Ultrafast Broadband: Devon and Somerset

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the roll-out of ultrafast broadband in Devon and Somerset.

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. Although in many ways being the MP for North Devon is an immense privilege, our broadband connectivity is not one of the constituency’s finer features. On the doorsteps during the election campaign of 2019, getting broadband done was second only to getting Brexit done.

Ever since, I have taken every opportunity to raise the plight of my constituents’ poor connectivity. I have taken on chairing the all-party parliamentary group on broadband and digital communication, where we also campaign tirelessly for better connectivity in colleagues’ not-spots, including the majority of Devon and Somerset, which is more not-spotty than not.

The sorry state of broadband across Devon and Somerset stems back many years, many contracts and, in my mind, a decision by Connecting Devon and Somerset in 2015 to reject BT’s £35 million bid to connect our counties. BT was clear then that it could not meet the 95% superfast target by 2017; here we are in 2022, with south-west England still at only 92% and my constituency at just 87% connected. That decision set off a chain of events that I suspect colleagues across Devon and Somerset will also reference today. It has sent our constituencies to the bottom of the superfast pile. My constituency, at 607, does not win the race to the bottom in Devon and Somerset, with central Devon in at number 643. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) could not be with us today, but wanted me to ensure that I mentioned his concerns, with his constituency languishing at 631.

Although CDS does its utmost to connect us, the nature of the contracting process has not attracted the big boys of broadband to our contracts. We remain a technology roll-out behind much of the country, with confusion as gigabit rolls out alongside superfast. I am not sure many residents are clear which fibre is which, or how much we may be missing out on by not even having superfast.

CDS notes that the UK’s superfast programme was predicated on an assumption that the commercial sector would deliver for two thirds of premises, leaving the programme to deliver the remaining third. In the main, across the CDS region, that ratio has been inverted, with CDS needing to deliver closer to two thirds; in more rural parts of the region, CDS has on occasion delivered more than 80% coverage.

Bizarrely, our gigabit availability, relative to the rest of the country, is nothing like so poor, reaching more than 27% of the constituency, ranking us at 399. The commercially viable parts of my constituency, like so many all over the country, are being fibred—over-fibred—offering great competition to those constituents who live in conurbations. We need to find a way to connect rural Britain, as well. Why is choice only found in town or city? My concerns about being over-fibred are different from many. It happens when the CDS contracts overlap with an extended commercial build.

The complexity of the process of connecting Devon and Somerset cannot be overestimated. I know we have to look forward and cannot change the past, but the future looks as though it will go the same way—and that we can influence. Delivering gigabit-capable broadband to the depths of Devon and Somerset is a monumental engineering task. It is clearly not commercially viable, and reaching the ultimate target of 100% gigabit capability is not happening any time soon.

Pondering today’s debate, I was keen not to repeat the anecdotes about persuading Openreach to connect schools, charities and all of Lynton and Lynmouth, using the funicular railway as home for the fibre, but it would be remiss not to mention how the voucher scheme does work, as Lynton and Lynmouth have shown and Chulmleigh will show.

However, Lynton and Lynmouth were the subject of a special Openreach project. Together, they form the fourth biggest town in my constituency, yet they were an Openreach special rural build. Accessing the vouchers has worked well, but when a constituency has 93 villages, as mine does, it is difficult to know how many of them will access the voucher scheme and make it work.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that local councils have an important role to play in promoting community fibre partnerships? West Devon Borough Council has recruited a community broadband officer, who is now recruiting broadband champions throughout the small villages of west Devon. Cannot local councils play an important role in promoting community fibre partnerships?

[Selaine Saxby]

I agree entirely with my right hon. and learned Friend, who is my constituency neighbour. There is much that our local councils can do, and are already doing, to support the work of Connecting Devon and Somerset, and Openreach. Where it works, as it is now in Chulmleigh, in my constituency, it works incredibly well. My right hon. and learned Friend’s constituency shares many features with mine: we have lots of very small villages. I am concerned about these hard-to-reach areas, which I will come to.

