Digital Economy Bill

Grant Shapps Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Programme motion No. 3: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I agree with every word of the right hon. Lady’s intervention—both the first part and the second. Yes, working with the DFE is incredibly important in building resilience and actively ensuring that people’s health through relationships is taught effectively. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and I have both been in discussions with the DFE on that point. That said, the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) makes an important point about the broader circumstances that should be taken into consideration, as well as the clarity in the amendment, which I hope she welcomes.

Turning to mobile phone contracts—a bit of a shift—new clause 7 seeks to place a mandatory obligation on mobile phone service providers to agree with the customer at the time of their entering into a contract a financial cap on their monthly bill. Since the new clause was first tabled in Committee, we have had further contact with mobile network operators, and providers already offer consumers ways to manage their usage: apps that allow customers to turn financial caps on and off, warning text messages when customers are approaching their allowance limits, dedicated phone numbers that tell the customer their usage, and online tools that explain how much data is needed to carry out different online activities. I expect providers to continue to take steps to minimise bill shock and ensure that their customers are sufficiently equipped to manage their usage, but I am sure that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) will agree that legislation is not currently necessary, although the movement in this direction is.

On new clause 14, I understand the frustrations of people whose mobile experience does not live up to their expectations, but while roaming appears to offer a quick fix, it risks doing more harm than good, because it could undermine the incentive for operators to invest in new infrastructure. This is particularly damaging in areas with no coverage from any provider at all. There is no incentive to invest capital in a new mast if operators can by law simply piggyback off others’ investment. The Government considered roaming in 2014, but for the above reasons it was rejected in favour of licence conditions to drive increased coverage by all mobile operators.

That agreement locked in £5 billion of investment to deliver improved coverage across the UK, and we now have 4G coverage to 97.8% of UK premises. I can confirm that this is happening: a mast was turned on just last weekend in my own constituency, and coverage on the road to Newmarket from my house is now better than it ever has been—so I have seen it for myself. The House will also have seen the recent announcements from mobile providers that they are expanding coverage to meet their 90% landmass requirements, which they must now meet under the contracts in their licence agreements. The Bill strengthens the fines they face if they miss those agreements. Of course, however, we want further improvements. Last week, new planning laws came into force to allow taller masts, and we are reforming the electronic communications code in the Bill to help operators to extend their networks, making mast-sharing easier and infrastructure deployment cheaper. These reforms have been widely welcomed by industry, and Ofcom will hold providers to account for the delivery of wider geographic coverage.

New clauses 20 and 25 seek to place mandatory obligations on mobile phone service providers to allow an end user to terminate their contract upon their being unable to obtain a mobile signal at their main residence or main place of employment. Existing consumer protections are already in place, while the automatic compensation measures in clause 3 strengthen Ofcom’s powers to require automatic compensation when there is a complete failure to provide a contracted service. I think that the ability to break a contract when one’s signal is not good enough at home is already dealt with, as contracts purchased at distance can be cancelled under the statutory 14-day cooling-off period, while for “in shop” purchases there is often a “check your coverage” cooling-off period for the first two weeks after sign up. Some providers also offer extended periods to ensure that the service meets needs, with the option of cancellation without penalty.

[Grant Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that this must be the only product that someone can buy and end up not being able to use? People do not just move house during the first 14 days of a contract; it can happen at any time during the two years of a contract. Will he look again at this?

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[Matt Hancock]

I would say that 5G is the future. As for the hon. Gentleman’s substantive point, I do not want the debate to turn into a seminar on mobile connectivity, but those in the industry have a wonderful phrase for the phenomenon that occurs as more people use data over a particular mast: they say that the coverage “breathes”. In other words, it comes in and goes out as other people use the data. Of course, at any one point in time the coverage may be different. The very best people to conduct the analysis are those at Ofcom, and they are conducting it, so I think it best for us to engage in this particular debate once they have published the “premises by premises” data.

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his offer to incorporate some of the issues raised by the new clauses in the Green Paper. He says that those at Ofcom are the best people to make the decisions. No one in the House, indeed no one in the country, will believe Ofcom’s claim that nearly 98% of UK premises are covered. It does not stack up with reality, and it does not stack up with what the British Infrastructure Group of Members of Parliament found either. I appeal to the Minister to ensure that he does not himself start to believe this nonsense.

[Matt Hancock]

I am looking forward to seeing the data for exactly that reason. In my rural constituency, I can drive for 10 minutes without getting a signal at all—that includes driving past houses—and the same probably applies to many other people. The lived experience is critical to judging whether the figures are broadly correct. I am entirely with my right hon. Friend on that. My job, and our job in the House, is to hold the mobile network operators to account and ensure that they deliver high-quality geographic coverage, whether it is in Rhondda, Welwyn, in Suffolk or, indeed, in Buckinghamshire, Mr Speaker.

