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Brian White: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that private sector companies have experienced similar
problems, but they do not get the same publicity? The problem is not necessarily with the public sector, but with the way in which IT companies relate to their customers.
Dr. Cable: I am sure that the problem is often one of large organisations rather than necessarily one of government. I worked in one of the largest international oil companies and remember the grief caused by attempts to generate new IT systems there. It is not an ideological point; there have been major problems. I wonder how the NHS, which is the biggest public sector unit in, I think, the world, will manage to aggregate its needs efficiently.
Mr. Robathan: I apologise for missing the beginning of the hon. Gentleman's speech when I was having lunch. He is making an extremely good point. In response to the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White), may I add that the difference between a large oil company, such as Shell, losing a lot of money on IT and a public sector organisation is that the taxpayer does not have to pay for that company's losses?
Dr. Cable: The public sector does not have to pay either if it structures its deals properly. That is probably one of the lessons that we have to learn.
The other aspect of the billion-pound programme is not so much making public services work better as providing better information flows to the public and helping people to communicate, for example, by paying their taxes and getting passports on the internet. That is already happening, often in surprising ways. I have discovered in the past few months that because my local council is putting its unitary development plan and all its planning applications on the internet so that local people can access them—if they have broadband, they can get all the maps—between 500 and 1,000 people have been turning up to public meetings that I have organised to discuss fairly modest issues such as the use of a public open space. They have downloaded the maps and they can see how a proposal will affect their homes and their areas, so they are massively engaged.
There is a problem with that, however. Planning is a relatively wired-up area, so the council has got used to notifying the public of planning decisions through the local online service. Most people are aware of that and make their objections, but the information flows are completely bypassing elderly people and others who do not have access. Although a great deal is happening, and most of it is beneficial and efficient, what will happen to ensure that we provide public sector information to that residual part of the population—the elderly, those on relatively low incomes and the isolated—who do not have broadband or, indeed, any internet provision?
There was a proposal, which the Minister will know about—indeed, he may be a little embarrassed about it—to make sub-post offices the locus for bringing together all those information flows. I believe that the Government have retained the idea that post offices will, like a GP service, provide generic advice, but the technology aspect has been lost. If post offices are not to be the focal point, where is that point to be? If I am a newcomer to an area, whether it is the New Forest, Shetland or Twickenham, and I do not have broadband,
cannot afford it and do not know how to operate it, I will want to go somewhere to get information about working with the Inland Revenue or understanding my local development plan and planning applications. Where would I go? Where is the public resource—the central point at which a local authority would bring all that information together?3.57 pm
Mr. John Maples (Stratford-on-Avon): We have listened to a series of speeches by people who obviously know what they are talking about, and I hope that the last two speakers will forgive me if I do not follow them down the routes that they took, interesting though those were. This is not my specialist subject, as will rapidly become apparent, but I have a problem, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give me some answers when he winds up the debate.
I want to concentrate on the problem in rural areas, which have 25 per cent. of the population and produce 30 per cent. of GDP. Only about a quarter of BT's exchanges have been upgraded to operate ADSL, and depending on what figures one uses, between 10 and 20 per cent. of the rural population have access to broadband. I want to confine the problem further—to business in rural areas. I am not desperately concerned about whether individuals have access to broadband in their homes, although I suppose that it would enable my children to stream even more unsuitable videos to themselves when I do not know that they are doing it. We manage to live in my village without Channel 5 and I do not hear a huge number of complaints about that. However, I am concerned about business and the rural economy.
Rightly, part of the Government's strategy for rural areas, and that of the previous Conservative Government, was to encourage diversification and to encourage businesses to locate themselves, or to stay, in rural areas. Businesses have been encouraged to convert old farm buildings, for example, and there are many of those in my constituency. If all those people have to relocate to a large town to get a service that they need, we will have more problems in the towns with transport, traffic congestion and pollution, costs that the Government will have to pay, one way or another, because those costs tend to get externalised.
If we are serious about business staying in rural areas it has to be able to be competitive. For many businesses, access to broadband is part of that competitiveness and the foundation of productivity. If an architect's practice, to use the example given by another hon. Member, or another business that does a great deal of work on the internet, could not get broadband, while its competitors in the nearest big town could, that would be a serious problem, and it would lead to migration to the towns.