I and many colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton, who could not attend the debate, are keen to pass on our grateful thanks to Openreach for its help with these partnerships and for extending its commercial build. We hope that Openreach will be able to extend further into the fields and moors of our beautiful constituencies.

The target of 85% gigabit-capable broadband coverage by 2025 leaves me fearful that Devon and Somerset could be the missing 15%. Our rural constituencies are not suddenly going to become commercially viable. The £5 billion funding pot is there, but the contracts, the engineers and the plan to infill is not. Project Gigabit is committed to deliver, and I know Building Digital UK and CDS are committed to delivering, but we cannot infill until we know where the commercial building will be, which is still years away. We need to find a way of looking at rural Britain to redefine commerciality for our rurality.

The very hard-to-reach premises, otherwise known as rural Devon and Somerset, are not currently served by any CDS contracts or commercial plans. They are the most remote and rural premises, and will not get any less so as time goes on. The voucher schemes and community fibre partnerships are simply not viable, as the cost per premises will far exceed the support available. Yes, there has been a consultation, but we need action and some creative solutions. I do not want to forecast that we will become the 15% that is not connected, but that increasingly seems to be the direction of travel.

CDS itself is keen to accelerate the deployment of resources from Project Gigabit, particularly relating to the very hard-to-reach premises. This piecemeal marketplace makes the entire situation more complex. CDS asks for clarity, alongside support for ever-smaller schemes and community-led solutions. My own hope is that one of the bigger players in the market will look at Devon and Somerset as an opportunity to show its understanding of the challenges we face in rural Britain, and sweep through to prevent us becoming ever more digitally divided.

When I talk about levelling up North Devon, the infrastructure I am talking about is not road or rail, but broadband. Our poor connectivity holds everything back. We are never going to get geographically less remote, but we could be far better digitally connected, making so many more things accessible. If we are to level up Britain, then levelling up rural access to ultrafast broadband is essential. I do not expect a six-lane motorway to Ilfracombe, but to unlock the potential of rural Devon and Somerset we need look no further than access to ultrafast broadband as the bedrock of our levelling-up journey.

Today, we are speaking about becoming gigabit capable, but what about the shocking fact that the south-west has almost twice the proportion of homes below the broadband universal service obligation than the national average? We have 4.2%, as opposed to 2.5% nationally. In west Devon, 12.4% are below the universal service obligation, which is the eighth worst in the country. The issue is the depth of this divide, the length of time it has prevailed and the fact there is not a clear plan to fix it. I know we have to wait for commercial builds, and I know more is being built this way than originally planned, but I have schools whose catchments are twice the size of Birmingham. The geography is immense. I would like to invite the Minister to come and see the challenges we are up against, as from Westminster it is hard to ever fully understand what rurality and a digital divide look like.

The complexity of connecting Devon and Somerset is not to be underestimated. I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who listens to me bang this drum: the suppliers such as Jurassic, Openreach, Airband, Truespeed and Wessex Internet, alongside the tireless work of CDS and BDUK. But just as a gigabit is really fast, we would like our rural roll-out to go a bit faster—100% superfast would be a great start.

Oral Answers to Questions

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

2. What assessment he has made of the potential effect on the protection of human rights of the UK leaving the EU.

[The Attorney General (Mr Geoffrey Cox)]

The United Kingdom has a long tradition of ensuring that rights and liberties are protected domestically and of fulfilling its international human rights obligations. Our departure from the European Union will not change that.

[Afzal Khan]

There are real concerns about whether the UK will remain a signatory to the European convention on human rights as we leave the European Union. The convention has led to changes in UK law that protect victims of trafficking, tackle workplace discrimination and ensure the rights of disabled people. Can the Attorney General guarantee that this Government will never withdraw from the convention in any circumstance?

