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Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con): I, too, will be very brief. Like other hon. Members, I should like to hear what the Minister has to say about the Bill. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) on introducing the Bill. Mobile phones are important to all our lives, but the growth in their use has, of course, been phenomenal. There are more than 62 million mobile phone subscribers now, compared with 9 million when the Government first came to power in 1997, and 85 per cent. of households now have mobile phones.
The background to the Bill is a concern of which all hon. Members are aware from their constituencies. In the eyes of our constituents, masts can affect people's health, particularly when they are sited close to schools and medical facilities, without any proper consultation with local communities. As my right hon. Friend and other Members have explained, the problem is that the siting of such masts is effectively outside the planning process. No proper consultation with communities therefore takes place and people feel disfranchised from the decisions that are taken. The Government's own expert committee urged that a precautionary approach be taken to the siting of masts. That is reflected in the Bill, which would ensure that new masts—not existing ones—would be subject to full planning permission and that health considerations could be taken into account when applications were considered.
The precise detail of the proposals will need to be examined and scrutinised—I hope in Committee. We will need to consider their impact on the number of applications and the extension of 3G coverage. The number of planning applications would certainly increase. All those aspects can be dealt with.
The principle of the Bill—that local communities should be properly consulted over the location of masts—must be right. For too long there has been a creeping attitude that the Government know best and a process whereby too many decisions are, in effect, taken out of local control and away from local communities. We have seen that in a number of areas of our lives where the say of local communities has been taken away and responsibility has been moved to a regional level—in relation to the police service, the fire service, planning decisions and so on—or to Government. The idea that is it wrong to consult local communities and involve them in such decisions and that no objections to the siting of masts may be brooked simply because the Government have judged that mobile phones are good for us all is profoundly anti-democratic.
The Labour manifesto for the last election stated, perfectly reasonably:
If that is to be adhered to and applied, the Government should support the principle behind the Bill and at least be willing to examine the Bill and discuss with us in Committee how it might operate.
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Concern about the issue will grow. One suggestion is that 3G technology will require up to four times as many masts as at present. That would mean 135,000 more masts in the country—more than 200 for every constituency. The issue will not go away and it is no longer acceptable to sweep the concerns of local people aside. We must be capable of achieving a sensible balance.
I have left plenty of time in which the Minister can respond without talking out the Bill. If he is still speaking at 2.30 pm, the House will know that the Government's real intention is not to support the Bill. The Bill has had support from hon. Members on both sides of the House and I hope that the Government will therefore allow it to go into Committee so that it can be discussed further.
2.7 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Jim Fitzpatrick): I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) on securing a place in the ballot for private Members' Bills and using the opportunity to debate this significant topic. As he knows, the subject is important to the Government and is of widespread interest and concern to hon. Members and the public.
The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) suggested that there was going to be subterfuge by talking out the Bill, but we are quite clear that we do not support the Bill—we are quite happy to say that. However, where the Government agree with the right hon. Gentleman—I commend him on the tone in which he introduced the Bill—is in recognising that we have to move the situation on and that there is concern and fear because of a perceived health risk, although all the evidence shows that there is no such risk. I will come on to that. I apologise to the hon. Member if it will cause him offence if I am still talking at 2.30 pm, but I have a lot of information to put across.
We published our latest report this week, as the right hon. Gentleman was generous enough to acknowledge. It runs to some 40 pages, but expresses matters concisely and precisely. We are advised that the latest data from the research commissioned as a result of the paper will be with us by the end of April. We are determined to move the issue on in order to reassure the public and deal with the legitimate concerns that are being expressed by hon. Members. I accept entirely that this matter will not go away. The Government are not making any attempt to say that the issue does not need attention. It does need attention, we are giving it attention and we will give it a lot more in the months ahead.
Before I get into the substantive matters addressed in the clauses, I should like to set this discussion in the wider context, which has been referred to piecemeal by hon. Members over the past couple of hours. It has been one of the Government's objectives to create the most dynamic, competitive communications industries in the world, ensuring universal access to a choice of diverse services of the highest quality and that citizens and consumers are safeguarded.
The UK is at the forefront of the service provision of electronic communications technology. It is estimated that, in 2004, the UK communications sector
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contributed £47.4 billion to the UK economy, forming about 4.1 per cent. of UK GDP. However, it is a fact that if we want our mobile phones to work, there is a need to be within a few hundred metres of a base station. To enable us to send and receive signals from our handsets, some sort of relaying apparatus is needed. The technology of base stations means that each one can handle only a certain number of calls. The more that people use mobile phones, the greater the need for base stations.
The coverage of a cellular system is provided by a network of radio base stations, each with a certain coverage area or cell. A base station is a facility that provides transmission and reception for radio systems. There are three types of cells. Macro cells provide the main structure for the base station network. The base stations for macro cells have power outputs of tens of watts and communicate with phones up to about 22 miles distant. Micro cells are used to infill and improve the main network, especially where the volume of calls is high. They are sited in places such as airports, railway stations and shopping malls. The micro cell base stations emit less power than those for macro cells and their range is considerably shorter. Pico cells have a lower power output than that of micro cells—it is a few watts—and are generally sited inside buildings.
Communication systems are obviously driven by demand. Increase in the use of mobile phones has meant that operators are continually expanding their networks to accommodate customer requirements of service and quality. However, the base stations need to be where the users are. Consequently, the greatest need for base station sites is usually in built-up areas where there is the highest density of mobile users, and within a mile or two of main roads, where demands on network capacity are greatest.
The size of each cell is determined by a number of factors, but particularly the number of subscribers expected to require access to the system during the peak usage period. In areas where call traffic density exceeds the limits of the network, capacity can be expanded either by introducing new sites—macro or micro cells—or by splitting existing cells, thus effectively doubling capacity. Cell splitting requires the erection of additional antennae at the base station site or a new base station site.
The location of transmitter antennae is important. Obviously, signals from one cell will interfere with nearby cells on the same frequency. To avoid blind spots from buildings and hills, antennae must usually be placed high up. In urban areas antennae are often best placed on existing buildings. However, in rural areas, a lattice mast is often required. Technically, that is all a mast is—a tower structure.
There are currently about 45,000 base stations in the United Kingdom. The right hon. Gentleman referred to a higher figure, and I am sure that he has the latest data, given his research for this morning's debate. The Mobile Operators Association estimates that the number of base stations will increase to at least 50,000 by the end of 2007. That does not mean 50,000 sites or 50,000 masts, because many of these base stations will be installed on existing structures or be collocated with the apparatus of another operator. If we do not have this infrastructure the handsets will not work at the service level that users expect.
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Despite the undoubted popularity of mobile phones, however, there is significant disquiet about the infrastructure necessary to support them. A proposal for a new mobile phone mast is often accompanied by protests and objections, sometimes with justification and sometimes without, often because local communities are not sufficiently well informed.
The Government are sensitive to the public's concerns about the mobile network infrastructure. We acknowledge that many hon. Members and the public generally are concerned about the health and environmental impact of mobile phone base station developments. We recognise that there is a balance to be struck between the regulations and guidelines that facilitate the growth of the mobile phone network and the need to keep its environmental impact to a minimum and address public health concerns. The right hon. Gentleman covered those aspects widely in his introductory speech. The Government believe that the current arrangements broadly strike the right balance.
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