out and that we do not have to continually change the premises included in procurement. We need to ensure that those procurements are stable.

European Football Proposal

Tim Farron Excerpts

Finance (No. 2) Bill: (Freeports (Stamp Duty Land Tax)) (Ways and Means) & Ways and Means resolution
Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all the work he has done, which has helped to shape the fan-led review we have announced. On competition law, we are already engaging with BEIS on our response. As I said, we rule out nothing. I know from my conversations with the premier league and UEFA that they are already proposing to take some pretty draconian steps to stop this, but we stand ready to act. We will not allow anything to stop us in terms of timing; we will get on with it as soon as we need to.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]]

This is a devastating attack on the English game, as a shameless, arrogant and desperate elite seek to make millions at the expense of the millions of us who love the game and love our clubs. The statement contained some rhetoric that I found good and urgent, and detail that was ponderous and thin, so as well as a lengthy review, will the Secretary of State fast-track legislation that will force any club seeking to break away and join a new league to first ballot its fans and be mandated to abide by the outcome of the ballot; and will he make sure that the legislation is retrospective and active from the beginning of the current football season? Those who wish to steal and destroy the English game must be stopped. English football must be saved. This Parliament has the power to do it, not just to review it.

[Oliver Dowden]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will be doing three things. First, we are backing the actions by the football governing authorities. Secondly, at the same time, we are looking at all options—he raised some important further options—and we will proceed at the fastest pace required to deliver a result. Thirdly, these events give rise to major questions, which have become ever more apparent to me. We had the promise in our manifesto. My dealings with football over the past years, as we have sought to negotiate the support that the game requires, have demonstrated again the need for governance reform and the need to look at finance and whether an independent regulator is required. All these things will now be examined by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Tim Farron Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con) [V]]

In line with the sentiment across the House today, I will attempt to keep my comments as brief as possible, and I will confine them to Lords amendments 2 and 3. However, with your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a brief comment about the broader point of the Bill.

As my hon. Friend the Minister pointed out, and as many other hon. and right hon. Members have pointed out in this debate, access to fast broadband and a stable internet connection is vital. I want to talk about my community, because we have seen during this pandemic the need for a stable internet connection. I know from the correspondence I have received from teachers and parents who have not had that, where children have had to access the internet via a parent’s mobile phone to do their work, that the Bill is necessary.

I want to pay tribute in particular at this time to my schools, which have met the challenge of the digital divide—particularly the amazing team at Summerhill Primary Academy in Tipton, who have gone above and beyond to ensure that our most vulnerable students can still access education. That absolutely demonstrates why the Bill is necessary.

Lords amendment 2 is simple: it is about ensuring that someone’s access to the market should not depend on where they live. A competitive and open marketplace and the ability to access various providers is essential to ensuring access to a decent internet connection. It is right that where someone lives or where they are residing should not influence their access to a competitive internet supply. In my region of the Black Country alone, there are roughly 174 properties that will be impacted by the Bill, and more than 3,000 people more widely. Lords amendment 2 is welcome and I most certainly support it; I think it is the right one.

However, as my hon. Friend the Minister pointed out, the substantive amendment here is Lords amendment 3, which provides some food for thought. The sentiment behind the amendment, which requires the Secretary of State to provide a review of the Bill’s impact on the telecommunications code, in terms of whether the code is sufficient to support access to 1 gigabit per second broadband, is interesting.

The Government have been clear that the Bill is not a panacea; it addresses a very specific issue. The wider gigabit connectivity agenda needs its own legislative framework and its own level of scrutiny. My hon. Friend the Minister pointed out that the House has many mechanisms by which we are able to scrutinise the roll-out of that agenda, so I question whether Lords amendment 3 is necessary, given the various mechanisms that we have to hold the Government’s feet to the fire.

However, I am interested in some of the principles in the amendment, in particular the idea of rights of access for operators, akin to what we see for water, gas and electricity. The amendment recognises—I think this is a point that we all agree on across the House—that broadband connectivity and an internet connection will be just as vital as we come into this new economy as water, gas and electricity. It triggers an interesting debate and, I believe, a conversation that we are going to have for years to come as this develops.

I am conscious of time and my promise to keep my contribution brief; I would never wish to mislead you, Madam Deputy Speaker. At its heart, the Bill is about communities. Communities such as mine, which wish to aspire and achieve, need access to a basic, stable internet connection. Considering that 90% of job applications are based online and that the internet economy in the UK is worth around £180 billion, for me this issue is simple. It is vital for my communities in Wednesbury, Oldbury and Tipton that they have access to the opportunities that they have missed out on for far too long, and I believe that the Bill, and particularly the Government amendment, Lords amendment 2, allows that.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]]

I too wish to support the Bill and the amendments made in the other place. I am deeply concerned, though, about the practice of the Government’s moves to meet their own self-imposed universal service obligation.

