Rural Broadband

Clive Betts Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I call Neil Parish to move the motion.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Betts. It is a great pleasure to work under your chairmanship. Do I have to move the motion now?

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Yes, move the motion—that is the new format.

[Neil Parish]

I do not have it to hand, which is not a good start.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

It is arriving.

[Neil Parish]

Thank you for passing the motion to me, Minister. Don’t worry, once I get going, it will be fine.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered delivery of rural broadband.

Next time, Mr Betts, I will make sure that I know the new procedure. It is a great pleasure to work under your chairmanship. It is a delight to have the Minister here this afternoon, and I shall put some questions to him at the end, which I am sure he will be more than able to answer. I thank hon. Members for turning up this afternoon. We are all concerned not only about rural broadband but about the delivery of broadband throughout the country, which is very significant.

The internet is increasingly important to everyday lives, whether for online shopping, for staying in touch with friends or for all our rural businesses, such as farming and tourism, which are keen to have broadband. Despite a public subsidy of about £1.7 billion, too many consumers, businesses and individuals cannot access broadband. Theoretically, until we had to change the system, farmers were expected to deliver payments online, and next year they will have to, but if they do not have superfast broadband or a good internet connection that will be impossible.

BT owns a lot, if not all, of the infrastructure and is the largest retail provider using it. Ofcom is considering whether to propose separating the infrastructure division, Openreach, from the rest of BT, which would create more competition and mean that BT no longer had a conflict of interest in delivering the high-quality broadband that everyone deserves. I do not know whether this afternoon the Minister will want to be drawn on the question of what should happen to BT. An independent Openreach would improve the quality of service and increase infrastructure investment.

There are two elements to the delivery of superfast broadband in most constituencies: the publicly funded programme—in my constituency, Connecting Devon and Somerset—and the commercially funded roll-out of superfast broadband in larger towns and cities. We must remember, however, that Government and council money is all taxpayers’ money, and we want to see value for it. In earlier debates in the House, we have been very concerned not only about the pace of broadband roll-out but about whether it is being rolled out with value for money for our taxpayers.

For the Devon and Somerset roll-out, the first delivery contract was let to BT and is believed to be on time; it has been suggested that it is also within budget. The target refers to 90% coverage of the area by 2016, but that is where the problem lies in many respects. If roll-out across a constituency or a country is in percentages, people automatically roll out to the areas that are easiest to get to and, all the time, we will have to put public money in to get to those hardest-to-reach areas. I have yet to be convinced that we are getting the necessary value for money from many of the contracts.

If we let one contract get to 90% of the population and another to 95%, and if it is the same company rolling out the broadband, what stops the company from not delivering what it should have done under the first contract but delivering it under the second contract and saying, “Of course it is all too hard to reach. We need more money to reach the hardest-to-reach areas”? One of our problems in Devon and Somerset is that there has not been enough competition in letting the contracts. A contract was let to BT, then a further one was to be let to it again. There has not been enough competition, so there are not enough people out there with wireless connections or different types of technology to keep BT moving. BT has been slow at bringing in the new technologies.

Many Members present have constituencies with a hilly topography and many farms, villages and hamlets are stretched out and a long way from the cabinets and the fibre cable. In the end, there will have to be a system not only of fibre cables but of wireless and other technologies to deliver broadband.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and welcome her to Parliament. She is right. I do not know whether Cheshire is the same, but Devon and Somerset signed a confidentiality clause with BT in the first contract, so that has made it doubly hard. The situation has got better and in Devon and Somerset, websites have been set up and people know roughly where they are going to be. The people at BT argue that is a commercial matter, and if they say they are going to be in a certain place at a certain time and they do not arrive, they leave themselves open to a legal challenge. However, it is still very frustrating for people. I am a little concerned that BT is inclined to move faster when it thinks somebody else might move into the area. It is just a feeling of mine, but I think it is probably shared quite a lot in this Chamber. Perhaps we can ask the Minister about that: does he actually like the confidentiality clauses in these contracts, and would it be better if we did not have them? It would be interesting to see what he has to say about that.

In 2010, Ofcom put regulation in place to allow competing broadband providers access to Openreach national infrastructure and access to passive networks, so that their own fibre to the cabinet or fibre to the home superfast networks could be deployed. That has been helpful for non-BT providers such as Sky and TalkTalk. The majority of superfast investment comes from BT and Virgin Media, and both are investing in upgrading their existing networks. We need, all the time, to keep as much open access as we can.

