The next item is a statement by the Minister for Skills and Science on superfast broadband in Wales. I call on the Minister to make the statement—Julie James.

Diolch, Lywydd. Today, I want to provide you with an update on the progress of Superfast Cymru, together with our emerging work to address the final few per cent of premises not part of the project or commercial roll-outs and a refreshed approach to communications and marketing.

I’m sure that I do not need to impress on Members the growing importance of connectivity to homes and businesses. The opportunities it affords are limitless, and we need as many people as possible to be able to access it, but also to make the most of that access. Our aim, as outlined in ‘Taking Wales Forward’, is to bring people together digitally by offering fast, reliable broadband to every property in Wales.

We continue to make solid progress on Superfast Cymru. To the end of June this year, we have provided access to superfast broadband to over 610,000 premises that would not have been able to receive superfast broadband speeds without our intervention. Today I have also provided Members with information about progress by local authority. Let me be clear: that’s 610,000 premises across Wales that can now enjoy broadband download speeds averaging around 66 Mbps as a result of this investment. This compares to an average speed of less than 10 across Wales when we started this work in 2013. However, this remains a complex project and deployment remains challenging. BT Openreach needs to maintain the momentum if it is to hit its contractual targets. My officials and I are monitoring progress very closely as the project moves towards completion.

However, this is not just about numbers of premises and speed. The real benefit of Superfast Cymru is going to be how it is improving lives and supporting businesses. I’d like to share two examples with you. The mother of an autistic boy has told us how her son uses superfast connectivity to use specialist apps and websites on his iPad. He reads on his Kindle and does and submits his homework via an online portal. With a household of five, superfast broadband means he can still get online even if everyone else is online too. An entrepreneur in Conwy county, north Wales, who runs a cake-baking business uses broadband on a daily basis to communicate with customers, upload all her images quickly to a cloud storage system, keep up to date on social media and learn new skills from webinars and tutorials. Superfast broadband has enabled her to be far more efficient, dedicating more time to baking and decorating, rather than waiting for documents to download or trying to get in touch with customers.

However, the roll-out has had its fair share of challenges and Members regularly write to me seeking answers and updates on a range of issues related to the roll-out. I thought it would be helpful if I addressed some of the common themes here. Firstly, the build phase of the Superfast Cymru project is due to be completed in June 2017. As with other major contracts of this size, there will then be a six- month window for Openreach to complete any in-build elements ahead of a contract drop dead date of 31 December 2017. You will all recall that the project was extended to June 2017 to allow for the inclusion of an additional 40,000 premises. The extension followed an open-market review which showed the number of premises that needed to be addressed under the project had increased, for example because of new-build premises or where premises due for roll-out under telecommunications companies’ own plans had been deemed economically unviable by them.

Secondly, BT is delivering superfast fibre broadband using two technologies—fibre to the cabinet and fibre to the premises. Fibre to the cabinet involves installing a fibre roadside cabinet close to an existing copper cabinet and connecting the two so that the broadband signal travels to the home or business over the existing copper telephone cable. This is the most straightforward, cost-effective and common option, as it enables BT to improve the broadband for multiple premises at once. Fibre to the premises is more complicated. It involves extending a fibre cable to the premises itself. In many cases, the solution for each premises is bespoke. This adds to the cost, complexity and time taken to deliver.

Fibre cannot be the answer for every premises. The Access Broadband Cymru scheme will continue to play a part in helping people to achieve a step change in their broadband speed, and the ultrafast connectivity voucher will continue to help businesses get the speeds they need to ensure they remain competitive. Furthermore, we have commissioned Airband Community Internet Ltd to deliver to around 2,000 business premises using a wireless solution. This work is progressing at pace and will be completed by December of this year.