In my constituency, we are looking at around 1,000 properties—domestic properties, never mind businesses—that will not meet the USO. Indeed, even when we factor in those properties that can be supported via 4G to receive that kind of basic broadband connectivity, hundreds of properties in places such as Coniston, the Langdales, north Windermere, Ambleside, Hawkshead and Cartmel Fell are left still unable to access the Government’s targets or avail themselves of them, and have no source of appeal and no form of redress. The only thing they can do about it is to shell out tens of thousands of pounds of their own money, if they are able and willing. It turns out that the Government’s universal service obligation is not universal, and is not an obligation. That is going to, and does, hit rural communities such as ours all the more.

I am also concerned that, as has been mentioned by others in this debate, the Government’s commitment to full fibre roll-out has fallen by the wayside to a significant degree, and a breaking of manifesto promises is now clearly taking place. The commitment to £5 billion being spent in this Parliament has dropped to less than a quarter of that amount—less backhaul, more backsliding. That is deeply concerning for rural communities such as ours that thought they could rely on the promise that was made to them. The Government’s reappraising of its targets—that is, the breaking of its promises—will mean that rural communities such as mine miss out the most, which is deeply regrettable. Through conversations with BT and others, we now calculate that nearly half of my constituents will not get ultrafast full fibre broadband for at least another decade. That is not acceptable, and not in keeping with the spirit of this Bill.

I will focus on two final points. The first is that our experience during this pandemic tells us something very important about the nature of work. Here I am, speaking to Members from Milnthorpe in Cumbria while simultaneously being in the House of Commons. People working at home and making use of broadband connectivity has been transformative, and in one sense we are very grateful to be in this situation at this time, when we have this technology available to us. Imagine what it might have been like 20 or so years ago, when this technology was not available!

However, with so many more people working from home, we begin to realise that the Government’s fixation and focus on download speeds is somewhat misleading—maybe not intentionally, but it is misleading. For so many people in business working from home, it is upload speeds that matter. They are the benchmark of whether or not we are genuinely, properly connected. I can think of people in our big town of Kendal with upload speeds of less than one megabit per second, who are meant to be working from home, running companies of many dozens of people with large turnovers. That is not conducive to communities like ours. I have one of the most entrepreneurial communities in the country, with one of the highest numbers of people working for themselves when compared with any other community elsewhere in the United Kingdom. We are really proud of that, yet the Government hobble us by not having ambitions that are ambitious enough to allow people to work from home and within their communities, and to enable them to contribute to our economy. Let us focus on the reality of connectivity and realise that the Government’s own ambitions are still very unambitious, given the new world that we find ourselves in.

My final point is this: we are very proud of, and very grateful to, our mountain rescue services, and indeed all our emergency services here in the lakes and the dales. Only recently, a leading member of our mountain rescue teams here in the Lake district suffered very serious injuries rescuing a member of the public, and we remember how vital their service is, both the service given voluntarily by the mountain rescue services and that given by the professional emergency services. We owe them so much, and one of the things we owe them is decent connectivity. In three parts of my constituency, and in many other parts of the country, we have promises from the Home Office for new emergency service masts. In my community, that means the Langdales, Longsleddale, and Kentmere. Those Home Office masts are vital to the safety of people in those communities, and to the emergency services that often operate in those communities. They are also vital because they then provide a platform for commercial delivery for mobile telecommunications in vast, underpopulated—but not unpopulated—areas.

The Home Office continuously puts off the erection and bringing into operation of the Longsleddale, Kentmere and Langdale masts. At the moment, we understand that the Home Office has no plan to activate those masts for another three or four years. Will the Minister put strong pressure on the Home Secretary to act swiftly to make sure that our emergency services, the people they come to aid and the wider community in the lakes have the benefit of those masts and have them quickly?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I am pleased to see the Minister in his place. The Bill is very important, and I welcome it. The Bill and the Minister’s direction of it have given us a chance to tidy up the process, and it does just that. I support the aim of the Bill to tackle absent landlords impacting on broadband, to ensure that they face a greater obligation to facilitate the deployment of digital infrastructure when they receive a request from their tenants. That is in-built, and I support ensuring that tenants are not waiting months to get a simple permission or access.

Future of the National Trust

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Gentleman ought also to look at English Heritage’s 2013 publication on broadly the same subject. He may wish to compare the quality of that report with the National Trust’s report and form his view as to whether it is appropriate to associate some of our national figures with slavery, as the title of this particular contribution does.

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is legitimate for organisations to explore history and present material in a balanced, measured and considered way. The judgment we all have to make is whether the National Trust has achieved that. I suggest to him that, against the standards of other organisations, such as English Heritage, the National Trust in that respect has fallen well short. Indeed, any reasonable appraisal of the material would suggest to me and many others a corporate culture at odds with its membership. I would argue that it is also at odds in important respects with statute that underpins the National Trust.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate; I also join him in offering congratulations to our new Chair.

The National Trust obviously employs a vast number of people in the Lake district; the jobs of many of them are now at risk, which is deeply concerning. It also owns a huge amount of land and acts as landlord to dozens and dozens of important hill farmers, who are essential in maintaining the heritage of our landscape. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the National Trust should do everything it can to act as a landlord that encourages succession on those farms, rather than turning the buildings into second homes or holiday lets? Likewise, does he agree that it should encourage the Government to make sure that, in transitional terms, the payments coming into the farming industry from January onwards encourage the maintenance of the family farm and not a move to ranch-style farming?

