Lord Walney
Main Page: Lord Walney (Crossbench - Life peer)(9 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) not only on securing this debate, but on the wonderfully persuasive and erudite way in which he opened it, which makes me slightly trepidatious about following him. [Interruption.] That is most kind. I also congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on finding the time for us to debate this hugely important issue.
Even the urban parts of my constituency suffer economically from the geographical remoteness of our corner of Cumbria. My constituency includes small villages and one of the Lake district’s most remote valleys, which all Members should take the time to discover—not, perhaps, before 7 May, but at any time after that. Good-quality broadband connections are vital for local businesses trying to compete with those in more densely populated areas, for our sizeable tourist industry trying to make the most of our stunningly beautiful area, and of course simply for local residents who want to use the web at something better than the prehistoric speeds that so many of them have to cope with.
Over the last two summer recesses I travelled around my constituency by bike, sitting down with local residents in front rooms, village halls and cafes to talk about whatever issues mattered to them, and time and again—whether in Broughton, Kirkby, Leece or Great Urswick—the issue of broadband speeds came up. Many residents knew they had been promised great things by the Government in terms of rural broadband but had not seen the fruits of that.
Ministers have certainly talked the talk over recent years and some parts of my constituency are getting broadband which is much better, even if they believe, rightly, that the description “superfast” is overegging the pudding, but for too many other areas the reality on the ground simply has not changed. There is no great use in our revisiting here the fiasco of the bidding process for rural broadband, but the delays that led to it are still dragging on, leaving thousands of my constituents relying on broadband speeds of barely 1 megabit per second. In the village of Ireleth alone, 500 households are struggling along on that sort of speed. Hundreds of others in neighbouring villages are seeing similar glacial broadband speeds. The residents and I are becoming increasingly sceptical about BT’s promises—the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire eloquently made this point—to upgrade the local exchanges and ensure these villages get the 21st century service they deserve and need.
Let me give my own experience to demonstrate this point. On 14 October last year my office received an e-mail from BT stating that the exchanges at Broughton-in-Furness and Greenodd, which serve most of the rural areas of my constituency, would be upgraded during the winter of that year. That was excellent news, but then, after Christmas, another constituent from the area contacted me about their very slow broadband. I wrote to BT again. On 21 January, just three months after I was told something quite to the contrary, BT responded that
“there is no date available by when this will be ready.”
BT understood, the e-mail went on to say, that its supplier, Openreach, had met its target of delivering fibre optics to two thirds of the UK and that anything further would be a matter for funding by the Government’s broadband fund. This is another example of it washing its hands of this situation and the clear responsibility of providing acceptable broadband speeds for my constituents.
The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)
Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge in the course of his brilliant speech—which easily passes muster with that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman)—the £43 million that has been invested in Cumbria under this programme and the 119,000 premises that should get superfast broadband under it?
John Woodcock
Yes, money has been invested, and where it has come in, it has been welcome, but it has been too slow, it has not met the promises of delivery which the Government themselves set out and there are still too many areas that have got nothing at all, and they are tearing their hair out. As I am sure the Minister will accept, it is my responsibility to speak up for those people in the House today. On that note, will he agree to meet BT with me, so that it can explain when faster progress will be made and when it will meet the promise that it so clearly made?
Mr Heath
I recognise what the hon. Gentleman is saying. We have made good progress in Devon and Somerset in terms of the BT contract, but there is still the last bit. If I may say so, it is pointless meeting BT, because it simply will not deliver in those areas and what we need to look at now is other smaller providers filling in the bits that BT will never reach.
John Woodcock
The hon. Member makes a good point but BT should not be let off the hook on this, because it has made assurances to my constituents and to others that it has not delivered on.
Mr Vaizey
Of course I will meet the hon. Gentleman. Although it is a great hostage to fortune to say so, I make it a matter of principle that I will always meet any Member who requests a meeting to discuss this issue. And while I am on my feet, I will also say: Devon and Somerset, 300,000 premises and £92 million.
John Woodcock
Of course I will give way to my hon. Friend the shadow Minister; perhaps he could come along to this meeting too.
Chris Bryant
Will my hon. Friend point out to the Minister that just spending money is not a success, and that success is when—[Interruption.] Well, it is about time you lot learned that. It is when broadband is actually delivered that there is a success.
John Woodcock
I am afraid that I cannot agree to my hon. Friend the shadow Minister’s request because he has already eloquently put the case himself, and I would be a pale imitation of him if I were to try to follow.
