Broadband and Mobile Connectivity: Rural Areas

16:00:00

I will call Anna Sabine to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from both the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. If anyone does not have that twin permission, they should not and may not speak. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

I beg to move, That this House has considered broadband and mobile connectivity in rural areas. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I represent the fairly rural constituency of Frome and East Somerset. In February this year, I conducted a survey asking residents in villages such as Lamyatt, Doulting, Alhampton, West Pennard and Witham Friary about their experiences with mobile and broadband signal. The number of responses was overwhelming, and there was a striking consistency to what they told me. The current arrangements for getting a mobile or broadband signal are mismatched, too expensive, frequently slow and, in many cases, simply not fit for purpose. Access to a reliable internet and mobile signal is now a basic necessity of our lives. Whether for work, education, healthcare or simply staying connected, people rely on broadband and mobile coverage every single day. I heard from a number of brilliant rural businesses—wedding venues, farms, ironmongers—who battle with poor connectivity daily. For many, broadband remains one of the biggest obstacles they face as a business, in terms of both the quality and speed of the connection available and the frustrating experience that creates for their customers. One local farm, for example, was quoted more than £250,000 by Openreach just to connect a wire across a relatively short distance to secure full-fibre broadband.

We are all here for the same purpose: our constituencies do not have the 3G broadband that we all wish to see. Does the hon. Lady agree that Westminster and all the other regions of the United Kingdom—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—should collectively have a programme that delivers 3G broadband for everybody in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

I have met the Minister before, which I will come on to. I know there is a plan, about which I have some specific questions. I totally agree that this is a nationwide challenge. On mobile reception, I am particularly concerned about the elderly and vulnerable in the Government’s digital switchover. Many of those individuals still rely on landlines, not by choice but because mobile signal in their area is unreliable.

My constituency of Wolverhampton West is residential, densely populated and urban. The area of Tettenhall has lots of elderly constituents, many of whom do not have a mobile signal, creating a dead zone. A recent investigation by The Observer said that, nationally, mobile coverage is more than 1,000 times worse than reported by Ofcom. Does the hon. Member agree that this is not solely a rural problem, but a national problem that affects everyone and to which the Government need to give urgent priority?

I have not seen that research by The Observer, but it is interesting. I live in a town in my constituency and I have poor mobile coverage. I am sure it is not uncommon to find that it is worse than it is reported. Many older people in my constituency still rely on landlines, not by choice but because the mobile signal in their area is unreliable. Although good internet and 4G can enable voice calls, that is not always the case in rural areas. Crucial services such as two-factor authentication for medical appointments or online banking still rely on SMS, which in turn relies on having basic mobile coverage. A constituent in Alhampton tells me that every time she needs a one-time passcode, she has to run out of her house and up the road to try to get a signal.

Half the areas in my constituency are considered to be among the worst 10% in the UK for broadband coverage. My community council raised the same issue as my hon. Friend in relation to updates, which are a problem for those who are home working and want to make payments online. I hope the Minister will reassure me, but does my hon. Friend agree—a bit like the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—that we need to work on a nationwide basis to resolve these issues?

I thank my hon. Friend; there are a couple of interesting points there. The number of people affected may be relatively low, but they can be concentrated in one area, and it is quite often a rural area. On the question of one-time passcodes, I notice that many companies now offer alternatives, but the process seems to be quite slow. We often talk about 5G-ready smartphones and fibre-optic broadband, but not all communities start from the same point. Urban areas have a considerable head start, and rural areas should not be punished for being harder to reach.

The connectivity challenge is a huge issue in rural areas, especially for businesses. I recently visited a local tourism business in Bacton that relies on multiple copper landlines—a very vulnerable set-up, given the upcoming switch-off of the public switched telephone network. That business has had outages and engineers unintentionally disconnecting those landlines during maintenance work, and there is clearly no plan yet from Openreach for full-fibre in the village. Does my hon. Friend agree that such connectivity issues are holding back our rural economy, and that Openreach needs to help villages like Bacton to thrive?

