Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD) I beg to move, That this
House has considered broadband in rural areas. It is a pleasure to
serve under you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. Broadband and internet
connectivity are integral to modern life, whether that be in
education, employment, leisure, healthcare or almost anything else.
We rely on broadband more than ever before, and the tasks that we
carry out require higher speeds than ever before. Digital
connectivity...Request free trial
(Glastonbury and Somerton)
(LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered broadband in rural areas.
It is a pleasure to serve under you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain.
Broadband and internet connectivity are integral to modern life,
whether that be in education, employment, leisure, healthcare or
almost anything else. We rely on broadband more than ever before,
and the tasks that we carry out require higher speeds than ever
before. Digital connectivity provides us with great
opportunities. Small businesses can widen their reach. Health
consultations can be carried out online. However, many rural
areas are still struggling to realise the opportunities
available, because of poor broadband coverage: 17% of rural
domestic premises and 30% of rural commercial premises do not
have access to superfast broadband.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for bringing forward this debate. She
brings really important debates to Westminster Hall, and her
contributions on the Floor of the House are much appreciated as
well. On the subject of rural broadband, especially for
businesses, I, like the hon. Lady, make a plea. Broadband must be
dependable as well as fast, and the Government need to ensure
that connections are up to date, fit for purpose and able to cope
with the intensification that working from home has brought to
the need for reliable connection. Does she agree that the
Government really need to move on this one?
Yes, I agree, and I will come on to that as I move through my
speech.
County Councils Network analysis shows that only 21% of county
areas have gigabit broadband, compared with 70% of London. Those
statistics will not come as a surprise to my constituents in
Butleigh, where more than 15% of premises receive lines getting
10 megabits per second or less, putting the area in the worst 10%
in the UK. Other areas of my constituency mirror that: 10% of
premises in Bruton, Brewham and Cucklington receive less than 10
megabits per second, while about 7% of premises in Curry Rivel,
Fivehead, Ilchester, Mudford, Langport, Long Sutton and Martock
also receive less than 10 megabits per second. Only yesterday my
constituency office in Sparkford lost internet connection during
the working day, leaving my team frustrated and annoyed. The same
feelings are regularly felt by many people reliant on good
broadband to carry out their work in rural areas. The broadband
speeds that these premises receive are under the universal
service obligation, which Ofcom calculated at 10 megabits per
second in 2018. However, it is important to note that as the need
increases, broadband speeds must reflect that.
In a survey by the Countryside Alliance, 70% of respondents felt
that digital infrastructure was the most important issue to the
rural economy. Given that only 58% of premises in Glastonbury and
Somerton currently have gigabit broadband compared with the
national average of 78%, it is clear that people in rural areas
are being held back by poor broadband access.
(Wells and Mendip Hills)
(LD)
The Minister has very kindly agreed to meet me and my Somerset
colleagues, including the instigator of this debate. The reducing
rate of network expansion across Somerset is absolutely shocking.
Connecting Devon and Somerset has been a monumental failure. Does
my hon. Friend agree that we need to make certain that the
exceedingly disappointing performance in getting rural broadband
into Somerset has to stop, and things need to accelerate, not
decelerate?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing an audience with the
Minister. I hope we can ensure that we get the coverage we need
in Somerset, which is largely a rural county.
(Derbyshire Dales) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate. Connectivity is
a significant problem for my constituents. My constituency of
Derbyshire Dales has the 26th lowest rate of gigabit broadband
coverage in the country, and currently only 40% of residents have
access to gigabit broadband. Does the hon. Member therefore
welcome the fact that the recent Budget allocated £500 million to
support the roll-out of gigabit broadband to ensure that we can
reach full national coverage by 2030?
The funding is very welcome, but we need to make sure that it is
fit for purpose and reaches our customers. That is the most
important thing. Far too many rural areas are in very
hard-to-reach areas, so the money should be fit for purpose.
