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UK Software Industry

Thank you, Mr Weir, for reminding the hon. Gentleman that he has plenty of opportunities to make his point. It is a bit rich for a Labour politician to talk about the misrepresentation of other parties' policies, given what we have seen in the news this week, after the first election court for almost a century was called on the basis of Labour party leaflets in the general election. Sheer brass neck does not even begin to describe it. This is a debate in which I have an opportunity to set out our policy on broadband in response to the comments of the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South about its importance. That is what I intend to do. As I said, we want the best superfast broadband in Europe by 2015. We have secured the funding for it—£530 million to the end of the spending review, and a further £300 million after that. We have launched four super-fast broadband pilot projects, in the highlands and islands, Herefordshire, Cumbria and North Yorkshire, so that we can identify early lessons and work out how to proceed in the most cost-effective way. We shall also launch in more detail at the end of the year our policy on broadband, setting out some of the nuts and bolts issues. We have made huge progress on regulatory issues, such as duct access for competitors to BT and the opportunity to roll out broadband on telegraph poles.