I beg to move,
That this House has considered the rollout of superfast broadband to rural communities.
It is, as ever, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. Anyone wondering why broadband should be of concern to me and my constituents could do no better than to look at the briefing paper prepared by the House of Commons Library for today’s debate. If anyone is looking for Orkney and Shetland in just about any of the various league tables in that paper, do not bother looking for us at the top of most of them because we are generally at or around the bottom. We are the sixth lowest UK constituency for superfast broadband availability, and in the table for average speeds, the situation is even worse—we are fourth lowest. The only table where we feature near the top—fourth from the top—is unfortunately the one showing the percentage of households in constituencies that are unable to get connection speeds of 10 megabits per second or more.