Openreach's gigabit economy report estimates that full-fibre
coverage could boost UK productivity by £72 billion by 2030 and
bring over half a million people back into the workforce. If the
Government want to achieve the growth that they have spoken
about, they must recognise that there are huge opportunities in
rural areas, and adequate broadband coverage is crucial to
achieving that.
(Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
I also represent a very rural area. Despite the fact that it is a
stone's throw away from Bristol, there are people who do not have
adequate services. Does my hon. Friend agree that the timeliness
of getting the service is also important? If professionals such
as doctors wait a long time for the installation, that is as much
of an issue as the speeds once the service is installed.
I could not agree more. The ongoing spending review must take
that into account and must ensure that the remaining unspent
funds for Project Gigabit are spent on ensuring that
hard-to-reach areas are indeed covered.
I thank the Chamber Engagement Team who provided me with quotes
from members of the public in preparation for this debate. The
following demonstrates just how damaging poor broadband is to
productivity in people's lives. Alison, a small business owner,
said that slow broadband impacts the entire productivity of the
business, from accessing emails to downloading and uploading
files to suppliers. With more and more people working from home,
poor broadband puts rural people at a massive disadvantage.
My constituents in Charlton Adam work in technology and video
editing, often from home; but due to poor broadband speeds, they
are continually hampered by poor download and transfer speeds.
When inquiring about the cost of connecting fibre to their
premises for on-demand services, they were quoted an astonishing
price of £270,000.
Poor broadband also impacts farming and agricultural
businesses.
Dr (Winchester) (LD)
This issue has a real impact on rural farming businesses. As a
vet I spend a lot of time driving around the Meon valley and
places such as Chilcomb, where not only is the broadband
terrible, but a mobile signal and 3G, 4G and 5G barely exist. It
is not unusual for me to be trying to find a property at midnight
to attend an emergency—which can affect someone's business if it
results in the death of a cow or horse—and be unable even to make
a phone call or look on Google Maps to find my location. We lack
not just broadband, but connectivity on every level. If we can
get a landline to every single property in the UK, we should be
able to do the same for fibre.
I wholeheartedly agree, and will say more about the implications
for rural businesses, farmers and vets.
Farmers rely on the internet for multiple purposes, such as
sustainable farming incentive and other grant applications,
animal monitoring and the security of their property. Vanessa, a
farmer, told the engagement team that she could not connect her
burglar alarm to her mobile as her broadband was too weak. That
is very concerning for farms, especially in the south-west, where
the cost of rural crime rose 41% last year, costing farmers £7
million, according to the National Farmers Union's “Rural Crime
Report”. Even if equipment is fitted with alarms, it takes the
police time to respond due to the remote locations of farms and
rural businesses, but reliable broadband and smart wi-fi products
give farms proactive and reactive security.
Sir Ashley (Bridgwater) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister needs to find a
suitable alternative for our constituents in Somerset, after the
failure of Connecting Devon and Somerset and Airband?
As I said, we must work harder to resolve some of the problems
that CDS has left us in Devon and Somerset.
Farms are also hindered by poor mobile connectivity. An NFU
survey revealed that only 21% of farmers had reliable mobile
signal across their whole farm. That is especially important in
farming, as it is Britain's most dangerous industry and accounts
for 20% of all deaths in the workplace. Farmers often work alone,
so it is vital that they can contact help if there is an
incident.
We must make progress on the shared rural network. Although the
recent funding announcements are welcome there is still more
progress to be made, especially in the very hard-to-connect areas
that make up about 4% of Glastonbury and Somerton. I have spoken
to Connecting Devon and Somerset, and the challenges to
connecting those premises are clear. If there is physical
infrastructure access, a build can cost £20 per metre, but
without it prices can go up 10 times. If the landowner does not
give permission, the costs rise even further. Project Gigabit has
been targeting homes and businesses not included in broadband
suppliers' plans, and has helped to reach those hard-to-reach
communities. It is important that we recognise the project's
successes, which I hope will continue, but we must not forget the
final few per cent of people who will struggle to get good
broadband coverage.
