Digital Britain

My Lords, I am delighted to receive a Welsh welcome. Earlier today, I said to a colleague from Wales in another place that there is an enormous amount in this report for the nations and the rural parts of the United Kingdom. That is not just in relation to broadcasting and content, but also to the coverage of broadband service, the funding for next-generation networks, extending mobile coverage to 100 per cent, the rolling out of digital radio capabilities and the funding of pilots. I hope that one of the consequences of this will be an increase in the binding together of the United Kingdom through an extension of services to parts of the country currently underserved by these things. On the noble Lord’s specific question, it is very clearly argued that these will be commercially run consortia, notwithstanding that they will use pump-priming finance through the contestable fund process. Therefore, I suspect that they would end up having a combination of anchor tenants or anchor shareholders who would act as a way of bringing together other interested parties. We have already had some proposals from commercial operators in Scotland as to how they can put together their first pilot. I have two views: first, the Government should stay away from running it as far as possible and let the operators run it and, secondly, we should use these pilots to investigate their optimal way of working. I suspect that we will end up with a different model in Scotland to that in Wales and that in the English region, and I think that we will learn from that.