I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing the debate and allowing us all to get these frustrations off our chest.
This debate is welcome, because the last time the House discussed broadband was prior to the publication of Ofcom’s “Connected Nations” report, which has been referred to today and which offered a progress report on the Government’s delayed roll-out of broadband. The debate has clearly indicated the continued frustration of hon. Members throughout the House, and I feel their frustration. The Ofcom report showed that Sheffield is the major city with the lowest superfast broadband coverage in the country. That is a useful reminder of a point that has been played out today—that although this problem predominantly affects rural areas and particularly island communities, as has been so passionately
expressed, it is also a truly national issue, encompassing all nations, regions, cities, towns and villages of the UK, and so requires a national strategy.
The “Connected Nations” report found that although Scotland performed worst in the UK and England best, the headline data masked internal variations that cut across the traditional boundaries of rural versus urban. Indeed, of the 3.5 million homes that cannot receive superfast speeds, 1.7 million of them are in urban areas. In total, 36% of rural Scotland is in the slowest of slow lanes, and 25% of rural England, while 400,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in town and country do not have access to superfast broadband, with 200,000 being unable to access even the basic speed of 10 megabits per second. Almost a quarter of a million UK premises cannot get even the pitiful download speed of 2 megabits per second, and more than 600,000 premises cannot get 5 megabits per second.
There is little secret that we are facing a slow-moving productivity crisis, and little wonder when 75% of our small businesses report that broadband is critical to their needs and yet nearly half of small businesses have complaints about internet service as it currently stands. Some 33% of the business parks that were designed to be a test bed for innovation productivity are still unable to access superfast broadband, as the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) set out. She also highlighted the important distinction between technical access and availability, and the take-up of broadband speeds in our communities. It is not yet clear to me that Broadband Delivery UK, whatever its future iteration with relation to the universal service obligation, will take those issues into account and properly measure them.
We are failing our businesses and, even more importantly, our potential businesses if we do not keep pace with them and provide the digital infrastructure that they require. Businesses rely increasingly on substantial download and upload speeds—although the USO does not take upload speeds into consideration—in order to store information on cloud systems and conduct multi-user calls while transferring and processing data, with multiple employees online all the time.
The sheer scale of data transferred over fixed-line broadband is detailed in “Connected Nations”, and it has grown as broadband speed has increased. The average monthly data consumed per household jumped by 36% over the past year to 132 gigabytes, and the total volume of data transferred was a staggering 2,750 petabytes. That all clearly adds up to a need that will become more and more stark by the end of the decade. With the need so obvious, it is surprising that Ministers continue to pursue the pitiful designation of 10 megabits per second by 2020.
I perfectly understand the frustration of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland that 37% of his constituents still cannot access the bare minimum speed that Ofcom defines as being necessary for participation in a digital society. Moreover, the Government are offering his constituents that bare minimum only by 2020. Half the properties in Orkney and Shetland do not have access to superfast broadband, so as it stands it will be the same old story, repeated again and again: rural communities are an afterthought, and those with poor coverage are always playing catch-up, as technological advances require a faster and faster internet service.
As the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Calum Kerr), the Scottish National party Front-Bench spokesman, said, Ofcom agrees with that. In its technical response to the USO, it said that
“government may want to consider the extent it”—
Government intervention—
“should be designed to take into account further future growth”.
Ofcom made it clear that the Government would get better value for money by intervening once and ensuring that there is not a continual state of review, advice and reinvestment as requirements grow over time.