As the Superfast Cymru and Airband projects enter the home straight, we cannot rest on our laurels. We will need to focus on what comes next and how we are going to reach the final few per cent of premises. We’ve already started work to define where those premises will be. On 9 September, we published a public consultation to primarily engage with the telecoms industry to understand their deployment plans. This will enable us to target premises currently not part of any roll-out to further extend the Superfast Cymru project using £12.9 million of funding generated through the predicted take-up levels. We hope that this funding can be used to provide superfast broadband access ahead of the end of the current contract in December 2017. This extra funding will, however, only go part of the way to addressing the remaining premises. That is why I have asked officials to look at how deployment can continue into 2018 and beyond.

Work is already well under way, with plans to launch a further detailed formal open-market review process later in the autumn. This is required to underpin the evidence-based assessment of where public intervention can take place under EU state aid guidelines. Only once the outcome of the review has been analysed will we be in a position to confirm whether and how a new procurement to provide access for further premises can be taken forward. Procurement activity could take place during 2017 with a new contract to commence in early 2018. However, I need to be clear that we cannot provide fibre connectivity at any cost, as providing value for money for the public purse is also vital.

Work is also in hand to explore future funding options, including EU funding. We will be pressing BT to release further funding that it generates through take-up of the existing Superfast Cymru roll-out so that we can reinvest this funding in future deployments. We will also be seeking further support from the UK Government as well as looking to our own budget.

Like the two examples I mentioned earlier, we want to make sure that everyone can make the most of the access they have to superfast broadband. This month, we have begun a multi-layered regional communications and engagement programme across Wales to raise awareness of the benefits of superfast broadband to consumers and to encourage use of the technology available to them.

We will be delivering activity in every local authority in Wales between now and December 2017 through a blended approach of events, public relations, community engagement and advertising. We are working closely with local authorities to provide them with a toolkit to promote the use of superfast broadband, in addition to our own activity in each area.

Finally, we are developing our website further to include personalised advice for customers and consumers to help people make more informed choices about their broadband. Members can be certain that I remain committed to offering fast, reliable broadband to every property in Wales, that plans to tackle the final few per cent are already in hand and that we are putting in place a programme to encourage consumers to make the most of the opportunities that this superfast broadband provides.

May I thank the Minister for her statement? Naturally, it’s a very important subject—superfast broadband. It’s been the subject of a number of comments from people in my region. Naturally, we welcome the fact that there has been progress in this work and we have received additional information about the situation, on a county-by-county basis. As the Minister has already said, this project has been a long-term one and a complex one, with several challenges to face.

Some of those—from looking at the table of the provision of broadband access in our counties, we see that places such as Ceredigion have only 60 per cent of premises with access to broadband. In Powys, the situation isn’t much better: 65 per cent of premises there have access to superfast broadband. I would hope, when this review takes place into how much work there is still to do—as you said here, in 2018 and onwards—that there will be a review of the number of premises in our most rural areas that are having problems at present in gaining access to broadband, because it is a matter of regret that those figures are so low in those counties, considering the fact that there has been very good progress in other areas.

Turning to the business aspect of things, it’s good to say that, over the years, BT has received significant funding from EU funds, such as ERDF and so on—around £250 million over the years. Business understands that that kind of investment is needed, but what business can’t see—those that have been talking to me, at least—is that their costs as businesses have also doubled and can be very high, just for them to gain access to superfast broadband. I understand that that is outwith any investment that this Government does make into the Superfast Cymru scheme, but that’s what’s of concern to businesses out there. I’ve had several meetings over the past few months about the availability of superfast broadband and, when it is available, the increasing costs to businesses—they have to pay a lot for that service. In that regard, I would ask the Minister, as well as having an update on the points as to how we’re going to improve the situation in Ceredigion and Powys, for people in those areas, would the Minister be willing to meet with some business leaders who have been voicing their concerns in the Swansea region in order for me to give assurance to our businesses, which are increasingly reliant on these services, that there is certainty about the way forward in terms of the provision and in terms of the costs. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for those points. In terms of the roll-out and the rurality issue, the point about this programme is it is almost entirely based in rural areas, or non-metropolitan areas, because it’s a market intervention. So, the point about it is, we’re only allowed to go where the market isn’t going to go. So, it’s a truism, I’m afraid, that the market only goes to high-population areas and therefore this programme goes to lower population areas. So, you can see from the roll-out that that’s how it works. The figures are for the whole of the connectivity across, and bear in mind we’ve still got another year or so to go.