[Dr Murrison]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point; I feel sure that he is more expert on upland farming than I am. I would always encourage a landlord to be responsible, especially a big one, and in particular a massive one such as the National Trust. I would be distressed if it was tempted to sell off properties for them to be turned into second homes or holiday homes. That seems entirely the wrong thing for the National Trust to do, and I would argue that it is probably contrary to the 1907 legislation that founded it. The idea behind the National Trust is conservation, and it is difficult to see how selling off property in the way that he has just described would service that end.

Much of what we have had from the National Trust in recent times is entirely commensurate with the fears expressed by many that what it is doing, in its own terms and the terms of the leaked documents we have seen, is to “dial down” its role as what it calls a “major national cultural institution”. We see the corporate upper lip curling at an “outdated mansion experience” that is of interest only to what it calls a “niche audience”, which is apparently “dwindling”. It is a “niche audience” that was on the rise before lockdown and that is bigger even now than the population of the Republic of Ireland, but it is one that the trust’s clairvoyants anticipate will have moved on, as the trust seeks to

“flex its mansion offer to create more active, fun and useful experiences that our audiences will be looking for in the future.”

I have “fun” every time I go to a National Trust property —that is the whole point of going—and it is not clear to me what “useful” means, but we do learn that

“Everywhere…we will move away from a narrow focus on family and art history.”

This has been pejoratively described as the triumph of the “trendies” over the “tweedies”. What it means in practice is that professional curator posts will fall from 111 to 80. There will be a new curator and it will not surprise right hon. and hon. Members to learn that that curator will be called

“curator of repurposing historic houses”.

But out will go actual curators—those internationally renowned experts and scholars, who are specialists in one of the world’s greatest collections.

I suspect that most of the membership, like me and my family, flock to National Trust properties to admire an elegant pile of bricks or a beautiful landscape before going for a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake—job done, and happy days. It is leisure, it is breathing space, it is succour for the soul and a welcome break from the remorseless hectoring about this and that, to which, as citizens, we are subjected day in, day out.

There are those, particularly on the hard left and perhaps within the trust’s hierarchy, who will say that an organisation makes a political statement every time that it does not advance an opinion—that silence is violence. But the National Trust needs to be a politics-free space, a great mediating institution, and not an organ for promulgating a particular world view, whether one sympathises with that view or not. That, surely, is the service that it renders to civil society.

My parents liked to drag me and my brother around National Trust properties when we were younger. Fifty years on, they all merge into a perpetual search for ice cream, but I do have one abiding recollection, and it is not some politically correct right-on narrative, misspelt on a piece of slate. It is inequality. Those great houses stand as silent witness to an unequal past. We do not need to be force-fed that by the trust’s high command; it is there and it is in your face. It is also plain to most visitors that the wealth required to throw up those mini-palaces did not often come from a post office savings account. Some of that money was highly questionable—some of it very dirty indeed by today’s standards and even by the standards of the day. But here we are in 2020, with the public—on whose backs, to a greater or lesser degree, those palaces were built—possessing them. That is a triumph and a restitution.

I mentioned that I did not want to be misconstrued or misunderstood, and it is therefore with trepidation and in anticipation of a wall of hate mail and trolling that I come to the document—the trust’s slavery and colonialism report. It is a catalogue of its properties that have some links to those subjects, but much of it is flimsy and tendentious. In 2013, English Heritage published “Slavery and the British country house”, which is a serious, thoughtful, measured contribution to a subject of significant public interest, in contrast with the National Trust’s colonialism and slavery report, whose title, which conflates two things as a common evil, gives the game away. The conflation gets worse because, wittingly or not, it by association diminishes towering figures in British history, notably Winston Churchill. The trust speaks of context, but where is the context for a man who, more than any other, stood against fascism, racism and antisemitism? The best that could be said of that piece of work is that it is plain shoddy. Otherwise, we are left to conclude that it is indicative of the trust’s corporate mindset.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that our local museums play a really important part in our local heritage and culture. I am thrilled to be heading up this Department, and I hope very much that we will be able to find the funding. I will be having conversations with the Treasury to ensure that we are investing in places, and in the feeling of place, right up and down the country, and I know that he will want to be involved in that process locally.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that the Government’s plan to put a £30,000 salary floor on migrants entering the UK will massively damage the tourism industry in the Lake District and the Yorkshire dales, leaving many unable to fill vital positions? Representatives of the tourism industry and I have spoken to Ministers past and present about the need to massively lower that figure. Will she listen?

[Nicky Morgan]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will know that I am a Minister who always listens. He represents a beautiful part of the world in the Lake District, whose benefits I have been delighted to enjoy on many visits. I am very aware of this issue, which is obviously under active consideration. One point is that post 1 November, the UK will be able to set its own immigration policy that is right for this country. We are aware that the tourism sector is reliant on domestic talent, but also on recruiting from overseas.