I turn to Britain’s digital future. The UK has one of the most competitive broadband markets in the world, with lower prices than most other European countries. Once people actually get access to the internet and broadband, they get a very good deal, but it is about making sure that we can get people connected in the first place. The UK has an ambitious digital plan, which will help the economy and result in world-class connectivity, so we are going in the right direction—I thought I ought to put something in this speech to make sure that the Minister felt that I have listened to what he has said. This will help to decrease business costs as well as reduce the cost of public services and help our long-term economic growth. Indeed, it might even help our long-term economic plan, might it not? However, the current market structure is letting Britain down.

There are over 500 different telecom companies, the majority of which depend on Openreach. It is worth remembering that when other sectors were privatised, such as the electricity sector or the rail network, they were prevented from simultaneously owning the infrastructure and being a retail provider. Ensuring that Openreach was independent of BT would help to extend internet coverage, which, in turn, would help to support small local businesses. In addition, that would help to cut back on the red tape and ensure that the process of installing broadband across the country is much more transparent.

I have emails in my inbox from businesses that feel like they are being let down by the Government not getting broadband to them fast enough. I know that the Minister is working hard on that, but it is what people are concerned about. Over 200 businesses have been in touch to say that they do not have the internet connectivity that they need to be able to run their business. Indeed, 75% of Federation of Small Businesses members say that the internet is vital to their businesses. One particular business said that as a result of the internet, its sales increased by 40%, and 46% of members would like faster internet provision. It is extremely important that businesses have good internet speed and access so that they can promote themselves online. It is essential for tourism, shopping and market research.

In rural areas, Broadband Delivery UK intends to roll out superfast broadband to 95% of the UK by 2017, with universal access to broadband speeds of up to 2 megabits. The final 5% is primarily made up of rural areas, which is mostly what we have been talking about today. Although that is only 5% nationally, it probably means that in many of our constituencies, up to 50% of our areas will not be covered. Rural areas also have slower superfast broadband coverage. There are also related technical issues, as rural areas tend to be further away from the cabinets. That means that companies and the Government should be looking at more efficient and cost-effective solutions, which we have largely covered this afternoon. We appreciate that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has announced a £10 million fund to pilot technologies such as satellites to address the problem, but we would like to see more speed due to the negative effect on businesses and constituents. I want to labour this point for a third time. We have not concentrated enough effort and resources, and certainly BT has not, on the different technologies. We will not by 2020, 2021 or 2022 get to the hardest-to-reach areas if we are not using the better and newer technologies to get to them now, because all these things take time. That is what worries us. We are very pleased for all those who have the broadband connection, but we are very worried about our constituents and businesses that do not have it.

Finally, I come to my questions for the Minister. Can he extend competition to keep the pressure on BT to deliver on its contracts more quickly and effectively? Can he persuade BT to use extra technologies, especially in the harder-to-reach areas, to ensure that BT is delivering on its contracts as promised? Will he encourage other companies to bid for contracts to deliver superfast broadband, especially in difficult to reach areas, so that there is local competition in the marketplace? Can businesses and individuals be given vouchers that would go some way towards paying for broadband, which in many cases individuals have to fund privately, out of their own pockets, instead of through the huge taxpayer subsidy that BT is already receiving? Will the Minister keep up the pressure on BT to ensure that it keeps its promises, as already too many people in rural areas do not have broadband and that is only adding to the problems of rural isolation?

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Six hon. Members have applied to speak. I shall restrict the Front Benchers to nine minutes, rather than the usual 10, to allow everyone else five minutes to speak. It is a five-minute time limit, including any interventions, because obviously we are restricted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Elliott]

Absolutely. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention; what he says is right. I do not have an answer as to how reliable the figures are, but obviously the Minister may be able to give us more information on that. Clearly, if fibre optic is in the village, whether it is going to the school or to a cabinet through BT, the real question is why businesses and residents cannot access it. I just do not know. That has not been addressed.

Another issue in the EFRA Committee report that I noticed was not addressed is how farmers in particular, and people in rural areas in general, cannot now access business opportunities. Some of this is just about the simple registration of births of animals. Doing that online is actually very efficient. Someone may make a mistake on a form, and farmers quite often do—I am a farmer myself, so I hold my hand up—but it is very difficult to make one on the electronic form that is submitted, because it will be rejected. In fact, it is almost impossible to make a mistake on the application form that people put in. Many farmers are disadvantaged because they cannot do that online. In Northern Ireland, we can apply for the single farm payment process online, but many farmers in Northern Ireland cannot do that, simply because they do not have broadband availability. Even the dial-ups in Northern Ireland are quite slow—much slower, I am sure, than the broadband or dial-up connection used by the wife of the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton.