So, this isn’t the final situation; this is the situation of premises passed—those are premises that definitely have a speed of 30 Mbps download or more, and most of them have 66 plus, but it’s 30 Mbps that’s the cut-off point. BT does not get paid for any premises that do not make the 30 Mbps mark. That is the target for them. So, the roll-out of broadband is faster than the premises passed number—this is from the end of June—and that’s because we have a rigorous process to test that the premises that they claim actually get the speeds that we think they should. So, there’s quite a lag in that and I spoke about the lag at the end of the contract while we get those final premises through and so on. This has been a very vigorous process to make sure that people get what we’re paying for, and we’re very keen that they should do that.

At the same time, we always knew that this wasn’t going to get to 100 per cent of premises across Wales. We all are aware of the beautiful terrain in Wales and it is glorious and very much part of what we are, but it is, of course, problematic in telecommunications terms. It’s difficult to cable, there isn’t line of sight for telegraph poles and all the rest of it; Members will be more than familiar with that, I don’t need to tell them that. That’s why we have a project that is aimed at getting to the final 4 per cent or 5 per cent of premises and that will be via other methodologies. So, people will be aware—. I’m sure all Members have had constituents talk to them about the Access Broadband Cymru scheme, for example. There are some really good examples across rural Wales. I visited one with Kirsty Williams only the other day, where really excellent satellite technology is used to get speeds of up to 100Mbps down and upload, actually. So, it’s not a second-class service in any way; it just isn’t that cable service that we’re paying for.

So, we will get to everyone. The problem we’ve got is that nobody wants to be in the last year. So, we are where we are. BT are going to meet those targets or pay a very severe financial penalty for not doing so. They will meet them. We monitor them very closely in that and, at that point, we will have a picture right across Wales where we can target the further resource we get from the gain share from the contract into those last few premises.

On the businesses, we don’t control the cost that the ISP people charge, but I encourage all businesses to shop around, as I encourage all individuals to shop around. I’m more than happy, if you want to write to me, to come and meet any businesses that have concerns in that regard. We do have a list of ISPs that are available, and as they say on the BBC, other brands are available. But shopping around really does get benefits for people in terms of the cost of the service afterwards.

I would like to firstly thank the Minister for the welcome statement today and the fact that the Superfast Cymru project has improved the availability of fibre broadband across Wales, benefiting residents and businesses alike in the intervention area. So, that should be welcome.

Despite there being many advancements in Wales’s connectivity as a result of the Superfast Cymru project, the recently published evaluation of the programme highlights some key failings of the project to target the areas of Wales that are most in need of improved connectivity. Dai Lloyd has mentioned Ceredigion and Powys and, of course, I’m a resident of Powys myself and I appreciate the Minister providing those examples in her statement today, but I’ve got plenty of examples of constituents who’ve got alternative experiences. But, I appreciate the Minister will accept and be aware of that. I’ve got to say that I was pleased you’ve committed to the new funding stream to target premises that are not part of the roll-out. That’s to be welcomed as well.

I do have a few questions. First, are you still confident that BT will meet its contractual obligations, or are you expecting to reinvest clawback funding as a result of the failure to meet the contractual obligations or the targets? In your statement, when I heard the date of 31 December 2017, I was a little alarmed by that, but I would just like some confirmation that it is in regard to the in-built elements that you continue to work through, and that that’s no excuse for any slippage from the June 2017 date. I’m sure that is the case, but it’d be useful to have that confirmation.