Despite being called Stratford-on-Avon, my constituency is about 500 square miles of rural Warwickshire. Stratford is the only exchange that is broadband-enabled. Two others, in Southam and Alcester, will be enabled this month, and trigger levels have been set for two more, at Studley and Wellesbourne. I like to think that we had some role in persuading BT to publish those targets and in getting
people to sign up, resulting in two of the exchanges I mentioned being enabled. I hope that the other two will be as well. No trigger levels have been set for three other major exchanges in my area, and many small exchanges are not even on the list for getting a trigger level in the next few weeks or months.I urge the Minister to persuade BT to publish trigger levels, or even to insist that it do so, so that we know what is needed in an area to make the exercise economic for BT; then, we will know in which areas broadband will never be economic. I realise that BT faces problems—if the company is to act voluntarily provision has to be economically sensible. However even if all the exchanges for which trigger levels have been published are enabled, many rural areas will still not have access to broadband, either because they are too remote, or because enabling their exchanges will never be viable—I understand that for technical reasons some exchanges cannot be enabled. I am concerned about that, but I want to explore a few ideas about how the problems might be addressed and ask the Minister to comment on them.
First, might we consider introducing a universal service obligation? Large areas of the countryside would not have telephones, electricity or even water if there were no universal service obligation. Do the Government think that that might be one way to proceed? I understand that there are problems with EU legislation and that the issue cannot be re-examined for a couple of years, but that is not an enormously long time in the context. What do the Government think would be the consequences for BT? Would it be reasonable to impose a universal service obligation on the company, or would it be hugely uneconomic, in which case we would pay for it in terms of inefficiencies in other parts of the telephone network? If so, perhaps the Government should consider helping. I am not usually at the forefront of asking the Government to spend money helping private business, or asking private business to do something that it does not want to do, but the Government will pick up the costs of failure in terms of the relocation of businesses to urban areas, creating traffic congestion and pollution problems. Therefore, the issue is not cost versus no cost, but one cost versus another.
Secondly, BT is doing a great deal of work in this area and I have had helpful replies to correspondence with the company, which seems to be trying different technologies in different areas. However, reading what it has to say, it seems to me inevitable that not all rural areas will be reached—not all will have access to broadband. BT and my local regional development agency, Advantage West Midlands, are looking into wireless and satellite technologies. Does the Minister think that those are viable alternatives for rural businesses?
I understand that satellite is far more expensive, at about £1,000 to initiate compared with about £30 for a regular ADSL connection, but that is not a huge sum in a business context, although an individual might see it differently. Any business that needs broadband to remain competitive will probably be able to afford the £1,000 initial charge. My concern is whether the system is viable for the type of rural business I have in mind. I understand that there is a technical problem in that either the upstream or the downstream traffic runs at
half the speed of the other; is that likely to be overcome? Is wireless technology, which BT and Advantage West Midlands are exploring, likely to provide a solution?Thirdly, will the Minister tell me about the Government's programme to link up schools and GPs? I listened carefully to the Minister's speech and heard him say that all GPs—I was going to ask him whether all GPs or most GPs would be part of the programme—will be broadband enabled by March 2004. There are GPs in many of the villages that I represent—and, I am sure, in areas represented by many other right hon. and hon. Members. If broadband cabling, or some other system to give them broadband access, is to be installed, could it be made available to rural businesses? Giving business access might help to defray the costs—the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White) talked about something similar happening in Stockholm, although that might not be an exact parallel. Perhaps the Government could charge people: if the alternative was satellite costing £1,000, it might be possible to get £750 from a rural business that wanted to hook up and thus defray part of the cost.
Does the Minister think that that is a viable solution, or does it run into serious problems with European law on state aids? It would be a pity if it did. There are all sorts of special schemes for rural areas, such as the new rural regulation that allows common agricultural policy money to be spent on non-agricultural matters in rural areas. It seems a pity if, on one hand, we and the European Union were trying to promote business and non-farm activities in rural areas, and, on the other, we stopped for a competition reason problem one of the things that was an essential ingredient of such businesses being able to remain competitive.
The regional development agency in my area is playing a part, with its share of the Government's £30 million, in trying out some things. I understand that it is heavily involved in the backbone network that the Government are putting in place and is undertaking some rural pilots. It says that it believes—it is a bit of a throwaway line in its memorandum—that satellite services are a practical alternative for most small and medium-sized enterprises. I am not convinced that that is so.
I have rather more questions than solutions, but the problems to which I have referred are important to several businesses in my constituency. I think that that situation will be replicated throughout much of the country, and in geographical terms, most of it. There are many rural constituencies like mine in which there are villages and businesses that will never, realistically, have access to BT's cable broadband service, without either some Government intervention, some ability to hook up to the Government's own network, or some alternative technology.
I read carefully the report of the Minister's speech in a Westminster Hall debate a couple of months ago, or whenever. I did not feel from that that this issue was really addressed. I realise that there are many other issues that must be higher up the Government's list of priorities with which they must deal. However, the issue before us is important to many of us. I think that any Member representing a rural constituency would say to the Minister that it is coming pretty high up in the issues
that are raised in their postbag. We are receiving many letters and other forms of communication about it. People feel upset and angry. They feel that their problem is not understood. I am sure that the Government understand the issues, but I look forward to the Minister telling me how he thinks that the Government can help to solve the problem, or whether he thinks that market forces can solve it.
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