We want answers to those questions. I noted that the Minister had referred to two areas, saying that there was 98% and 93% availability of high-speed broadband. The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) referred to Dorset, saying that the last 5% is key. It is the last 45% in Fermanagh and South Tyrone. It is the last 45% in West Tyrone, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) will make the case about his constituency, where I am sure the figure is equally low, so I think—

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Order. That is five minutes.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Betts, for giving me the opportunity to speak in the debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing it. One of our roles as parliamentarians must be to create a level playing field, so that businesses can compete wherever they are situated. I give credit to the Government and to the Minister, because we have seen huge improvements. I am referring to the £1.7 billion of investment, the target of 95% of people getting superfast broadband by 2017 and the fact that we are one of the leading nations in the European Union for broadband access.

However, the issue is not just what we are spending, but where. The key question is whether we have a level playing field. Some 5% do not get good access; they have poor or absent broadband and mobile phone coverage. There is the issue of rural areas gaining access to schemes such as the £3,000 broadband connection voucher scheme, which was aimed only at cities.

As we have heard, broadband is now an essential service. The Institute of Directors names it as its No. 1 priority for businesses. Rural Action Yorkshire says that it is now a “necessity” and that poor mobile coverage and slow broadband make it nearly impossible to run a business. Many businesses in my constituency are struggling to compete. Businesses used to compete just locally, but now businesses compete nationally and internationally. I recently visited a Michelin-starred restaurant in my constituency that is competing against other Michelin-starred restaurants in other parts of the country. If people are sat waiting to be able to book a client in online and the screen will not change, they are losing business. Other companies selling goods online are competing against businesses internationally.

We want to attract great businesses such as architects and graphic designers, but they cannot operate in rural areas with slow broadband, which means that they will relocate out of our areas. They will move to urban areas or places where they will get faster broadband. It is not a level playing field, and that is contributing to a depopulation of young people and businesses, which hampers job creation and investment.

A report by the National Farmers Union recently stated that 40% of farmers are without access to broadband and 90% have no reliable service. Despite that, we expect them to fill in forms, use the common agricultural policy information service, complete VAT returns and manage vehicle tax and animal passports online. North Yorkshire County Council recently announced that its third-stage investment in broadband would still mean that some isolated areas would not get access to high-speed broadband, so those businesses have no prospect of a solution in the foreseeable future.

The position is similar for mobile phone coverage. Yes, there have been improvements, and we are delighted to hear of the £5 billion investment in new masts in our major networks around the UK. On the ground, however, we see little apparent improvement in access to mobile phone coverage.

How do we help rural businesses on to that level playing field? There are solutions, of course. Point-to-point wireless is an effective solution. Fixed-line to wireless and back to fixed-line is another. I am grateful to the Minister for agreeing to meet in October one of my providers, Moorsweb, which provides those excellent solutions in my area. Its business model is contingent on finding long-term customers in its area, but as soon as it achieves market penetration, BT or Openreach can come into the area and take those customers back. As a result, Moorsweb has no long-term customer base, which is a disincentive to it to invest. It is a good, not-for-profit organisation that is keen to deliver a service to local people, but when it invests, there is no long-term return. We need to make sure that such providers have security of commercial opportunity.

Effectively, we have a market failure. The bundling of BT with Openreach almost disincentivises the company from rolling out superfast broadband to industrial estates, where it already has leased lines—

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry to cut the hon. Gentleman off, but we have to move on to the next contribution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I will try to make my contribution short, because the Minister appears to have a little list—in fact, it appears to be a large list. It probably has the names of all our constituencies on it and how things are improving, so I will allow him a little more time to engage in dialogue with Members about that.

We have had a good debate, introduced by the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). A lot of thoughtful speeches have been made. I was interested to hear the hon. Gentleman speak about the importance of value for money and how we deal with broadband in the hardest-to-reach areas. There has been a great deal of discussion about businesses and their receipt of broadband, or in many cases about how they cannot receive it properly. Furthermore, if we consider business development and rural regeneration, we see that there is an untapped source of private regeneration involving home workers living in rural areas, perhaps travelling sometimes to a company in the city. For that group, too, it is vital for there to be good access to broadband in rural areas.

I will not be able to mention all the speeches made by hon. Members, but I would like to draw attention to a couple of them, including the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith). She made the important point that farms today must often diversify their business, and good broadband is vital for that. She also spoke about Broadband for the Rural North, which seems to be doing a valiant job.

