---

Broadband (North of England)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sanders, and to be able to speak in this debate to balance the Yorkshire impact from Lancashire. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones). Even though he comes from Yorkshire, he makes a good case.

First, I put on record my belief that the Government’s roll-out of superfast broadband has the potential to transform the rural economy and in particular the nature and future of our rural villages. In simple terms, villages in my area of the north-west, as in many parts of the country, have suffered the loss of shops and businesses to more urban areas, to the extent that many have now in effect become dormitory housing for the nearest big towns, retirement villages, or a combination of both. I will not rub it in, but in the last year of the previous Government, we lost six rural post offices, which were virtually the last shops in the villages concerned. My village schools, however, have gone from strength to strength, simply because of the high quality of the education, and they are now attracting pupils back from the urban areas. I am grateful to the Government, which only recently introduced funding protections for those small schools. As my hon. Friend laid out, the broadband programme has the potential to reverse that rural decline and to bring back what I call “live” villages, where businesses operate and activity returns in the daytime. Where villages have been hooked up, there is clear evidence of businesses wanting to get back into and operate in them.

It is great that the Government have now decided to add to the pot of money to achieve even wider superfast broadband coverage—we hope to 97% of such areas. It is so transformational that it will have an impact on regional imbalance and the so-called north-south divide, giving a chance for regional and rural business to compete with the best down south without relocating. That is a key plus. Originally in my area, it was clear that the contracts would cover only 93%, and it seemed unlikely that coverage would get up into the villages in the hills above Lancaster, in the trough of Bowland and the Lune valley. There would therefore be a problem about what was happening in the low land and what was happening in the high land. It also seemed likely, given what we have seen throughout the country, that BT would yet again win the contract, and BT could not guarantee either that it would cover every property in an area or the speed—it was only in terms of average speeds.

As a result, a local community group got going in my area, led by Professor Barry Forde, formerly a professor at Lancaster university, and ably supported by some keen enthusiasts such as Chris Condor and Martyn Dews. They put together a social enterprise company to reach the areas that could not be reached. It offered to lay fibre to every single household in the areas for which it got responsibility, leaving no one out. On top of that, it guaranteed 1 gigabit of speed to every single household, which BT could not do. There were various negotiations with the county, but the company was allowed to experiment. I have to put it on the record that at the beginning even I was wondering whether it could manage all that. The whole purpose of the social enterprise was that the costs would not be the same as for BT because

farmers would lay cables across their land without the need to obtain wayleaves and in return would receive superfast speed without having to pay the same rental charge because they had allowed their land to be dug to lay the fibre.

There were questions about whether there would be problems in certain areas and whether people would be involved and buy shares in the social enterprise. Interestingly, three or four years down the line, the enterprise has happened. It is called broadband for the rural north—B4RN—and the indication was that the outline plan could cover 3,500 households in the hills above Lancaster, although there was some dispute about that. It applied to the rural communities broadband fund, but unfortunately Lancaster district council had already applied with Lancashire county council, and the contract for most of the county went to BT. The county council and district council wanted to cover the largest possible part of Lancashire so it is understandable that most of the grant went into the big pot.

BT obtained the major contract, and B4RN dug its way across the hills, but BT then refused to say which 3% of the region would not be covered by its network. That forced B4RN to lodge a complaint with the European Commission about Lancashire county council’s use of state aid, and delayed matters even further. B4RN agreed to drop its complaint if the county council would protect B4RN’s postcode areas from BT’s rival scheme. It then seemed that B4RN could get moving, and Arkholme, Quernmore, Abbeystead and the hamlets of Littledale and Roeburndale are now wired up with 1 gigabit to every house and farm and no one is left out.

That is a demonstration of the big society, but there were frustrations along the way. For example, it was necessary to take a cable across one of Network Rail’s bridges, which carried an average of six trains a day. We got Network Rail down to show it that the fibre cable would lie on the bank, which was nearly 12 feet—I still use imperial measurements—from the railway line. Would Network Rail agree to that? Unfortunately it would not, because it might set a precedent and there would have to be rental to the community project. Failure to obtain Network Rail’s agreement added to costs because B4RN had to drill under the ground. That community group was strong and just kept going when such obstacles arose.

I, the local MP, B4RN, the community group, and most people in that part of Lancashire still do not have a map of which areas BT will or will not cover. B4RN put Abbeystead and Quernmore villages, which are on my patch, on to cable, but in between is another village, Dolphinholme, which has 181 inhabitants. B4RN had to take cable through it because it is between Abbeystead and Quernmore. However, out of the blue, BT suddenly started to fibre up Dolphinholme, a tiny village in the hills. However, it decided that one of my biggest villages in the lowland, Glasson Dock, will not be fibred up to receive superfast broadband, yet it can provide it to a tiny village in the hills, miles away from anywhere, which just happens to be next to the community group’s project.

I found out only this week that on the other side of the community group’s project at Wennington in the hills, BT is offering to pay farmers £4.50 or £5.50 a metre to lay its fibre cable across their land. B4RN, of course, cannot offer money. It can only offer a return to

the community group. B4RN tried to obtain a map from BT, but I am now being contacted by constituents in my biggest urban area, the city of Lancaster, asking when they will have superfast broadband. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) referred to a business park. I have a business park in my constituency, the White Cross estate. It is supposed to be a start-up area for new businesses, but BT has not provided it with superfast broadband, yet it has taken it up into the hills next to a community group.

What is going on? I am a Conservative and I believe in competition. BT is receiving Government grant, but B4RN receives no grant and is a community effort with community money. It seems to everyone in B4RN’s area that BT is using its strength to surround and hem in the only existing tiny piece of competition in the great county of Lancashire. There are serious questions about what is going on. The community group is struggling. It does not have the time to go to law because it is digging to put in fibre and running it into people’s homes, and it is training people to use superfast broadband’s potential. Businesses ask me where B4RN is going with 1 gigabit speed because they want to relocate into that area. High-tech companies want to relocate to the highest and most rural part of my constituency to have access to speed that is not available in any major town in this country, but BT seems determined to hem in that little bit of competition.

The remaining roll-out is critical to the north and my rural areas. Will the Minister ask his Department to take a serious look at BT’s behaviour in north-west Lancashire and provide what help it can to the big society and community groups that are doing their best to provide 1 gigabit speed to every household, which BT cannot even dream of doing? I have recently had meetings with BT, which has promised to provide maps of where its network will be, but I have still not received them. Even when it covers an area, it will not guarantee that every household there will be linked up to its boxes and receive high speed.

BT is taking the edge off a fundamentally successful Government project and it should be straightforward to sort it out. It involves 2,500 households that BT may not be able to link into, but it seems to have won the contract in every part of the country. My request to the Minister is that he has a serious look at what is going on before someone takes what is happening in north-west Lancashire—the matter went to the European Commission—to the new competition authority and asks what is going on with Government funding.

9.58 am