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that those issues hold back rural economies. I am sure there are some interesting statistics on how much more growth—which is the Government’s agenda—we could get out of rural areas if they could connect at speed and at the times they needed to, without having to pay for often expensive satellite alternatives. I welcome the Minister’s continued engagement on this issue, particularly his meeting with me and Somerset MPs to discuss the next steps in the roll-out of Project Gigabit, but I have three specific asks of him today. First, I would be grateful if he could confirm when we will receive the promised map identifying which households are included in the scheme. For any that are not included, what mechanism, obligation or incentive will exist to ensure that broadband providers still serve them?

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is unacceptable for homes and businesses that were originally put in scope for local Gigabit projects to be de-scoped partway through, like the homes and farms on the National Trust’s Cowgrove estate, and then told that the Gigabit voucher scheme has been paused, so that they cannot even buy in to other projects in the area?

That does sound very unfortunate. I know of villages in my constituency where vouchers have been applied for and received, but it is taking so long to get internet coverage that the vouchers are expiring. Clearly, there are a few voucher-related issues. My second ask relates to concerning reports from the telecoms industry that the remaining Project Gigabit fund, some £2 billion, might be at risk in the upcoming spending review. Any reduction in that funding would seriously undermine efforts to deliver universal full-fibre connectivity. If such cuts were made, it is highly unlikely that our more remote rural communities would ever see a fibre connection. Will the Minister confirm whether the funding will be protected? Finally, as we continue the digital switchover, what specific support will the Government provide to ensure that the elderly, the vulnerable and those in isolated rural areas are not left behind?

On the matter of the radio teleswitch service, there are 790 meters in my constituency still running off RTS, which operates Economy 7 meters, and across Wales there are 11,000. The Government do not know how many households depend on those meters for their heating. In many areas, particularly rural areas, that are off-grid and without any signal, smart meters will not work. How will we ensure that these often very vulnerable people are kept safe?

That is an extremely good point; perhaps the Minister will be able to address it in his response. In today’s hyperconnected world, no community should be excluded. We speak of self-driving cars and space tourism, so clearly the technology exists; it is not a question of possibility, but a question of political will.

Does my hon. Friend agree that rurality does not necessarily correlate with population density? My constituency is a city, albeit a small one, yet mobile signal is non-existent in the city centre, and businesses have had real issues attaching to any sort of broadband availability.

I agree with my hon. Friend; when I moved into my house in Frome recently, I was told that only one broadband provider was available, because all the other cabinets were full. There are many issues around broadband connectivity in towns as well. I will finish my points there, because I believe that other colleagues have agreed to speak.

16:09:00

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) for securing this debate. Too many people in South Devon are still being cut off by poor digital infrastructure. Airband promised to deliver, but was allowed to fail spectacularly across my constituency.

My hon. Friend mentions Airband. Building Digital UK wrote to me last month to say that villages and premises had been de-scoped because Airband had withdrawn from the contract. Does she share my view that BDUK ought to find alternative providers that can fill the gap left by companies such as Airband when they give up in places like Branscombe, Churchill and east Devon?

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I totally agree. It is outrageous that a company like Airband is allowed to pick off the easy bits and then walk away when it comes to the more expensive bits of the contract. In Staverton, most residents have no mobile signal at all. Although mobile providers claim high coverage levels, the claims do not align with the reality on the ground. In Diptford, broadband coverage is at best patchy. I myself used to have to have a satellite connection on the roof of my house to connect to a station in Italy in order to get internet connection.

Is the hon. Member aware of the ways in which the structure of the mobile tower market in the UK is holding back investment in 5G? Some of the regulations introduced by the previous Government are leading to a concentrated market that is not investing quickly enough in more towers and the better signal that we need to reach properties that otherwise would need a satellite connection, particularly in rural constituencies like hers, or mine in Lichfield.

I am not aware of the specifics of mobile towers, but I am sure the hon. Member is absolutely right. Back to Diptford: years ago, residents were promised full-fibre broadband, but it has yet to materialise. Despite repeated assurances from providers and Governments, very little progress has been made. Residents in Holne, Loddiswell, Aveton Gifford, Rattery, Capton, Higher Brixham, Buckfastleigh West, Maypool, Galmpton, East Cornworthy, Thurlestone, Woodleigh, Norton in Dartmouth and more remain disconnected, creating a digital divide that affects access to vital services and businesses’ ability to connect.