My Welsh colleague and neighbour the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) spoke about Superfast Cymru, which I think we all agree is a good programme that will deliver real improvements. The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) referred to Access Broadband Cymru. Although Conservative Members do not always praise what is happening in Wales, there is widespread agreement that that is an excellent initiative that deserves serious consideration.

This always happens at the summer recess: we come back and discuss the Government’s failure to deliver rural broadband. The Minister makes another speech; he often comes with a little list. We wonder whether the Prime Minister could not get mobile coverage on Polzeath beach during the summer, or whether it was difficult for him to chillax in his holiday cottage, but whatever it was, the view is always that something must be done, and the Minister is always dispatched here to tell us that he is the person to do it.

However, the facts are fairly simple. We all know, especially those of us from rural communities, that far too many parts of the country do not have any broadband coverage whatever. Some areas cannot get the most basic broadband at 2 Mbps, which is not even fast enough to watch iPlayer, and the roll-out of that basic broadband is three or four years late. Some people are still unconnected now, in 2015. The Minister says that the Government will provide basic broadband in 2015, while the Department for Culture, Media and Sport website says that it will be 2016. It would be interesting to hear which year we are talking about.

The Government are considering a minimum requirement or universal service obligation; I know that that has been raised in various speeches in this debate, including by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach). However, I believe that the universal service obligation that the Minister has discussed is only 5 Mbps, not the 10 Mbps that Ofcom says we need as minimum. Why has he not listened to Ofcom? Perhaps he has, and can clarify or even correct me.

The level up from basic broadband is superfast. The Government’s target is 24 megabits per second, but even that target is a long way short of what Ofcom and the EU call superfast, namely 30 megabits per second. Why do the Government promote that dodgy definition? They promised the

“best superfast network in Europe”,

but their broadband scorecard does not even measure its speed. At the same time, research shows that our rivals are speeding ahead. One study even showed that Ukraine’s capital has faster broadband than ours. Why is Kiev faster than London? The Government missed their superfast roll-out deadline of May 2015 and shifted it back by two and a half years to December 2017.

The Minister is writing furiously; I hope that he will correct me and bring the deadline forward a bit. Even the 2017 deadline is only a hope, as senior BT executives and almost half of councils have warned that it could be 2018 before the roll-out to 95% of the country is finished. Is the Minister really going to get up and say that BT Openreach has been doing a brilliant job or will he get things sorted?

The Government designed the tender process for superfast roll-out so that it was virtually impossible for any company other than BT to win. The hon. Member for Eddisbury and the hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey) also raised points in connection with that. What was the result? Funnily enough, BT Openreach won 44 out of 44 contracts, and its monopoly on the existing copper network was reinforced. BT Openreach delivers the Government’s delayed roll-out.

Although it is nominally at arm’s length from BT, Ofcom says that it still has an “incentive to discriminate” in favour of the rest of BT Group. Ofcom is now considering whether the situation provides an unfair advantage to BT and whether BT Openreach should be split off in the interests of transparency and fair competition. The Opposition believe that the situation is now so bad that Ofcom’s review should work on the presumption that BT Openreach should be split from the rest of BT unless the review produces conclusive evidence to the contrary. Surely the Government, apparently wishing to champion free enterprise—at least some of the time—should consider that view.

Beyond the existing roll-out, at least there is a plan for getting superfast broadband to 95% of the population, even if it is two and a half years late. The Government do not seem to have any plan whatever for how to get superfast broadband to the final 5% of the population, let alone how to pay for it. It is not 5% of the population, however, because as the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton made clear, we are talking about 50% in certain areas. The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Tom Elliott) spoke of similar proportions in Northern Ireland. The Government have pilots looking at different ways to get to that 5%. When will those pilots definitely report? Will the Minister confirm the story in the Financial Times that he is considering an industry levy of £500 million?

The Government have missed target after target on basic and superfast broadband, and yet despite their record of failure, they are setting themselves another goal to miss. [Interruption.] The Minister smiles; he is going to correct me. The Government have set their sights on an ambition that ultrafast broadband should be available to nearly all UK premises. They plan to review progress against that ambition annually, starting in April 2016. Will the Minister commit today that the review will be conducted independently and then published for proper scrutiny? Will the Government be able to deliver on all their goals? At the Edinburgh TV festival, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport got the definition of “superfast” and “ultrafast” wrong. He said that it was “up to” not “at least” 24 and 100 megabits per second. That does not fill us with confidence.

