Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps his Department is taking to help accelerate the rollout of (a) 4G and (b) 5G in (i) central Winchester and (ii) other urban areas with limited mobile data availability.

This government wants all areas of the UK, including urban areas such as Winchester, to benefit from good quality mobile coverage. Our ambition is for all populated areas to have higher-quality standalone 5G by 2030, and to increase 4G coverage to 95% of the UK landmass by the end of 2025 through the Shared Rural Network programme.

This government is committed to ensuring we have the right policy and regulatory framework to support investment and competition. As part of this work, the Government intends to reform the planning system to make it easier to build and deploy digital infrastructure.