I thank the hon. Member for giving way and the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) for securing the debate. The rural areas that I represent are blessed with incredible natural beauty, but too often that beauty can obscure deep issues in public services, transport, employment opportunities and connectivity. I have had to fight hard for local residents, such as those in Inkerman Court in Denby Dale in my constituency, to get the connectivity they deserve. With the new Government investing £500 million next year to deliver digital infrastructure upgrades through Project Gigabit and the shared rural network, does the hon. Member agree with me that high quality, stand-alone 5G is crucial to unlocking the economic and social potential of our rural communities?

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention; I could not agree more.

My hon. Friend talks about rural businesses. Ollie, a constituent of mine in Glastonbury and Somerton, works in video editing and depends on fast and symmetrical broadband to be able to transfer his files, but his rural community is reliant on outdated copper infrastructure that severely restricts the upload speeds. Despite the nature of his work, suitable services are simply not available. He has asked several suppliers, but the services are just not available. Does my hon. Friend agree that outdated infrastructure is undermining rural employment and that we must urgently address that to support digital livelihoods?

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention; I could not agree more. I declare an interest here. A family member who has been trying to set up a business park has been told that it is not doable because they are too far from the exchange. As has been said, we can go to space, but we cannot connect to the internet. It just seems ridiculous. For older residents, reliable broadband is crucial, as has been mentioned, for online GP appointments, personal alarms and emergency calls. Without it, they are left isolated and vulnerable, while young people in my area are being denied equal educational opportunities. Local businesses are missing out on the digital economy. Families are struggling with unreliable services. The divide between rural and urban areas is widening, and it is simply unfair. If remote parts of the UK can access full-fibre broadband and mobile signal, there is no reason that South Devon should be left behind.

Will the hon. Member give way?

I am nearly finished—there is only one line left—but I will give way one last time.

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. Does she agree that it can be a particular problem when remote areas become new-build areas, yet are completely lacking in any mobile or broadband infrastructure? Some telecom companies say that they are not fully involved in the planning aspects, yet they can fully see the houses going up. Does she agree that this issue ought to be looked into?

I absolutely agree. In the society we live in today, it is fundamental to planning that connectivity should be considered at the earliest stages of any new development. I am on my last line, if anybody wants to intervene.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Go for it.

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, especially on her last line. One of the key issues with rurality is that we often depend on mobile signal because of the sparsity of the areas we represent, such as my constituency of North Northumberland. We can be profoundly impacted by storms as a result, and we should be looking to build in contingencies such as generators for mobile masts. The Government should consider simple things like that.

I thank the hon. Member for his excellent contribution. Digital connectivity is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity, and it is time to treat rural communities with the same priority as urban areas.

16:15:00

Mr Stuart, what a delight to see you in the Chair. I congratulate the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) on securing the debate. She probably should have secured an hour and a half, or three hours, or even a whole day, because this issue obviously matters to a lot of people. The two key things to discuss are mobile and fixed connectivity. Both of those could occupy all of us here, because many of the issues apply equally, I would argue, to rural and urban constituencies, albeit in slightly different patterns. I will push back slightly on the idea that rural areas are getting a worse time than urban areas; actually, in some urban areas, the fibre is theoretically passing down the street, but it is not going into the building where the flats are because of wayleave issues. There is a problem in cities as well as in rural areas, and we need to address both—they probably need different answers, but we need to address both. In the end, our ambition is to get to 5G stand-alone across as much of the country as we possibly can, as fast as we possibly can, and to get full fibre to premises. Full fibre will not be for 100% of the country; that would be impossible, and financially it would not make logical sense. In some cases, getting to the cabinet is good enough, where it is a relatively short passage from the cabinet to the premises and there are only a few premises, so there will not be the same contention problems as there would be with a lot of premises on that same passage. We want to go as fast as we can and as far as we can, and the hon. Member made some very strong points, although I will come to another area later where I completely disagree with her.

Will the Minister give way?

I will, although I granted the hon. Lady permission to speak earlier.