What does the Government’s performance mean for rural communities up and down the land? Many of us fear that broadband is too slow and too late for many people and that the Government are creating a digital divide. We all rely on the internet. Broadband has become as much a public utility as electricity and water. People in rural communities expect decent, high-speed, reliable broadband. We all shop online, pay our vehicle duty and council tax digitally and check deliveries on the go on our mobiles and tablets.

We want high-speed, reliable broadband for social media, for catch-up TV and iPlayer. The NHS orders drugs, shares patient records and sends x-rays and test results online. Farmers are supposed to register and receive their common agricultural payments online. Builders and plumbers rely on internet searches for new clients and many of the burgeoning new industries, such as video games, are entirely dependent on the fastest possible broadband. Rural communities need broadband to diversify economically. Reliable superfast internet and mobile connections are essential for farmers who want to diversify their business, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood said, and for the geographically isolated. It is not an added extra any more; it is essential for every aspect of our lives and the economy. That is why we hope that the Government will get a grip and deliver decent rural broadband, so that the Minister might have a glimmer of good news for us for once.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

May I ask the Minister to finish at two minutes to the hour to allow Mr Parish two minutes to wind up?

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I hope that you will signal the time to me, because I get so passionate and carried away about the subject. In fact, in the previous debate, I was meant to finish two minutes early, but I forgot because I had so much to say—not just a glimmer of good news, but a bucketful.

In the same way as we had a debate at the end of the previous parliamentary session, we meet early in the new parliamentary session to celebrate the world’s most successful state-sponsored broadband programme. Our cousins in Australia look at the UK and at their own broadband programme, which has not yet started and has already doubled in cost. Our cousins in America look at their rural broadband connection programme, which is much more expensive than ours and delivers to far fewer homes. Our European cousins in the big four member states look at us and see the UK powering ahead. They are celebrating our unequivocal success story. As I look at the thousands of homes being connected in the constituencies represented here today by my hon. Friends and hon. Members, I can say only that I am delighted to be the steward of this highly successful programme.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) for calling the debate, because it allows me to once again rehearse some of the landmarks. Most of the debates begin with hon. Friends and hon. Members saying how important broadband is for rural communities. I get that point, which is why we started the programme in 2010. We understood that rural communities needed broadband and we also understood that it would not be delivered commercially. In Brecon and Radnorshire, not a single home in that constituency would get broadband under a commercial roll-out scheme. It is entirely subsidised by our rural broadband scheme because companies do not go where they cannot get a return on their investment. We are all agreed on that.

I notice a change of tone in the debate. Because we are now focusing on the last 5%, there is a quiet acknowledgement that the main job is done; we will get to 95% and now we need a solution for the last 5%. I understand that the role of the Opposition is to pick holes, particularly when they have no policy of their own. The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) has to tread carefully; her party is in power in Wales. She lives in a world in which superfast broadband roll-out in Wales is going absolutely fantastically well and it is a disaster just in England, so we can discount pretty much everything she has said.

Let me remind hon. Members what the Government have said from the outset. In 2010 we said that we had a certain amount of money and would get to 90% of the homes in the UK by the end of 2015. I am still confident that we will do that. We have never changed that target. People think that we moved the goal posts; we have not. The programme was going so well that the Chancellor gave us more money, so we said that we would get to 90% by 2015 and use the extra money to get to 95% by 2017. So we have always said 90% and 95%. And I am no fool: I know that that means that we were not going to get to the last 5%. However, I also said as we approached our targets that we would look at how we get to the last 5%, and all my hon. Friends know—they have seen the curve—the enormous expense of getting to the most hard to reach premises.

Nevertheless, we have been working on that. Two Secretaries of State ago—under my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller)—we set out very clearly a £10 million fund to pilot new technologies to get to the last 5%, because we did not want to go to the Treasury, give them a back-of-the-envelope costing and say, “Give us 2 billion and I think we could probably get to the last 5%.” We wanted to see whether we could drive down the cost and we wanted a good idea of what the cost would be. The good news is that we have a range of different providers already delivering to homes that count in the last 5%—in terms of competition, that is good news—and we are now actively working on a solution for the last 5%.

In the eight minutes I have left, let me address some of the points that have been raised. I completely accept the point that has been made about clarity. It is important to remember that this project is a partnership with local authorities. Every local authority that is managing one of these schemes should publish on a map where superfast broadband is going. I say to any hon. Member who has an example of a local authority that is not doing that to let me know please, and I will personally ring the chief executive of that council to ask why that is the case.

