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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if he will estimate how many (a) households and (b) businesses do not currently reach Ofcom's acceptable minimum broadband speed of 10Mbit/s in each region and constituent part of the UK.

Nearly 90% of homes and businesses in the UK currently have access to superfast broadband - and we are on target to reach 95% by the end of 2017. The Ofcom Connected Nations Report, published in December 2015 (which can be found here: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/market-data/infrastructure/connected-nations-2015/) shows the percentage of premises that have access to broadband speeds above 10Mbit/s.

Since 2010, we have substantially reduced the proportion of all UK premises with speeds less than 2Mbit/s - from 11% to around 1% in December last year. All homes and businesses that cannot currently get 2Mbps can now take advantage of a subsidised satellite broadband service delivering speeds of 10Mbps or more - meeting our commitment to provide access to at least 2Mbit/s broadband speed to all premises.