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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of the 10 Point Plan for a Better Openreach proposed by the industry coalition comprising Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone, the Independent Networks Cooperative Association and the Federation of Communication Services in their letter to Ms Sharon White, Ofcom, dated 16 May 2016.

I am pleased to see that the industry is engaging constructively with Ofcom on this issue. The Government’s ambition is to ensure that the UK has the right infrastructure to meet the needs of business and consumers and enable the UK to remain a leading digital nation. We welcome Ofcom’s determination to tackle these issues and agree with the Regulator’s view that the current relationship between BT and Openreach will not deliver the country’s needs for more competition, better innovation and better service. Our belief is that Ofcom should be firmly focused on taking whatever action is needed to correct the competition problems identified, however radical a change that might be.