It is the case that sometimes the target is relatively flexible, because when someone is on the ground actually delivering broadband it is important for us to remember that they are part of an engineering project. Delivering broadband is not about flicking a switch; trenches have to be dug, cabinets have to be put in and power has to be put in. Sometimes, providers allow an element of wiggle room, but people should be able to get clarity.

As far as competition is concerned, the process was competitive; the 44 contracts were let as part of a competitive process. However, let us not forget that European state aid rules require open access for anyone who builds a network using state aid money. That is why Virgin did not compete with BT for these contracts. But there will be competition for the last 5%, because we are showing that smaller providers can come in for these smaller contracts. Nevertheless, we wanted to get to as many homes as quickly as possible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton asked about new technology. BT is already introducing new technology, G.fast, which uses existing infrastructure to get speeds of up to 300 megabits a second, as well as fibre to the remote node. As I said earlier, one of the reasons that we have these pilots is to test new technology for the last 5%.

My hon. Friends have asked about vouchers, which brings me to the solutions for the last 5%. We are looking at a whole range of solutions. Funnily enough, some of the last 5% is in cities and we are looking for a bespoke solution for that; there might be a voucher solution, or a fund that companies can bill into. And yes, it is no secret that a universal service obligation is under consideration. We hope to announce our proposals towards the end of the year, to coincide with the spending review. However, it is our intention to get to 100%, in effect, by the end of this Parliament.

My hon. Friend also asked us to keep BT’s feet to the fire. We keep BT’s feet to the fire; we meet with BT regularly. As he will know, any Member of this House who comes to me with concerns about roll-out in their constituency will have a meeting with me, and BT will be asked to respond to those concerns.

I was asked whether we could rely on BT’s statistics. In the middle of August, I was very pleased to be able to say that we had passed the landmark of 3 million homes, and by the end of 2017 we should have about reached about 5 million homes. The 3 million figure is an audited statistic of premises that are capable of receiving speeds of at least 24 megabits a second. Roughly speaking, probably by the end of this month we will have reached 3.5 million homes, but we will not announce that as an official figure because it will not have been audited. We only announce figures that have been properly audited.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) talked about making people aware of superfast broadband. It is important to make people aware of it, because the more people who take it up the more money we get back. In fact, under the terms of the contract BT has paid back £129 million early; by the way, it did so earlier than it had to under the terms of the contract. That means that with the same money we might reach 96% of the country rather than 95%. We had a superfast broadband campaign towards the end of last year. Of course, we were mocked for spending money on that campaign, but it drove up take-up and pulled back money to allow us to go further.

I also take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton about a time limit for BT where it has said that it will roll out broadband commercially in an area and is effectively putting a block on a competitor that might wish to go into that area. I will take that point away with me and ensure that we can make progress.

I am an unequivocal fan of this programme, because—obviously—I am responsible for it but also because I am the only one who seems able to talk about its benefits. I always like to hear speeches that refer to how well we have done and that simply request improvements, because that is the approach I take. We are doing well; we have hit all our targets; we are technically under budget; and this project is probably the most impactful and most successful Government infrastructure project of the last five years.

I will not take lessons from the Opposition. We had to write off £50 million of investment in South Yorkshire from a contract negotiated by the last Labour Government to deliver superfast broadband. They had a pathetic target of 2 megabits a second by the end of 2012. Members can imagine what kind of debate we would be having today if I was standing before you now and saying, “Well, we reached our 2 megabits target in 2012. What on earth are you complaining about?”

As for the absurd suggestion that London has worse broadband than Ukraine, that is for the birds. It is the finding of a bogus survey put forward by a rival of BT, and my hon. Friends must remember that everyone in this debate always has an angle; this marketplace is a highly competitive one and we will always hear from other people saying that they can do a better job. My hon. Friends should also remember that we lead the big five; that this country has the highest rate of e-commerce, so some people must be able to get online to buy goods; that two thirds of the people in the country have smartphones; that we have the fastest roll-out of 4G anywhere in the world and we will reach 98% of premises with 4G by the end of 2017; and that the Government have also negotiated a landmark deal with the mobile companies to get to 90% geographical coverage, because we do not forget rural areas or the roads that our rural constituents have to drive on. So I look forward to a weekly debate on broadband, so as to continue to celebrate this fantastically successfully programme.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I call Neil Parish to wind up, on behalf of himself and, no doubt, Mrs Parish. [Laughter.]