(Waveney Valley) (Green)
I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate. Several villages
in my constituency depend on outdated legacy copper lines. Areas
such as Darrow Green Road in Denton and Ringsfield common rely on
copper connections that can be a couple of miles from the
cabinet. They struggle with broadband speeds that are abysmally
inadequate for the needs of modern life. Those areas have no
indication of when they will get upgrades. Will the hon. Lady
join me in calling on the Minister to set out transparent
timescales for supporting those villages and hamlets?
Dame (in the Chair)
Order. This is Sarah Dyke's debate, and she can conduct it as she
wishes, but it seems to me that it may be more appropriate to ask
for a longer debate because of the number of interventions she is
accepting and the difficulty that may cause the Minister in
responding.
I take your point, Dame Siobhain, so I will hesitate to take any
more interventions.
The previous Government launched a consultation on reaching very
hard-to-reach areas, and to their credit began important work in
this sector. The new Government must take the opportunity to
re-establish that work to ensure that those areas are not left
further behind. This is a once-in-a-generation project, and I
fear that, if we do not focus on providing adequate coverage now,
it may never happen, as it is highly likely that these areas will
not be commercially viable for providers to connect in the
future. When speaking to Wessex Internet, which has both the
local authority and the Project Gigabit contracts for Glastonbury
and Somerton, it is clear that there are changes that could help
it to provide coverage in hard-to-reach areas. More flexibility
is required from Building Digital UK to add additional properties
to the contract and to ensure that premises that have been missed
are brought into scope again, while also providing a route to
subsidy funding that would help to boost coverage.
Many providers face struggles in accessing land, with the
electronic communications code sometimes necessitating taking a
lot of time to grant the provider access to private land to
build, thus creating a barrier to rural network build. The
electronic communications code could be streamlined to speed up
that process, reduce costs and provide more communities with
access to gigabit broadband faster.
That would be welcomed by my constituents in Fivehead who wrote
to me before this debate to reveal that they were reliant on the
slow speed of 5 megabits per second, which is hardly adequate to
meet modern demands. Fibre build to the premises may never be
feasible for some rural areas due to the huge cost and logistical
challenges involved. We must therefore look at alternative
solutions, whether that be fixed wireless or, in the most rural
areas, satellite coverage. As technology develops, opportunities
arise, and we must be prepared to take full advantage of that.
The Liberal Democrats are committed to ensuring that gigabit
broadband is available to every home and business, and we support
local bespoke solutions to achieve that.
I look forward to the Minister's comments, which will be short,
on how this Government will ensure that these
most-difficult-to-reach places are not forgotten. Now is the
opportunity for us to move further and faster and to simplify
processes to deliver gigabit broadband to every community. We
must not leave rural areas behind. Otherwise, I fear they will
never catch up.
11.16am
The Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms ()
It is a delight to be here, Dame Siobhain, and I warmly
congratulate the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton () on securing this debate. I am
not sure I will be able to answer the questions of all the
Members who have come to this debate in my speech.
Some Members have raised concerns at DSIT questions as well, and
I note that one Member said that I was prepared to have an
audience with people, which makes me sound like the Pope. I am
not the pontifex maximus— I am not even the pontifex minimus—but
my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and Bletchley (), who is my Parliamentary
Private Secretary, and I are happy to organise meetings with
officials to go through the specific issues in individual
constituencies. Some of the statistics that have been thrown out
are different from the statistics I have, and it may be that mine
are a little more up to date, because we have a whole Department
to look up statistics for us. That offer is available to all hon.
Members. I want to be as helpful a Minister as possible,
because—
(Honiton and Sidmouth)
(LD)
rose—
Sir
rose—
Wait a second! Because I fully accept the fundamental point that
was made right at the beginning by the hon. Member for
Glastonbury and Somerton: broadband is essential to nearly every
form of engagement in modern life—finding out where you are,
finding out which is the nearest chemist that is still open,
logging on to a Government website, the Government trying to do
their business, or someone trying to set up a local business. All
those things are absolutely vital.
