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Broadband (North of England)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Sanders. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) on securing this important debate. He made an excellent speech, and I want to pick up some of his points and perhaps embroider them a bit.

I know from my constituency in rural County Durham how true the hon. Gentleman’s comments are. Furthermore, it is right that he raised the issue of broadband roll-out for the whole of the north of England. I do not hold out

much hope that the Government will pay significant attention to the north of England or to building infrastructure there. We have seen a repeated pattern of capital projects that are very significantly well funded in the south but not in the north. That is borne out by the map that Ofcom produced, which shows the overall performance in different counties of the broadband roll-out. There is a central belt of London, the south and the west midlands, where things are looking quite healthy, but in your area of the south-west, Mr Sanders, things are not good, and things are certainly not looking at all good in the north of England. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing that to my attention.