Broadband

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on securing the debate.

I have been very focused on this issue in the last five years, first as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, which has looked in detail at the rural broadband programme and made a number of criticisms of it. I have also been to a series of debates—in fact, so many that I have seen more of the Minister this last fortnight than I have of my husband. That is not a joke, sadly, much as I like the Minister.

In my constituency, I have constant complaints from businesses and residents about connection times, speeds, unreliability of service and, of course, cost. I represent one of the most urban areas of the UK. We are a powerhouse for the future of the tech economy. We have frequent visits from the occupants of Nos. 10 and 11 Downing street. The Prime Minister has dubbed my area tech city. There is, therefore, great Government pride in the area, but we have pretty poor broadband. When I complain, I am told, “It’s okay: two thirds of businesses in Shoreditch have a connection.” However, that means that a third of businesses in this critical area do not.

The House of Lords Digital Skills Committee has now joined the cacophony on this issue. Given that the Committee is in the other place, it is worth putting on record its very first recommendation, which is about hard infrastructure:

“We are concerned about the pace of universal internet coverage and the delivery of superfast broadband. In particular, we find it unacceptable that, despite Government efforts, there are still urban areas experiencing internet ‘not-spots’, which is hampering universal coverage and the UK’s international competitiveness.”

It goes on to say, and I agree, that broadband should be seen as a utility—something that is necessary, just as water and electricity are.

A report by Digital Business First says that 10 million UK premises—homes and businesses—are unable to access superfast broadband. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) rightly highlighted, there are lies, damned lies and statistics. A few percentages here and there do not reveal the real trouble and pain that many businesses and residents face.

Let me give just a couple of examples. A resident in the Victoria park area, on the edge of Hackney, near Tower Hamlets, worked from home. However, his broadband service was so poor that he moved out of Hackney to get better coverage. I will not go into the numbers of businesses that have had problems, but I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) about the poor quality of service. It takes a long time to get an Openreach engineer to visit. The Perseverance Works on Hackney road is a consortium—a co-operative, in effect—of businesses, and it took ages to get an engineer to visit it. When an engineer does visit, they do a survey, but it does not seem to belong to the customer, even though they paid for it. It is really difficult to find out exactly what is happening—the lack of transparency about the service is poor, and it really needs to be improved.

The Public Accounts Committee is now seeing the next phase of rural broadband being rolled out. Some real alternatives are being proposed. Finally, to pick up the point from the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), alternative technologies are being promoted, albeit very late in the day, and only, of course, after the bulk provision has been cherry-picked. The cost envelope for the more difficult-to-reach areas is that much higher, which makes it much harder to deliver services.

I said I represent Shoreditch, which is an international hub of tech progress, but we are falling behind. Shoreditch is, frankly, a national embarrassment, when we consider the place it occupies in the world. It is second only to silicon valley in terms of the investment going into tech businesses, but broadband speeds, and upload speeds in particular, are very poor.

Tech City News does a weekly video round-up, which I recommend to the Minister, as it discusses cutting edge digital technology around the world and in Shoreditch. I have mentioned it before, but it is worth emphasising that the former editor, who has just moved on, says that it would be filmed and taken to his house to be uploaded, because the speeds around Old Street roundabout were too slow, and it took too long. If that is not a national embarrassment I do not know what is. I am always embarrassed to repeat that story in Parliament, as I do not want to dump on my area, but it is time the Government took that seriously. Perhaps the next time the Prime Minister and Chancellor visit, they will be able to celebrate success, rather than tripping over failures. In South Korea the aim is a national 5G wireless network. We need to look for the same. We should aim for more one-gigabit cities. There is some progress, and some companies are keen on achieving it.

I have some questions for the Minister and would welcome answers in writing if he cannot answer now. As part of the approach to improving access to and roll-out of superfast, the Government have put out an advertising programme, which—paraphrasing only slightly—says, “Superfast broadband: it’s coming—would you like it?” I would like to know the cost of the advertising programme, given that the Government have made great play of cutting back on advertising. How are they measuring success? What discussions has the Minister had with the Department for Communities and Local Government on planning rules to make it easier for other technologies to get into urban and rural areas and deliver superfast speeds, where the cable and fibre optics will not deliver?

More one-gigabit cities should be an aspiration of both the Government and the Opposition, so that things do not fall apart upon a change of Government. I hope we can be united in our aspiration. We need more collaborations such as that in York between the far-sighted Labour city council and TalkTalk, which wants to roll out superfast in its own way. It is important to give local authorities power over such contracts. More could be done to strengthen the arm of councils that want to follow that lead.

We need more competition in the market. That involves planning issues. Changes are needed to planning law to require landlords to provide what I would describe in simple terms as reasonable access for the installation of technology, particularly on high buildings. That would allow satellite and mobile superfast, for example, to fill the gaps. That might be more challenging in rural areas, and there might be other planning issues to do with rights of way across land, particularly agricultural land. Certainly in urban areas, however, it would be a fairly simple solution. All that it would require would be joined-up Government action and real will, not just on the part of the Minister, who, as the hon. Member for Wells said, always comes to our debates very optimistic about the programme, but on the part of his colleagues in other Departments. They also need to take the matter seriously. Will the Minister outline what conversations he has with Ministers in other Departments? Can he reassure us that they take the issue at least half-seriously? Are they, as I hope, stepping up to the mark to make sure our constituents no longer have to suffer the ignominy of the supposed superfast broadband programme, which is not delivering?