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[Helen Goodman]

The right hon. Gentleman said that, but he also said that he thought that this was a difficult area, and one of the reasons why he thought so was that people enjoyed doing it. Grown-ups enjoy having sex and grown-ups enjoy drinking alcohol, but that does not mean that those things are okay for children.

My real purpose this evening is to speak to new clause 26, which I had considerable help from the National Deaf Children’s Society in preparing. The new clause is designed to protect from frequency interference those with hearing loss who have hearing aids, radio aids, cochlear implants and other hearing technologies. Ofcom is about to sell spectrum, and there is a concern that the part of the spectrum that it is going to sell is so close to the wavelength used by such technologies that interference will be caused.

The new clause would place a duty on Ofcom to carry out tests in advance of the sale of the radio frequencies to ensure that any interference is identified and made public and to take appropriate action. That action could take two forms: either Ofcom should not grant a wireless telegraphy licence unless action is taken to remove the risk of interference; or a fund should be established to cover the cost of replacing medical and hearing technology affected by interference. That is important for the 10 million people who suffer from hearing loss and the 45,000 deaf children in this country, and it will enable Ofcom to fulfil its duties under the Equality Act 2010.

The Minister has said that tests have been done and more tests will be done and that we will know what those tests come up with in April 2017, so everything is fine. That is not the view of the National Deaf Children’s Society, which is not confident about the way in which the tests will be carried out. It has undertaken considerable correspondence with the regulator, and there is still dispute about how the tests should be done and how the results should be interpreted. Even if the tests are done and the results published on this occasion, as the Minister suggested, what happens then? What if there is interference? Will the spectrum then not be auctioned off as the Government intend? Will there be some funding for people who have to have new hearing aids as a result? The Minister’s response, I am sorry to say, is not adequate.

Interference will be a problem for children who use radio aids in the classroom to help them to hear what their teachers are saying. Unlike grown-ups, they cannot easily guess what a person is saying, because they are hearing things for the first time. The tests done in 2014 found that someone with a mobile phone using the relevant frequency could interfere with a hearing aid 4 metres away. I know quite a lot about hearing aids, because my husband has terrible hearing and he has two hearing aids. If he goes to a party, he can hardly hear what other people are saying anyway, and if his hearing aids were interfered with by other people standing in the room, it would be a nightmare. I urge the Minister to be flexible and to look at the matter again.

[Grant Shapps]

I rise to support my new clause 25, on the ability of end-users to cancel mobile contracts. It is very similar to new clauses tabled by other hon. Members—indeed, on the last count, by hon. Members from four different parties. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that this will now be considered in the Green Paper that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will bring out next year. However, I want to point out that the idea that a 14-day cooling-off period after purchasing a phone is somehow sufficient for a contract lasting for two years is, frankly, completely inadequate. Some 60% of people now have contracts for two years, and there has been a 19% increase in the number of people with lengthy contracts during the past five or six years.

It in no way negates the problem to say that, if someone realises during the first 14 days they cannot get a signal, they can exchange their contract. What happens if they move or if their place of work moves and they are stuck with such a contract? This problem can actually be solved quite easily. All we need to do is to split out the cost of the device—on average, about £800—from the cost of the mobile contract for the phone and data elements. If we did that, the person could stay within the contract to buy the device, while being able to move to another operator that can provide a contract with the ability to access a signal for phone and data use.

My point is very simple. I think that the briefing on this is extremely misleading. I do not believe that Ofcom is likely to do anything about this in the next year or two. I thank the Minister for his advice that this will be considered in the Green Paper next year, because unless we get a bit more radical, people will be forced to pay hundreds of pounds for a service they quite simply never receive.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I would have liked to speak to new clauses 3, 14 and 21, but I will restrict myself to new clause 13. New clause 13 would introduce a statutory code of practice to improve the performance of social media platforms when dealing with incidents of online abuse that cross the criminal threshold. It would place an obligation on the Minister to issue a code of practice, which would cover the processes and quality of the services provided. Such matters are commonplace in complaints procedures that already exist throughout the public utilities sector.

The code of practice would also cover an industry-specific requirement to set and enforce appropriate privacy settings for minors. This would be drafted after consultation with the industry, the criminal justice system, charities and other key stakeholders. An extensive consultation with a number of a significant bodies would guarantee a comprehensive set of guidelines.

Technology is ever adapting, which is why subsection (4) of new clause 13 states:

“The relevant Minister may from time to time revise and re-issue the code of practice.”

As technology is ever adapting, it is right and proper that legislation protecting vulnerable people from predatory and unacceptable behaviour online should be updated to reflect the dynamic nature of the online world. The new clause would have allowed that. I would have talked about this matter extensively had there been the time, but I hope that the points I would have made will be taken up in another place.