Rural Broadband and Mobile Coverage

Part of Backbench Business — [27th Allotted Day] – in the House of Commons at 5:43 pm on 19 May 2011.

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Photo of Ed Vaizey Ed Vaizey The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport 5:43, 19 May 2011

I am grateful for the chance to respond to this debate, which was called on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee by my hon. Friend Rory Stewart. He has been showered with enough praise in this debate, but let me add to the oleaginous tone with which we all approach him. For one so young and so new to this House, his ability to gauge the issues that concern the House is second to none. His relentless focus on mobile broadband is also severely disrupting my life. I have gone up to Penrith and The Border for a superfast broadband summit that even had members of the United States Administration attending. This is the second broadband debate that my hon. Friend has called, forcing me—I know that hon. Members will share my disappointment at this—to decline my invitation to the European Commission’s Culture Council in Brussels today.

I do not necessarily want to respond to every speech today; suffice to say that almost 20 Back Benchers contributed to this debate, all very effectively, raising issues and concerns specific to their constituencies. I thought that the shrewdest of all was my hon. Friend Simon Hart, who pointed out that the lack of superfast mobile broadband was preventing him from hiring babysitters.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport announced in his speech at the national digital conference last week that our ambition was to see superfast broadband coverage of 90% of the population in all areas of the country. To respond to the excellent speech by Ian Lucas, I must say that that is why last week I announced my ambition of universal superfast broadband in this country, starting with the clear aim of making sure that 90% of the UK can get at least 25 megabits per second by 2015. I have now thrown down a bone for the hon. Gentleman, so that he can table a series of parliamentary questions to elicit further details on that. In defence of the Government’s position, we mentioned our commitment to the universal service of 2 megabits by 2015 in our excellent publication “Britain’s superfast broadband future”, which was published in December. Specifically, it was mentioned in paragraph 8.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border started speaking, it felt like an Oscar acceptance speech because he had so many people to thank. The only people he did not thank were his family, which I was surprised about. I am pleased to see that his own team of officials is watching from the Gallery. I know that the whole House thanks them for their hard work. It will come as no surprise to learn that one of them is a constituent of mine, which is why she is so talented and able to undertake this very complicated work.