The inspiration for this debate came from my visit to the mid-west USA last month with a cross-party delegation of MPs from the British-American parliamentary group. I admit to having been a bit of a technophobe prior to the delegation, and I still am a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to technology.

I thought 5G was about higher speeds—that was my understanding of what we should expect. However, it appears from our learning on the visit that there is so much more to 5G and to smart cities than just higher speeds. It is actually about transformative technology and its ability to connect not just people but things—5G is designed to increase connectivity. We are talking about smarter motorways, smarter factories, smarter homes and smarter cities, and I would like to see capacity for smarter towns, smarter villages and smarter rural areas, because connectivity must be inclusive across the whole United Kingdom and across all areas.