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Mr. Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con): I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman) on securing this debate. Like others who wish to speak, I represent a rural area where broadband access is a problem, but we are not here to run down such areas-far from it.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb), I have struggled to reconcile the claim of virtually universal coverage of access to broadband with the experience of many of my constituents. Like him, I have a raft of correspondence-he will be relieved to hear that I shall not detain the Chamber with it-with people who have difficulty gaining access to broadband. I am here to argue their cause.
That cause is not only my constituents' but the Government's, as the Minister has been at pains to tell us and as he will, I am sure, tell us again when he winds up. The Government's priority is to provide universal access to broadband, which is a noble and entirely honourable aspiration. As the Minister wrote to me in a letter on 24 January:
"Stimulating broadband availability across the whole of the UK is a Government priority. We want to see all communities, irrespective of location, having access to an affordable broadband service from a competitive market."
I should like to dwell on some of the issues raised by that aspiration.
The significance of broadband in Shropshire is enormous. Last year Shropshire was declared to have the highest proportion of home-working of anywhere in the country. Because of even more remote access to the services than one might normally find in a constituency such as Wycombe, my constituents have great distances to travel and few job opportunities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe said, internet access is the one thing that provides the farming community with an opportunity for diversification, and a large proportion of the working age population, plus many who are beyond working age but have not had such opportunities before, with a way in to work. It is of great significance.
Shropshire county council has recognised that, and I commend the work that it has done through Switch on Shropshire, an initiative that has been running for three years in conjunction with Advantage West Midlands to deliver broadband to communities. They have done well. I do not often congratulate my regional development agency in the House, but it has done a good job. Indeed it was highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe as being particularly successful in that regard. It has achieved that with relatively modest resources-some £4.9 million has been allocated to broadband, about half of which has been spent. A number of initiatives are being taken to bring broadband to communities that currently lack it.
Let me address some challenges of delivering broadband in my constituency. Some are technological, which means that I may stray into areas that are a little beyond my pay grade or competence. It seems that a significant problem arises from the use by BT of digital access carrier systems as the delivery mechanism for telephony. It is clear that DACS cannot be shared with broadband access. Therefore, there is a requirement on BT to replace such systems with a hard wire or wireless system that will allow high-speed broadband delivery. Most of my constituents' problems occur when they apply for broadband modems. They are signed up by their internet service providers or by BT Retail, which takes their money and installs modems but then discovers that BT Wholesale is not able to deliver the service because they are on DACS. The cost of replacing the DACS technology is a commercial decision, not one that the ISP is able to force BT to implement. BT has made that very clear. On 13 January it told me that
"whereas BT has a universal service obligation to provide telephony service, the provision of broadband is based on a commercial model."
There is nothing wrong with that, provided that the commercial model can deliver access to broadband. There is an inherent conflict if it is uncommercial for BT to deliver to a remote individual household because of the cost that would be involved in replacing the line. How does the Minister intend to square the circle of dealing with BT's commercial priorities and the Government's priority to deliver universal access?
The impact of lack of broadband is clear. I should like to use as an example one of my constituents who might be known to racing enthusiasts in the Chamber. He is the racehorse trainer, Henry Daly, who happens to be one of the largest employers on the outskirts of Ludlow, one of the main towns in my constituency. He employs some 65 people and, despite living within three or four miles of a relatively large exchange, does not have access to broadband and has been trying to get it for the past two years.
All entries and declarations for races are available on the internet, which means that Mr Daly is unable to compete with trainers up and down the country to secure nominations for his horses, because he gets access to that information after everybody else. As a result, his horses do not always get high enough up the list to be able to be entered in the races for which they are best suited. That is a small example, but I think that will strike a chord with those who have an interest in racing. There is a clear competitiveness issue for people who are trying to do business in the countryside. There are also issues for people who wish to undertake adult learning from home. Schools have been connected, but we also need domestic connections.
Finally, I should like to touch on some of the solutions being proposed, particularly by Advantage West Midlands, and to urge the Minister to find one that he favours. There is something called Rabit-the remote area broadband inclusion trial. I am not sure whether it is peculiar to Advantage West Midlands or a national solution. For businesses only, the regional development agency is funding grants to provide satellite delivery-up to the 512 kilobyte service-to qualifying businesses. For faster speeds, the grant has to be matched. In most cases, that means that a small business will have to find £1,000 to secure the speed necessary for a proper, interactive service.
I urge the Minister to tell us when he will extend a scheme such as Rabit to cover domestic premises, given the priority that he has given to enabling the entire country to have access to the service.
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