On the issue of not being able to get to every premises, particularly in very rural areas—the highlands and islands would be an example—have the Government given thought to satellite internet provision, and perhaps to subsidising the cost of that for homeowners?

We have looked at satellite provision. The difficulty is that there is not much of it left. It is already pretty occupied and it is quite expensive. There are other options as well, such as fixed wireless, where the connection is delivered to an area locally and the rest is delivered wirelessly. It would not be gigabit capable, but it would run at significant speeds that would match most people’s modern needs. We are looking at all of those options. My suspicion is that in the next few years, technology will advance at such a pace that that will become easier for us, rather than more difficult. There probably needs to be more than one operator providing satellite options to people’s homes, and that might arrive in the next couple of years as well, with Amazon and perhaps others. That will definitely be part of the mix. There will always be a tiny percentage of properties that are simply impossible for us to reach with fibre; it would be crazy for us to try to take a piece of fibre down a 25-mile road just to serve one property. We have obviously aimed to deliver as much connectivity as we possibly can on a commercial basis first, because that just makes sense. However, that is quite difficult in itself, because commercial operators change their investment plans. Some of that is about the availability of money to them in the market. We have been working on some of those issues so that they might be in a stronger position, but sometimes they make very specific decisions in local areas that make it difficult for us to know when we should intervene to provide a subsidy and when it should be delivered simply on a commercial basis. That makes Building Digital UK’s job of managing those decisions phenomenally complicated.

Openreach has changed its mind several times about the affected community of Affetside in my constituency. What advice would you give that resolute, resilient community as it tries to convince Openreach to honour not just its historical commitment, but the one that it made, through me, only in December, and has since reneged on?

I will give no advice, but the Minister will.

Well, you often do give advice, Mr Stuart, but that is another matter. We will have to take this conversation elsewhere, because I am not sure whether that is a Project Gigabit-delivered contract or whether Openreach is rolling out its own commercial decision—[Interruption.] I will not take another intervention because I do not have very much time. Sometimes all those elements change because the commercial operators say, “Well, actually, we have realised that this business park”—which is outside a town and feels more rural even though it is sort of theoretically attached to a town—“isn’t going to be connected unless we connect another bit that is contiguous.” They constantly change their commercial decisions. We try to help them to make sensible decisions that fit with our subsidy plans, but it is not always easy. That also applies to the shared rural network, which obviously deals with mobile connectivity. A large number of masts have been put up through the shared rural network, including in large chunks of Wales.

I congratulate the Minister’s BDUK officers, who are really useful. The radio teleswitch service switch-off will affect people, and it is starting to happen on 30 June—just over a month from now. There are 11,000 households in Wales that are presently dependent on it, and if they do not have access to signal, as many off-grid homes do not, it will have an immediate effect on them. I beg the Minister to discuss with his colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero how to resolve that for vulnerable people.

