Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-91)
MONDAY 31 MARCH 2003
DR CHARLES
TROTMAN, MR
SEAN JOHNSON
AND MRS
PENELOPE BOSSOM
80. You are saying, based on the French experience,
that there is not.
(Dr Trotman) Based on what the Commission has said
to the French Government, we do not believe there to be a state
aid problem, certainly in the magnitude that others have said
there is.
81. By and large it is not beyond the wit of
man to discover who is right on this, is it? After all Brussels
does answer questions. Have you not thought to get a clarification
or push a government department to get a clarification or prompted
some member of the European Parliament to table the questions
which will get the answers?
(Dr Trotman) We have already had discussions with
both Defra and the DTI to clarify this whole position on state
aid and we are still waiting for an answer, we are still waiting
for that clarification and we are in the early stages of contacting
MEPs to seek clarification from the Commission as well as speaking
direct to the Commission itself on this.
82. It would be quite a good idea if the Committee
were to write a letter to the appropriate person and find out.
You mentioned interestingly Defra and DTI. The problem is that
this lot might all be settled more easily if Defra just kept out
of it, would it not really? The only thing Defra has, as a rural
affairs department, is the England Rural Development Programme
and that is it boys, finished, over, done and dusted. All the
rest of the time it is trying to persuade other government departments
to do things. The minister responsible for this is the DTI minister.
Would Defra not be better out of this and dealing with the people
more directly responsible? Is not joined-up government not just
becoming confused government?
(Dr Trotman) As a trade association, we have to work
with all players.
83. No, that is not what I asked you. I asked
you, in a sensible world, what the structure would be.
(Dr Trotman) In a sensible world you would have one
government department actually running the operation and it would
be one government department. But we are not in a sensible world.
84. I live in hope. That one would be DTI in
this case.
(Dr Trotman) In this case.
85. There might well be other things for Defra
to do, but in this case should this not be the DTI?
(Dr Trotman) It would be the DTI but
there is also another potential problem because you have other
public services such as the National Health Service, Education,
all needing broadband. If it were all to come under the umbrella
of the DTI, fine, but other government departments have their
own responsibilities as well. So it is important, certainly as
far as we are concerned, that we link up, we talk to all government
departments which have interest in this issue. We obviously have
very close links with Defra because we represent land and rural
businesses in England and Wales, but we also have to establish
good working relationships with other government departments.
What we are trying to do in a sense is push Defra to make a far
stronger case for broadband in rural areas, which they are beginning
to listen to.
(Mr Johnson) In this ideal world, yes, it would be
nice that there would be one department, but that department would
only be in charge of rolling out broadband to the country. It
would also be in charge of your infrastructure in the government
and the public sector workers who work in it. So when they needed
a new pipe from A to B, be it for private sector or public sector
demand, there was a governmental department which decided where
that pipe went from A to B, who put it in, instead of the Department
of Health saying yes, we need the pipe and we will call our mate
Jim because we know him and we like how he works and somebody
else saying we will put our one in. It needs this joined-up thinking;
it would be a very nice idea.
86. Has the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) got
broadband?
(Mr Johnson) I am not sure.
(Dr Trotman) Off the top of my head, I could not tell
you, but we would actually say that if they do not have broadband
at the moment, they should have broadband in all government departments.
87. Since we are working on farmers to fill
in all their forms electronically it would be a perversity if,
let us say, farmers were not allowed to piggy-back on the Rural
Payments Agency broadband system.
(Dr Trotman) Exactly. Yes, that is certainly an idea.
First of all we would have to establish whether the RPA had broadband.
88. Alternatively of course you could make the
forms a lot less complicated, as the Irish have.
(Dr Trotman) Yes.
Chairman
89. May I pursue the point David has made? Mr
Curry and I may have a slightly different perspective on this.
The DTI, who is responsible for broadband, is probably the most
Thatcherite department in government and the department most committed
to allowing market forces to work their way through the system.
It would always seem to me that there is some advantage in having
a department batting for rural areas, in particular in those areas
and on those issues where market forces alone will not deliver
the services which rural areas need. Is the point you are making
perhaps that Defra, which is the department which should be sticking
up for rural areas, could be doing a little more in relation to
DTI in sticking up for rural areas?
(Dr Trotman) Yes, that is certainly the case. I totally
agree with that.
(Mr Johnson) Allow Defra to spend someone else's money.
Ms Atherton
90. Would you agree, talking about the schools,
that it is a nonsense that our children in village schools, the
children of farmers and rural workers, will have daily access
to broadband and to the opportunities and the possibilities that
broadband offer and yet when they go into the world of work or
the world of their homes they will be deprived and it will lead
to further people in rural communities disappearing to the towns
because in order to develop their skills they will not be able
to continue in their own homes?
(Dr Trotman) That is exactly the point.
(Mr Johnson) It goes a stage further than that as
well. Earlier on Mr Curry was asking why people suddenly need
e-mail now, why did people need fax 20 years ago. We all need
cars now; we did not need those 150 years ago. Things have changed,
times change, business is at the speed of light. It is because
people now are not accepting that the office is closed at five
o'clock, people now expect that when you say you have sent them
something it will arrive in 25 seconds. They expect mobile phones,
they expect you to be contactable 24/7. It is because business
has changed that e-mail has come along. E-mail did not come along
and change business, it was the other way round.
(Mrs Bossom) There is also going to be a huge number
of new things and someone like Blewbury might discover new ways
of using it. Rural transport is a problem, young people, how do
they stay in touch with each other. It is just the beginning and
we have to watch the good practice, we have to watch the innovators
and somehow help spread it out.
Mr Drew
91. No-one has mentioned 3G in the three sessions
we have had. Is some of this all irrelevant because the great
3G revolution will come in and we shall all be on our mobiles
and we shall all be able to do the things wherever we are in the
country and static stuff we are now used to will all be washed
away? Is that a dream or is that reality in ten years' time?
(Mr Johnson) We see it now in a way with GSM, which
is around now, that these things connect to and what have you.
With the amount of money you have to pay for GSM to get your connectivity,
and 3G at the moment is going to be more expensive than GSM, you
are looking at very large sums. If I wanted to run this and run
as much data through it as I do through our ADSL connection at
work, it would cost me £1,000, £1,500 a month. Yes,
the technology is there and it may be another argument for bringing
down mobile/data/phone charges and everything like that, but it
is very expensive technology and with the amount of money which
was paid for the 3G licences I am quite sure they need to get
it back some way.
Chairman: Thank you very much Dr Trotman for
coming along with your colleagues this afternoon. If there is
anything you wish you had said which you think would be useful,
could you write to us and we shall incorporate that in the evidence?
Thank you very much.
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