The original open-market review conducted by Mott MacDonald identified 45,000 premises in Wales that would not benefit from the project. I’m sure you will agree that a number of businesses are making business-critical decisions based on assumptions that they will receive a fast, reliable broadband connection by a certain date. So, can I ask, are you in a position to provide the revised projected number and percentage of households and businesses, by local authority area, that will be outside the scope of the project? And are you able to proactively provide details on those households and businesses that will definitely miss out, so that they can make those contingency plans and they can make alternative arrangements via, of course, Access Broadband Cymru and the ultrafast connectivity voucher scheme?

You’ve also talked about an engagement project as well, with regard to take-up, but can I ask you about your agreeability, if you like, to having a project of engagement for those communities that are missing out, and to explain the schemes that I’ve just mentioned, and which you’ve mentioned in your statement as well? I’d also be grateful if you could set out in some detail an area that I was disappointed was absent from the programme for government, about how you may be working to reform the planning system for telecommunications and to improve access by the telecoms industry to public sector assets to support further infrastructure investment and network deployment. I appreciate that there are elements that are not devolved, but there are elements that are devolved that you have got the levers to.

I’d also be grateful if you could explain a little about how the Welsh Government is going to improve the situation with regard to marketing and communications and updating people. There are thousands of people who want answers. I get hundreds of people contacting me over a period of months. I was just a little concerned when you took the marketing element in-house. I know, Minister, that you’ve written to me in detail on this point, and I appreciate that, but perhaps you could explain, when you had the extension to the contract, why there wasn’t an element in there to ensure that Superfast Cymru were expected to deal with that marketing deployment, or marketing element, if you like. Because I appreciate answers to my letters, Minister, and when I write to you, there’s a fairly fast response in terms of ministerial correspondence—a couple of weeks—but I was getting a faster response before, when I was speaking directly to BT. So, that’s the element I would like you to address.

Finally, your announcement that the Welsh Government is now placing a greater emphasis on demand stimulation and will be launching a communication engagement programme around that is very much to be welcomed. I think it is disappointing that the demand stimulation budget only equated to about 0.5 per cent of the overall programme budget. So, now that the delivery of the Superfast Cymru project is reaching the final stages, I think it’s essential, of course, that the Welsh Government ensures that the infrastructure is not left dormant—I’m sure that you’ll agree with that—but reaches its full potential for both domestic and business customers. You, Minister, have previously spoken about the need for the industry to drive up take-up, and I agree with you on that, but also, of course, it’s right that the Welsh Government benefits from the take-up as well, and I think that you should be aggressively promoting take-up because we’ve got to see that benefit released on the taxpayers’ investment and ensure that take-up surpasses the rather modest—I would say—take-up target of 50 per cent by 2024.

Finally, I would just like a definition—

That’s your second ‘finally’. [Laughter.] You’re not getting around my stricter ruling by trying to adopt a second ‘finally’ policy.

The two ‘finally’, the five-second ‘finally’—

Very quickly.

A definition of ‘fast and reliable’, please, as well, Minister.

Thank you for that series of questions and comments, Russell George. A day is not complete in my ministerial office without a letter from you on Superfast Cymru; so, I very much appreciate your interest on behalf of your constituents in this matter. I’ll try and get through all of them. The contractual obligations point: we’re not relying on clawback as a result of failure of BT to get the money we’re talking about. We have a gain share written into the contract. So, if take-up in any area where Superfast Cymru has arrived is more than 21 per cent, we get a profit share back of that. So, that’s the money we’re relying on. I do expect BT to meet its contractual obligations because the contract carries heavy financial penalties for them if they do not. So, it would very much not be in their interest to get into that position. The money that I talked about is not from clawback, as you put it; it is from a gain share that’s written into the contract. So, we’re already talking to BT about the use of that gain share and how we can get to the premises that are not included in it as a result.

