Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the proportion of savings made in rent reductions as a result of the 2017 changes to the Electronic Communications Code that have been reinvested into telecommunications infrastructure in rural areas.

There has been no formal assessment of rent reductions received by site providers since the 2017 reforms came into effect. We were clear at the time the 2017 legislation was introduced that the changes would take time to achieve their intended effect, not only because the market would require time to adapt, but also because case law would need to be developed and the new provisions would not be immediately applied to existing agreements.

The government has committed a record £5 billion of funding through Project Gigabit to ensure hard to reach communities in rural areas are not behind and get access to world class broadband infrastructure. This has already started to be deployed and is not waiting for the end of the commercial rollout, building on the half a million rural homes and businesses already given coverage through our support.

In addition the government is investing £1 billion alongside the major mobile operators in the Shared Rural Network programme. This will mean that all four mobile network operators will provide 95 per cent combined coverage across the whole of the UK by the end of 2025, delivering strong 4G coverage irrespective of what network provider people use.