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Digital Economy Bill [HL]

My Lords, this is an opportunity for the Government to indulge in a bit of joined-up strategic thinking. The challenge comes because these universal service obligations, or measures of service, are always population-based, so that it skews it immediately towards the high density areas, such as cities with high-rise blocks. If we do not create the infrastructure out in remote areas, people will be forced to move. As happened in various other preceding great revolutions, such as the industrial revolution, you will see a steady migration of population to where they will have to move to in order to take part in modern society. What you could end up doing is creating more deprived areas. This sounds terrible, as if I am predicting apocalyptic things. I am not trying to do that. However, you will see a general deprivation starting to occur. People will then worry about that and want to address it, and suddenly you will have to put in much more investment and much more money. These things have a knock-on effect—once a few people start to migrate, there is less justification for the infrastructure; then more people migrate, and suddenly it becomes untenable to live there, except for very elderly or very young people who perhaps do not need access. It could also be used for positive moves, such as trying strategically to repopulate the Highlands. Farming was never going to repopulate the Highlands, and trying to keep a few people there crofting certainly never did. You could have viable communities up there, but there is no way you could justify putting the infrastructure in if it was on a population-based system. So it may be worth forcing Ofcom to report in a more strategic way, looking at how we use land and resources effectively in the UK.