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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to enhance provision of internet services in Midlothian.

We provided £100.8m from Phase 1 of the Superfast Broadband Programme to support superfast broadband coverage in Scotland. This has been delivered through the Highlands & Islands broadband project and the Digital Scotland project which covers the Rest of Scotland.

The UK Government provided £20.99m additional funding in February 2014 to support a Phase 2 project in Scotland to provide further superfast broadband coverage. The Scottish Government has not yet begun the procurement process using this funding and is not expecting to have agreed a contract until December 2018. We are doing all we can to speed this up.

For all premises which do not have superfast broadband coverage, the UK Government will ensure universal broadband of at least 10Mbps.