[The Attorney General]

I am grateful for this opportunity to reassert the Government’s complete commitment to our membership of and subscription to the European convention on human rights.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I welcome what the Attorney General has just said. Will he take the opportunity to remind many people that the United Kingdom is one of the founding fathers of the convention that gave rise to the ECHR—not least in the person of Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, a distinguished Conservative lawyer-politician? I know my right hon. and learned Friend will want to continue in that tradition.

[The Attorney General]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend and, if I may, I offer him a word of congratulation on his recent knighthood. I am delighted to welcome him in his new incarnation as Sir Bob.

My hon. Friend will know I agree with him that, as we leave the European Union, the country and the world should know that this nation stands for liberty, freedom and human rights. One mark of our standing for those values will be our continued vigorous participation in the Council of Europe and our subscription to the convention on human rights. That should not mean that we do not turn a critical eye to elements of the human rights structures in our country, and we will look at those in the time to come.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Although I welcome most of what the Attorney General has just said, the Tory manifesto says:

“We will update the Human Rights Act and administrative law”.

Yesterday, at Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister said that judicial review should not be

“abused to conduct politics by another means or to create needless delays.”—[Official Report, 15 January 2020; Vol. 669, c. 1019.]

Can the Attorney General tell us which recent court decisions have been about conducting politics or causing needless delays?

[The Attorney General]

It has been an enormous pleasure to appear opposite the hon. Gentleman. He is a distinguished historian, a distinguished politician and an experienced barrister.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Flattery won’t help you.

[The Attorney General]

Of course it will.

The hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) knows I will not be drawn into commenting on individual cases, but what I can say is that there are widespread concerns throughout our society and throughout this House as to whether judicial review is sometimes being used in a manner, often through frivolous applications, that needs better focus and care in its procedures and tests. We will have a look at that to see whether the elements of judicial review could be better designed to serve its purpose of holding the Government to account for their administrative decisions.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I always welcome compliments, but I did not detect an answer to the question from the Attorney General. He often says that he is a lawyer first and a politician second. He knows that Governments are sometimes vindicated in the courts and that they also face decisions from the courts that are uncomfortable. The answer is never to attack the independence of our judiciary or our courts system. There is a real worry that the Prime Minister is seeking some sort of vengeance because he did not like the Supreme Court’s decision that his prorogation of Parliament was unlawful. Does the Attorney General agree that if we are to weaken judicial review, it will be not the Prime Minister who loses out, but all our constituents whose rights to hold public authorities to account are watered down?

[The Attorney General]

There is no question of weakening judicial review. The question is whether we can make it more efficient and streamlined, and more focused on the purpose: holding the Government to account for their administrative decisions. Even the hon. Gentleman will have to accept that some judicial review cases have been brought that should perhaps never have been started—often they are indeed thrown out by the courts—and we can prevent the courts being clogged up with those applications. So I say to him: let us wait and see. The Government are looking at this extremely carefully, but I want him to understand one thing: there is no question of backsliding upon the fundamental principle of the independence of the judiciary.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I welcome the Attorney General back to his place on the Government Bench, but it was from the Back Benches, in February 2017, that he made a superb speech on the human rights of unaccompanied asylum seeking children, calling on the Government not just to pay “lip service” to those rights, but to make them “practical and effective”. So if the Government are genuinely committed to making those Dublin rights effective post-Brexit, why do they not just unilaterally decide to continue to accept unaccompanied children with family members here? Why are the Government seeking to repeal even the modest obligations to negotiate their rights under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018?

[The Attorney General]

We are not seeking to repeal this; we are simply removing the statutory requirement to negotiate it. The Government wrote in October last year seeking commencement of negotiation on family reunification. The principle is fundamental and one to which the Government are committed: vulnerable, unaccompanied children must be able to reunite with their family members in this country.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

3. What steps the CPS is taking to improve the prosecution rate for hate crimes.