Broadband is greedy. Every year, more and more speed and capacity
is needed. That is why we need to make sure that we get to full
gigabit capable broadband for every single set of premises as
soon as we possibly can. That is not a difficult thing to
achieve.
rose—
I will give way to the hon. Lady because her request to intervene
is timely.
I thank the Minister greatly. I join my hon. Friend the Member
for Winchester (Dr Chambers)—is the Minister actually the king of
mobile signal as well? If he is, there is a cracking need to get
on with making sure that areas like mine, like his, have got a
decent mobile signal.
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I am the Minister for
Telecoms, and that includes—
Dame (in the Chair)
Does that include Portcullis House?
That is an interesting intervention from the Chair! I think that
Portcullis House is a matter for the Speaker and the
Administration Committee. But there is a serious point here: in
many cases if we could get to 5G standalone universally, some of
these issues would not apply, because we would be able to do lots
of things. The police, for instance, could have fully streamed
services available through their 5G, and broadband might not be
so immediately significant.
I am painfully aware that this is an issue I raised as a
Back-Bench MP and baby MP all the time. Sometimes Ofcom's
reporting does not match people's lived experience. It will say,
for instance, that somewhere has 98% coverage from all four
operators on mobile, but when people get there they cannot get a
signal for love nor money. Often that is because of the way Ofcom
has been reporting, which relies on 2 megabits per second. But
with 2 megabits per second people cannot do anything. That goes
back to the original point made by the hon. Member for
Glastonbury and Somerton—I will think of her as the hon. Member
for Glastonbury Tor now, because it is shorter in my head.
(Middlesbrough South and East
Cleveland) (Lab)
The data issue that the Minister is raising is precisely what we
have been experiencing. Looking at it on paper, from the maps,
the villages have fantastic signal and broadband, but that is
just not people's experience. I am grateful to the Minister for
meeting me recently to discuss this and for the roll-out we are
going to see from the Government in East Cleveland.
I do not want Opposition Members to think that I have had an
audience with a Labour Member and not with others. There is a
universal service obligation on the Minister here. For most of
the issues that have been raised, I think the most useful thing
would be to book in a time for officials from Building Digital UK
to go through both the mobile and broadband issues that relate to
Members' specific constituencies. We do have more precise maps,
and we are able to talk all those issues through.
My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East
Cleveland () is right. One of the first
things I did when I became the Minister with responsibility for
telecoms was to write to Ofcom to say, “You have to review the
way that you look at these issues of reporting.” I am glad to say
that Ofcom replied recently, and I am happy to put a copy of that
letter in the Library so that everybody can see the
correspondence we have had. But it is a good point; apart from
anything else, mobile operators would quite like to know where
there is good coverage—and good coverage should mean coverage
that is actually any use to anybody, rather than something that
theoretically says 4G but does not feel like 4G at all.
The Minister has kindly agreed to meet me and some Somerset
colleagues later this month to discuss this issue. One thing I
want to put on the agenda for that meeting is Connecting Devon
and Somerset, which has cancelled three contracts previously and
has just cancelled a fourth. I wonder if we have a special
problem in Devon and Somerset.
That may be the case, and that is one of the specific things we
can take up with BDUK.
I should explain the whole process first. Of course the
Government do not want to have to pay for the roll-out of
broadband across the whole of the UK. That would be an enormous
big-ticket item. Nor, for that matter, do we want to pay for the
roll-out of 5G. We are therefore trying to ensure that where
commercial operators can do that roll-out, they are able to do so
as cost-effectively as possible. Where it is not commercially
viable, the Government will step in. That is what the whole BDUK
programme is, both through Project Gigabit, which relates to
broadband, and the shared rural network, which applies to mobile
telephony. That is the plan.
The hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton mentioned very
hard-to-reach places. The truth is that there will probably be 1%
of places where it will be extremely difficult—for either a
commercial operation or for the taxpayer—to take a fibre to every
single property. That could be so prohibitively expensive for the
taxpayer that we will have to look at alternative means. That
goes to the point made by the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Sir
) that we will have to look at
alternatives, and some of those may relate to satellite or
wireless delivery of broadband.
