Phone and Broadband Coverage (Herefordshire)

Debate between Jason McCartney and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Jesse Norman]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that remark. If I listed all my constituents who are affected, it would take a full day and a half of debate. Difficulties with reliable mobile coverage have been compounded by poor service from BT Openreach. Its remit as a non-customer-facing organisation causes enormous problems for my constituents. It is nearly impossible for them, or even for my staff, to get hold of people at Openreach. It takes too long to get one of its engineers to site, and they are often unprepared for the challenges of work in rural locations. It is difficult even to get in touch with Openreach, because there is no mobile signal in the areas from which one might seek to contact it. In addition, no effort seems to be made to prioritise customers who might be vulnerable because of age, disability or the sheer remoteness of their homes.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I praise my hon. Friend for the timeliness of the debate. Does he agree that extreme weather conditions such as floods, ice and snow highlight the importance of good broadband and mobile phone coverage? In the last week, my rural communities in Marsden, Hade Edge, Scholes, Cinderhills, Wooldale, Golcar and many more places were left isolated because of the questionable gritting policy of my local Labour-run Kirklees council. My constituents really need good broadband and mobile phone coverage.

[Jesse Norman]

It is a shame that literally no Opposition Members, let alone a Front-Bench spokesman, have attended the debate. I absolutely concur with the issues that my hon. Friend has raised. Constituents of mine have pointed out that they have been unable to contact the emergency services in the case of road traffic accidents and emergencies because they cannot get a mobile signal. There is a serious issue about allowing the emergency services to do their work.

What is to be done? I entirely reject, as colleagues will have heard, the argument that mobile phone coverage is a luxury, or that extending it should not be a concern of Government. I am delighted that that idea has been rightly rejected by Ministers for the nonsense that it is. Mobile coverage is absolutely essential to our constituents’ economic and social well-being. As a practical matter, they have no real economic power to secure parity of treatment. Someone who lives in a partial not spot has no place to go. They cannot secure the coverage that they need, and they have no alternative that might give them any economic leverage. On the contrary, the status quo raises serious questions about the effectiveness of competition in the market for mobile phone services in many parts of the country.

I absolutely welcome the initiative of the Secretary of State in this area and the recent agreement reached by Government and the mobile network operators. I wish that they would take that a step further and press for wider roaming rights for our constituents. Areas such as Herefordshire with multiple communications problems should be prioritised for improved coverage in a manner that follows local needs, not industry lobbying.

I will seek a full debate on the Floor of the House of Commons on those issues. I will encourage all my colleagues who are present today, and the dozens of others who have expressed an interest in the matter, to come along and take part in that debate. I want to cover three or four specific issues in that debate: first, a full understanding by Government of the nature of the problem, namely the combined effects of poor mobile, broadband and voice coverage; secondly, the specific performance of BT Openreach as a monopoly supplier of network infrastructure, and its manifest inadequacies; thirdly, recognition by Government that failure of phone or electricity is more serious where mobile coverage is patchy, so BT Openreach and the utility companies should prioritise repairs to such areas; and, finally, I suggest that Ofcom needs to look at service contracts. Mobile customers who sign such contracts and find that their connection is much worse than expected should be able to leave them early and on non-punitive terms. [Interruption.] On that basis, and with a welcome to Labour colleagues who have just entered the Chamber, I conclude my remarks.