Superfast Broadband: Rural Communities

In a future debate, we should address the fact that there is too much outsourcing of policy decisions to Ofcom. A lot of these decisions are political. I sometimes joke with my hon. Friend that he is the MP for the Faroe Islands, but the reality is that the Faroe Islands have that coverage because they took a political decision. They wanted that level of coverage and they took the policy decisions to deliver it. We could do the same, but we do not. We tend to pragmatism and say, “It’s going to cost a lot of money. How important is it? We’ll ask Ofcom and then shape the answer. Ofcom suggested this and recommended that.”