Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether he plans to allocate additional funding towards projects that improve mobile connectivity in (a) rural and (b) hard to reach areas.

We are working with telecoms companies to reduce poor mobile signal in rural areas. The Shared Rural Network is already delivering new 4G coverage to places where there is either limited or no 4G coverage at all. There are currently no plans to allocate additional funding beyond this.

Our ambition is for all populated areas to have higher-quality standalone 5G by 2030, and we are working with the industry to deliver this. We are driving the adoption of standalone 5G across key sectors through our £36m 5G Innovation Regions programme.