I am very grateful for the last bit of that, because the right hon. Lady reminds me that I need to talk to my colleagues in DESNZ about that. It is not directly my responsibility but, if she writes to me about it, I am happy to get it to DESNZ or to ensure she gets a response from DESNZ as soon as possible. She makes a perfectly legitimate point, and we need to get that right. I thought she was talking about a different switch-off, which is why I was confused. Reporting of mobile coverage is something that frustrates many of us. The Ofcom site may say, “96% of all four networks available everywhere across the whole of your constituency,” but I say, “No, you can’t get a signal anywhere in Hannah Street in the middle of Porth—end of story.” I have been in discussion with Ofcom, and we have exchanged letters, which I have placed in the Library of the House of Commons, about how it is going to change its reporting. That reporting has historically been based in part on two things: first, the coverage predicted by the mobile phone companies, which might not necessarily match people’s experience; and, secondly, 2 megabits per second, which frankly is of no earthly use to anybody—most of us now want 5 megabits per second. From about the middle of June, Ofcom will be reporting across the whole of the country on 2 megabits per second and 5 megabits per second, so people will have a much clearer understanding of the situation on the ground. I hope that might drive further commercial investment from the mobile phone operators, which will say, “You know what? We need to make sure we have more masts in this area, because frankly it’s not good enough.” The hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) mentioned Chichester; I have Godalming in my head, because I was at the Pizza Express there one Saturday evening and I could not order a taxi because there was no mobile signal at all. You would think that in the middle of Godalming, with the former Chancellor of the Exchequer as its Member of Parliament, that would have been sorted. There are lots of places like that around the country where the mobile signal simply is not good enough and we need to strengthen it. Much of that will be me trying to get the mobile companies to work harder to make sure that that works across the whole of the country. I want to work out with them what some of the problems are, and whether those are to do with the planning issues that have already been referred to. It seems to me bonkers that we would even consider building a new housing estate without making sure that it has proper mobile signal available and proper connectivity of every kind. One would think that that would just be quintessentially part of the offer. These are all issues that we are going to address. The hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset asked me three specific questions—I try my best to answer specific questions when people ask them, in the hope that that will encourage people to ask specific questions. First, she asked me about the promised map. That should be happening fairly soon. “Soon”, obviously, is a parliamentary word that has a moderate quantity of meaning, but I am trying to make it as fast as I possibly can. The advantage that will come roughly in the middle of June is that Ofcom will be providing a completely different understanding of mobile coverage in all our constituencies, which will be helpful. I too thank everybody in BDUK; I think that when we have done the drop-in sessions for MPs, everybody has found it very helpful. It has been able to provide specific details about what is happening in a particular village and a particular street. We will continue to do that, so I would say, “If anybody has not booked in, please do.” The hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset asked me what would happen in the spending review. I will not answer that question, because I do not know what will happen in the spending review. As I said, our ambition is to get full fibre to as much of the population as we possibly can, as fast as we possibly can, and our ambition is to get to 5G stand-alone. For many public services, 5G stand-alone would be far more useful than a version of 3G that is not very efficient and not very functioning. For instance, the police would be able to use 5G stand-alone. People would be able to download video, to take part in video conferencing and so on. We also need to do better at enabling people to have mobile signal inside their home and not just outside their home. I live in Wales and my house is stone built, which means whatever signal I get in the garden is not very available inside. I moved to VoIP, or voice over internet protocol, because I know how to do that—but of course many people do not, so we need to enable that more.

The Minister asked for specific questions. Part of the problem is that the cost of customer acquisition is four to five times larger in rural Britain than it is in urban areas, so the big companies prioritise urban areas, where they can find a lot of customers, leaving rural areas to small businesses that then face the capital cost issue that he refers to. My specific question is this: how can the Government help those small businesses that are trying to connect rural communities to go faster?

That is precisely what Project Gigabit is designed to do. That is what we are doing, and it has been a significant investment already. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman has been to one of our drop-in sessions with BDUK staff, but they would be very happy to go through every part of his constituency and work through precisely what we are doing to try to help. I need to temper people’s expectations about the speed at which some of these things can happen, partly because there are skills needs out there that must be addressed. There is likely to be, I would guess, some consolidation in the altnet market in the weeks and months ahead. In addition, where there has been competition between them, some of the altnets have ended up putting in ducts and poles, which are not exactly welcome in local communities that have never had poles before. It is not always an easy thing to arrange. I want to correct the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) on one thing, because she referred to the Government’s switch-off process. It is not a Government switch-off process; it is led by the industry, for the very fine reason that copper is failing. The number of occasions on which copper is now failing far exceeds the problems we have had in any other way. The thing that keeps me awake at night is, if people are moved from copper to fibre—they have an entitlement under the universal service obligation to a landline-only fibre connection, if they want it—whether their telecare device will work with that. That is why, since I was elected to this post, I have worked with the industry as hard as I possibly can to address some of those issues. We have been working with local authorities to identify all the vulnerable customers, trying to make sure that the operators switch people over only when all these issues have been dealt with and they know that their telecare device will still work, and saying to the telecare companies that they should stop selling kit that will work only in an analogue system and not in the new system. On top of that, many companies have now moved to a much longer battery life back up than the one hour provided for by Ofcom. That is not Government-led, but obviously, we are trying to make sure that the sector and the industry deliver in a way that is safe for all our constituents. Question put and agreed to.