Rural Phone and Broadband Connectivity

Debate between Roger Williams and Alan Reid

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) for so ably introducing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to raise the hopeless performance of telephone companies in Argyll and Bute.

In the past two months, telephone companies, both landline and mobile, have failed miserably to keep many of my constituents in telephone contact with the rest of the world. Following a storm in early December, some constituents are still waiting for their landline service to be repaired. The experience of one constituent from south Kintyre is typical. He reported a fault in December. BT made an appointment for an engineer to visit on 28 December. That appointment was not kept. It was the same on 14 and 28 January. He is still waiting. He now has another appointment for this Thursday. I hope that this time the engineer will turn up and fix the fault.

BT’s excuse is that it has declared MBORC, which stands for “matters beyond our reasonable control”. It claims that owing to exceptional circumstances, it is unable to meet its normal commitment times to provide a service or repair faults. It seems that by declaring MBORC, BT can also get away with not turning up for appointments. This is totally unacceptable. The engineers are clearly working flat out, often in difficult weather conditions, but BT clearly does not have enough engineers operating in Argyll and Bute.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

My hon. Friend has been given a different excuse for not fixing a fault. In my constituency, the problem was the unforeseen meeting of NATO in Newport. Does he agree that that was a foreseen circumstance?

[Mr Reid]

My hon. Friend is correct. We all knew for months, if not years, in advance that NATO was meeting in south Wales. His comments clearly indicate that BT looks for excuses to declare MBORC.

As several hon. Members have mentioned, BT Openreach is in the privileged position of having a monopoly on landlines. It should not be able to dodge its responsibilities for months simply by declaring MBORC. Will the Minister look at the regulations again?

The universal service obligation is supposed to guarantee a landline service no matter where one lives, and my constituents are quite rightly fed up being told that if they lived in Glasgow their phone line would be repaired quickly, but that they will have to wait months because they live in a rural area. I hope the Minister will look at the regulations again. Heavy fines need to be levied for failure to repair faults in a reasonable time and for not turning up to appointments. If BT was faced with heavy fines, it would be compelled to employ enough engineers.

Fuel Poverty

Debate between Roger Williams and Alan Reid

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Roger Williams]

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. One of the first things I did when I was elected to the House was to continue the work of my predecessor, who wanted to bring real competition into the supply of liquid petroleum gas. We managed to get the Competition Commission to conduct an inquiry into the procedures that limited people’s ability to change providers, and the commission introduced proposals to allow people to change their supplier without having to change their bulk tank. That has made people much more likely to choose their own supplier.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the success of his campaign. I am sure that he was as disappointed as me by the Office of Fair Trading investigation into the heating oil market, which concluded that it was working fine, when it is quite clear that in rural constituencies such as mine people are subject to monopolies because they do not have a choice of suppliers. Does he agree that the OFT should look at the situation again?

[Roger Williams]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I would join him if he made such a proposal. At the height of concern about the lack of competition in heating oil, we looked at a price comparison site that was available to my constituents, which appeared to show four potential suppliers of oil. When we looked into it, however, those suppliers were all the same company pretending to provide competition and offering marginal differences in oil price. That was undoubtedly illegal, and I believe that the company concerned has been prosecuted.