Ian C. Lucas
Main Page: Ian C. Lucas (Labour - Wrexham)
Eric Ollerenshaw
It is a pity that the hon. Gentleman has to reduce this matter to party politics given that there has been a genuine attempt across parties to get it right. I remind him that for 13 years nothing at all happened except the decline of those villages. I said that those involved had the best intentions and were trying to get the best results, as are the Government, and many of us are still working to do that.
We might lose our big society project but, more importantly, although the broadband that will come to the hills of Lancashire will be great and will mean that children and farmers in my area will finally be able to get on to the internet, it is estimated that most of that will be down copper wires or by satellite, so when the next stage comes, as the technical experts my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border and the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central understand far better than I do, we will end up, yet again, with the same divide between rural and urban England.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman clarify something? I understand that Lancashire county council is probably the first local authority to put such provision out to tender. Has it tendered on the basis of coverage being provided by one operator for the whole county or has it left open the possibility of different operators providing services in different parts of the county?
Eric Ollerenshaw
My understanding is that it is one operator, but I stand to be corrected on that. It is also my understanding that it is attempting to take into account my concerns and those of the villages in my constituency.
Everyone in this arena is trying to get this done. We all understand what the issue is and that it needs to be dealt with now. All I am trying to do is explain the examples from my constituency. We may well get something in rural Lancashire, but it might be something that in a couple of years’ time prevents us from getting to the next stage. I hope that we do not miss that bus and end up with yet another division between rural and urban areas. I hope that the Government will understand that as they plot to achieve the 98% coverage that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border wants to see. We must take into account the communities and the fact that they themselves want to contribute to achieve something. If we get that right, we will get it right for more than a generation.
Andrew Stephenson
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. What is surprising about his constituency and mine is that many of the properties that suffer from slow speeds are short distances from the exchanges that serve them. However, the technology used is so old, archaic and lacking in investment that such problems continue year in, year out.
I applaud what the Government have announced so far, particularly the initiative announced last October, which earmarked four rural areas—unfortunately not including Lancashire—for a pilot scheme for the next generation of high-speed broadband, in addition to setting aside £50 million for investment in the second wave of internet test projects. But the £830 million that the Government have pledged to create the best broadband network in Europe by 2015 will be spent in vain unless those living in more remote areas—
Andrew Stephenson
I am happy to agree with the hon. Gentleman on that figure. My key point is that that money will have been spent in vain unless it benefits those in rural areas as well as those in urban areas across the country.
Owing to the rural, coastal and sparsely populated nature of Lancashire, there is a real fear that our county could be left behind. A pan-Lancashire proposal endorsed by the local enterprise partnership has been drawn up. It is supported by Blackburn with Darwen borough council, Blackpool council and Lancashire county council. It estimates that, under current proposals, only 66% of premises will have superfast broadband by 2015, leaving 34% without. Needless to say, the 34% will predominantly be in the kind of rural communities that hon. Members have been describing today.
The pan-Lancashire proposal seeks to address that shortfall, and the outline proposal for £15 million of funding from the European regional development fund, which my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) mentioned earlier, has now been submitted. Lancashire has also submitted a funding proposal for £13 million from the £530 million that the Government are investing through Broadband Delivery UK. I commend that proposal to the Minister and urge him to do even more to connect our rural communities. As many of my constituents in rural communities whose broadband speed is currently less than 1 megabit have said, the adverts for services offering 100 megabit broadband are simply a bad joke.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) on securing this enjoyable debate, and for putting together a formidable array of talent to present the case for their areas around the UK—we heard a brief intervention earlier from a Member from Scotland. The hon. Gentleman has established himself as an assiduous and powerful advocate of the construction of a viable broadband service because of the nature of his beautiful constituency and other rural constituencies. It was good to hear a Government Member giving high praise in the Chamber to a Mandelson, for which I am sure he is very grateful.
There is, of course, a lot of common ground in this debate. We all believe in the importance of a broadband network. The Countryside Alliance has presented evidence that a broadband network is essential to the viability of a living countryside. Development in communications is a massive opportunity for the countryside, provided that a viable broadband network is constructed.
We all accept that there is a market failure in the broadband sphere. Most accept that two thirds of the country will not be adequately provided for by the market alone and that Government action is needed to remedy that market failure. It is important to talk about some definitions if we are to make progress on the common ground that exists between the political parties. We have to be clear what we are talking about and the terminology that we are using. The first important phrase is “universal broadband”. By this I mean that all should have access to broadband services. The previous Labour Government had a commitment to introduce universal broadband services, up to a speed of 2 megabits by 2012.
Until last week, the Government had assiduously avoided using the word “universal”, as far as I could detect. Instead, they continued to use the formula that their aim was to introduce the best high-speed broadband in Europe by 2015. They avoided defining exactly what that would be. But last week we made some progress, because the Government made it clear—for the first time, as far as I am aware—that their target was to provide universal broadband by 2015. That is a three-year delay in the costed target introduced by the previous Labour Government. If hon. Members get complaints from constituents with no broadband provision, they should blame the Government.
That delay is very bad news, because universal broadband is hugely important. First, it is important to the private sector. Competitive businesses in our modern economy, wherever they are, must have access to the broadband network. Without it, they will be at a substantial competitive disadvantage, and that will be bad news especially for businesses in rural areas.
