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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether he received legal advice on whether an agreement to vary the licence fee of mobile telephone operators to provide coverage in areas which are already served by one or two other operators constitutes state aid.

There is no agreement that varies the annual licence fees (ALFs) paid by mobile network operators (MNOs) for the use of spectrum. As part of the agreement on mobile coverage announced on 18 December 2014, Government brought the agreement to the attention of Ofcom in the context of their process to review ALFs. Ofcom will continue to set the revised level of ALFs independently, on the basis of full market value as set out under the Secretary of State’s Direction to Ofcom of 2010.