Mr (Inverness, Skye and West
Ross-shire) (LD)
Will the Minister give way?
Another new Member wants to make a contribution.
Mr
The £500 million set aside for the shared rural network was
instigated by the previous Government. In the highlands of
Scotland, it is organised by land mass, rather than the
geographic concentration of people. If the Minister wants to find
£300 million or £400 million of that to help with the roll-out of
broadband, he can feel free, because it is very unpopular where
we are and it is not serving the needs of the people.
I hope that I might be able to help the hon. Gentleman a little
here. I know the highlands of Scotland very well: I spent many of
my childhood summers in Aviemore, and I know the Cairngorms well.
It seems to me illogical simply to put big masts in places of
extreme natural beauty just for the sake of saying that we have
covered geographical mass. It is much more important to have
masts in places where there are actually people and a connection
that will be used, so that is very much the direction of travel
that I hope we can go in. I am not sure that it will save the
amount of money that he talks about, because, for all the reasons
raised by other hon. Members, people still need connectivity in
lots of places that are fairly out of the way, but broadly
speaking he makes a fair point. I cannot remember if he has
written to me about this issue, but I know that several Scottish
MPs have. If he writes to me, he will get the same response as
the others, which broadly speaking is the point that I have just
made. Incidentally, if Members want, they can go to
thinkbroadband.com for the most up-to-date figures on broadband
roll-out.
I mentioned the figures raised by the hon. Member for Glastonbury
and Somerton. I think the figures in the south-west are that 97%
of premises can now access superfast broadband and 77% can access
gigabit-capable broadband. However, that is lower than in the
rest of the UK, and our aspiration is to get to the same levels
across the whole of the United Kingdom, although there are
obviously geographical difficulties; I know that from the south
Wales valleys, where this issue is also difficult. There is a
difference between “have access to” and “have”. For instance, in
many parts of the UK—not rural, but urban—gigabit-capable
broadband has gone down the street, but not into the building, so
there are sets of issues for urban areas. I know that the hon.
Lady and others have written to me or asked me questions about
how much of the BDUK budget is being spent on rural areas. It is
more than 90%, but we need to address some urban issues as well.
I am trying not to see this as urban versus rural, as there are
different issues in different areas, and we need to address all
of them. I have referred to areas that are very hard to reach,
and we are looking at alternatives.
The hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton also raised the
issue of the electronic communications code, and I rather agree
with her that the process is cumbersome. There has obviously been
a new electronic communications code, and I can confirm that we
are looking at implementing the provisions under the Product
Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 that have
not yet been implemented in fairly short order. I hope that we
can make further announcements about that fairly soon, and that
should deal with some of the issues that the hon. Lady is
concerned about. The truth of the matter is that broadband,
mobile connectivity and connectivity in general are as important
as water, electricity and any of the other services on which we
have all come to rely, whether it is for the issues that the hon.
Lady relates in particular about farms, to do with running the
Government or to do with being a member of society.
One of the other areas in which we must do far more—it is a shame
that less has been done over the last 12 years by the
Government—is digital inclusion. We can map areas of digital
deprivation in parts of the country, including in the south-west,
and we need to tackle that. We need to have a whole-Government
approach, part of which is about access, part of which is about
skills and part of which is about tackling poverty. There is a
whole series of different issues, but if we really want to take
the whole country forward into a digital and prosperous future,
we can do so only if we have included every single part of it. As
I said, part of that is about connectivity and the affordability
of connectivity. Part of it is about people understanding that
they need the high speeds talked about by the hon. Member for
Glastonbury and Somerton, and part of it is about having the
skills and understanding to take those issues on.
I am very happy to give an audience to anyone who wants one; they
should approach me as soon as possible, because we have quite a
long list of people who do. However, I see this issue as an
essential part of our delivering an economic future that we can
all be proud of in this country.
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