Perhaps we should not be all that surprised that so much of rural Cumbria is seeing such slow progress towards superfast broadband. Many of the areas that I have spoken about have yet to see any significant progress at all with the earlier technology of mobile connectivity.
Tessa Munt
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has had the same difficulty as I have had in extracting the information from BT as to which areas will not be covered by it. Accessing that information would at least allow the people affected to make alternative arrangements with a satellite company. I do not know whether he has managed to find some way of getting such information about his area, given the difficulties that I have had.
John Woodcock
The hon. Member makes a great point—the situation is a nightmare. As I have just set out, often when someone receives assurances, they prove not to hold water. BT is a company that we would think would be good at communicating, but it turns out that for too many of our constituents, who are really tearing their hair out about this issue, BT has proved to be the exact opposite.
That has got to change, and either BT changes its ways itself—in response to the threat of other companies coming in—or, if I might offer the Minister some advice, the Government embrace the idea that they need to be more active in this sector. They had a tremendous example of a lean, active state, which was provided by the later years of the last Labour Government, and this is an excellent opportunity for them to learn from those years and adopt the same approach in their own dealings.
I turn to mobile connectivity. In the Duddon valley, if someone gets one bar of reception, they count themselves lucky. Again, this situation makes running a business tricky, or completely impossible, because it cuts off communities and in a remote area it also has serious safety implications. It is perhaps odd to think of mobile coverage as the next frontier after superfast broadband, but there has been little apparent interest from commercial companies in improving coverage for much of my constituency, and I am sure that the same is true of many other Members’ constituencies.
Any movement on this issue is welcome, but with the greatest of respect to Shropshire, Dorset and Norfolk, pilot schemes in those areas do not mean much to my constituents in Cumbria or impress them very much, if at all. Many of my constituents also look askance at the Government plans to improve rural mobile coverage based on A roads and B roads. My constituents in Seathwaite, for example, are 3 miles from the nearest such road, hidden behind a 2,000 foot hill, so such plans are not likely to help them much. We need more ambition, not a brief flurry of activity because the Prime Minister could not get any mobile reception on his way to Cornwall.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
My constituency is an outer London one. It is not rural, but it is nearly rural. We have A roads going through, and there are huge problems, not just in Keston in my constituency, but throughout Bromley, particularly as one goes towards Orpington.
John Woodcock
May I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that perhaps the way to get a quick solution would be to get a visit from the Prime Minister, a big fan of his, to his patch. It seemed to trigger the promise of action, if not the reality of it, when the Prime Minister was on his way to Cornwall. One never knows what could happen.
For too many of my constituents, no mobile reception and super-slow broadband are not just a holiday inconvenience; they are a fact of everyday life that impoverishes them and holds them back from reaching the enormous economic potential that my region has. Let me make one final request of the Minister, as he was so kind in agreeing immediately to my first one. Will he come to the beautiful Duddon valley—he had better come quick, given the election on 7 May—in my constituency? When he has finished admiring the scenery, will he try to do some work there for 24 hours, without meaningful broadband and with no mobile reception? Perhaps then—if he can properly appreciate how difficult it is to get anything done there—we will see some quicker action to tackle the mobile and broadband deserts afflicting too many in my patch.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I am not sure, given the new time limit on speeches, whether I will get many megabits per second into my speech, but I will try to get in several syllables per minute.
Mr MacNeil
Well done, thank you. At least somebody on the Opposition Benches is switched on. I just saw a lot of blank faces on the Government Benches.
As people, many of our needs have been met. We have food, drink, clothing and communication. In our houses, we have electricity, water and insulation, but we need communication and connectivity. That connectivity happens thanks to broadband—hopefully, it is 4G and mobile connectivity. The point was well made by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) who talked about “not not spots”. Let us ensure that we get “have have” spots, because that is what we need. This connectivity is a natural need, and it is what many people want and expect. The expectation that that connectivity will be in place is growing. People are comparing the situation in their own areas not only with other places in their own countries but with other countries, particularly rural places in other countries.
Our aim is to have superfast broadband and 4G reaching 98% of the population, which should mean that connectivity is well distributed across the country and that we do not have places in the UK where broadband coverage is far below 98% of the population. If 95% of us have superfast broadband, then surely 100% of us should get normal broadband. If superfast broadband has speeds of up to 30 megabits or more, surely others can reach 2, 4, 6 or 8 megabits.
There is also a possibility of convergence with 4G, as 4G is primarily a data carrier with speeds of up to 30 megabits. It does not matter whether or not people are connected with fibre, because connectivity can be found to enable them to get on the web thanks to the speed of the new mobile communications.