Broadband
Debate between Richard Bacon and Tessa MuntWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Tessa Munt
I tend to agree. Rather than looking at percentages, we should look at people. Back in the 1980s—I can remember all of this—we had British Rail trying to move trains from A to B and forgetting that its job was to move passengers from A to B. Exactly the same lack of focus on people has led us to where we are with broadband.
When my children were in senior school, they found the internet essential because they had to access their homework online. When they were at college, they had to send all their submissions online to their tutors, and they have to do exactly the same thing now that they are at university. It is difficult for someone who has no broadband and who lives some distance from the library, if they cannot drive or do not have a car and there are no buses. How the hell is anybody meant to be able to do these things?
I have a wonderful constituent who is 94 years old, who moved into Cheddar and found herself waiting weeks and weeks for some sort of connection. She used Skype, Twitter and Facebook to keep in contact with members of her family, who were all over the world. We must remember that in order to keep older members of the community living in their own homes, it is absolutely essential they can access services such as having their heavy shopping brought in from the supermarket by ordering online. They can still pop out to the shops every day and do the small items of shopping. Using the internet in such a way will help to keep them in their own homes.
Many of the businesses in my area are tourism-based, and if they do not have a reliable online connection and cannot use broadband at the right speed, they do not have a competitive edge. It is also difficult to buy, sell and communicate if the connection drops out all the time. Without a decent broadband connection, life is so much harder.
I wrote to the Competition and Markets Authority asking it to look into BT’s apparent refusal to join an open bidding process to increase high-speed fibre broadband access in Somerset. There is slight confusion over this, but it looks as though BT has held back information that might have enabled other organisations to join the bidding process. By saying that that information is commercially sensitive, it has prevented anybody from being involved in tendering for the phase 2 superfast extension programme.
Mr Bacon
I have no doubt the hon. Lady is right that BT has engaged in anti-competitive behaviour, and broadband is now a regular source of complaint among residents and businesses in my surgeries in Norfolk. However, is the situation not even worse? BT inflated its budgets for the BDUK rural broadband programme, thereby obtaining more state aid than it was entitled to. At the same time, it invested less in the programme than it communicated to the Government.
Tessa Munt
The hon. Gentleman has taken the words right out of my mouth. I hope the Minister will be in a position to address our concerns.