Duncan Hames
I note the hon. Gentleman’s comments about the changed timetable. Will he tell us whether the previous Government, as recently as 12 months ago, were on track to meet that 2012 deadline?
Ian Lucas
We were on track to meet that deadline. It was costed, and the £200 million that would have been used to do that would have been taken from the same money that the current Government are using in connection with their broadband commitment. For the outside world—although not for this Government—a year is a very long time. I am not aware of any questioning by the industry of the commitment made by the Labour Government. The position was deliverable, but this Government have decided to put back that universal broadband target by three years.
Chi Onwurah
Is it not true to say that we have little or no information on the progress that has been made by this Government towards meeting their unclear and undefined target of the best broadband by 2015?
Ian Lucas
Absolutely. The Minister is always very polite in his answers to parliamentary questions, but he is also very good at drafting uninformative replies, something that I worked very hard to achieve when I was a Minister. I was not quite as good at it as he is.
The provision of universal broadband services is also very important to the public sector. Online services are a massive opportunity for government at all levels to provide better services more quickly and more efficiently. However, the Government can move in that direction only if they provide those services to everyone across the country. For example, I understand that the Government intend to move to the compulsory online registration of new companies. As the former responsible Minister, I understand the reasons—costs and efficiency—for this decision, but one can justify such a move only if there is universal broadband provision across the UK. A company with no access to the internet cannot be required by the Government to use it.
If we are to have universal broadband by 2015, what will it cost? Through parliamentary questions, I have established—I did get some information—that the cost of providing universal fibre-to-the-premises provision would be £29 billion, and that more realistically universal fibre-to-the-cabinet provision would cost £5 billion. We agree that there is a market failure and that the Government have sought to address it by setting aside the £530 million by 2015 mentioned several times today. However, we all accept that that is not enough, so we must look to the private sector for the necessary investment to bridge that investment gap.
On definitions, the Government are not just committing themselves to universal broadband; they are committing themselves to the best high-speed broadband in Europe by 2015. It will be helpful if the Minister tells us today what speed he regards as high speed for these purposes. If we are to work together for the benefit of our constituents to achieve that target, we must know what it means.
We know that insufficient public money is available to achieve the Government’s goals by 2015, so let us consider the position for private investment. How is that going? Here, I regret to say, there is a problem that was referred to by a couple of Government Members, including the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). On 1 April the Minister received correspondence—no coincidence perhaps—in which senior executives of leading communications companies, including Fujitsu, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Geo and Vtesse Networks, wrote that “urgent intervention” was needed to require BT to revise the pricing for the use of its infrastructure. The companies also stated that without such intervention the Broadband Delivery UK process risked a lack of vigorous competition, and as a result would fail to deliver the investment, quality, speed of roll-out, innovation and value for money that the industry was capable of delivering, and which taxpayers deserved. That is a major problem for the necessary private investment.
The communications network under Labour was extremely competitive. For example, in the past three years, competition has seen the cost of mobile broadband fall from £50 per gigabyte to less than £10 per gigabyte.
Alun Cairns
If the network was so competitive under the former Administration, why are we ranked only 26th in the world for average broadband speed?
Ian Lucas
The previous Government made massive advances in the provision of broadband services and internet services over a very long period. I am proud of our record. Had the Government stuck to the same targets, we would have achieved much more progress than has been achieved to date. I now hear from providers, and the Minister has been told in correspondence from them that without urgent intervention there will be a lack of vigorous competition in the marketplace, so what action is he taking in response to these representations?
I wish to raise one more concern with the Minister. It is now clear that responsibility for the delivery of broadband services in particular geographical areas in England is to be the responsibility of local authorities, which might create a patchwork of provision across England. Different local authorities will attach different priorities to the advancement of the network. We heard from the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) about the issues affecting Lancashire. I was pleased to hear that the tendering process in the North Yorkshire pilot area seems to have begun, even though the pilots were announced as long ago as last October. There are particular issues when it comes to the provision of services and tender documents by local authorities. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that each local authority makes the progress needed to achieve the targets he has outlined?
I was interested to hear that Somerset and Devon are working together on their pilot project in the south-west. One of the drivers for that is the superior provision in Cornwall, which has been assisted by European funding that is unavailable in Devon. Hon. Members from Wales may be interested to know that the provision of broadband in Wales and Scotland has de facto—if not de jure—been assigned to the Welsh Assembly Government and the Scottish Government respectively. Responsibility for delivering services in Wales and Scotland will essentially be dealt with at the Assembly or Scottish Parliament level. A patchwork is already developing across the UK. It is important not to lose sight of the need for a national network. We do not need a lot of small “railways” running in individual areas without their being linked together. Although having small, big society projects set up networks is appealing, there is a danger of the networks not working effectively together. There are tensions between the small and larger projects. It is important that we maintain a competitive network.
I am sorry that I have not been able to deal with the numerous contributions made today. However, I am sure that the Minister has heard the strength of feeling from Government and Opposition Members, and that he will use the video in his negotiations with the Treasury, because there will come a time when some of the bids being made now will be turned down, and that is when government starts to get difficult. Saying yes is easy; saying no is always more challenging.