In my statement I did talk about another open-market review, which we will do in the autumn, because, again, it is a market intervention, so I have to make sure that I’m not going anywhere where there is going to be commercial roll-out. So, the best way to do that is to ask the commercial operators for their final analysis of where they are going to go, so that we can go to the places that other commercial operators cannot reach. Sorry, I couldn’t resist that. I am confident that we will get there.

In terms of identifying those premises early, he will know that I have been pushing BT for a very considerable period of time to tell us the premises that they know definitely that they won’t get to. We have now got around 1 per cent of those, and the website is slowly changing over this week and next week to reflect that. Some of your constituents, when logging on to the website, will now get the message ‘out of scope’. They will also then get something to say what we are going to do for them. In some ways, they are the lucky ones because it means that we can get to them fast, whereas the people who are still ‘in scope’ but with no build date will have to wait until June 2017 for us to see whether BT gets there. The reason for that is this: we run this project as an all-Wales project. BT can go to any premises in Wales that they want to and get it to 30 Mbps or more, and we will pay them for that. So, we do not control where they go. They go where they can get to. It’s obviously in their interests to get to as many premises as possible as fast as possible because that’s what gives them their income. So, as the technology changes—and, indeed, it has changed over the sequence of this contract—. For example, re-capacitising—if that is a word—the cabinets that are already at capacity is one route to them getting more premises engaged up to 30 Mbps. As I say, it’s important for Members to realise how strict we are about that. They do not claim it and we pay them. We check the speeds on a premises-passed basis, and that’s how they get paid. So, it’s very strict, and we monitor it very, very carefully.

In terms of the planning and mobile issues, mobile, as you know, is not devolved to Wales. [Interruption.] Yes. The Cabinet member for planning and I have already met and discussed the issues here. We have some officials doing a piece of work for us on what can be achieved in terms of permitted development, what can be achieved in consultation with things like the national park authorities, for example, and so on. There are restrictions that people will want to see. But as always with these things, it’s a trade-off: do you want very high mobile connectivity in your national park, or do you want no masts? I’m afraid that you can’t have both of those things, so it will be for local people to make those choices. It’s a matter for them which of those choices they want to make, and we can facilitate that choice for them.

In terms of getting everywhere with what speed, the Member will know that the UK Government currently has a digital Bill going through Parliament and that that has a universal service obligation in it. That universal service obligation is currently at 10 Mbps, which is very considerably lower than where we want to be. We are pressing them to up that and to put an accelerator into it. It’s also not clear quite how universal the universal service obligation will be. Members will be familiar with how that works, for example, with telephones. There’s an amount of money that the telephone operator will pay to connect you to a landline, and after that you are expected to pay the rest yourself. Clearly, we are not happy with that because it disadvantages people in rural communities that are a long way from anything. So, we are putting a lot of work into understanding from them what exactly it is they mean, what those cut-off marks might look like, and what we can do as a Welsh Government to fill in the gaps for people. People left out of that universal service obligation will obviously be at a disadvantage unless we can fill those gaps in, and that’s very much what the gain share money is for.

Lastly, in terms of their response, we’ve only just taken that in-house, and I’m afraid the team is taking a little while to get sorted. But I assure you that the response speeds will be back up to normal—I hope this week, but very soon. On marketing, we took it in-house because we wanted to target it specifically at areas with high take-up and at businesses that are vital to our economy. We wanted the local and regional Assembly Members to be involved in that marketing campaign. Because as I said, the higher the take-up, the more the gain share and the more money we have to reinvest in the programme.

I will try to make my comments a little more succinct, I promise. First of all, Cabinet Minister, I would like to thank you for your comprehensive statement this afternoon. First, can I sincerely congratulate the Welsh Government, on behalf of my party, for their extraordinary achievements over the last three years in making Wales the best-performing country in the UK, after England, at providing superfast broadband? I sincerely mean that, but can I draw your attention to the Government Social Research report in September of this year, which identified the lack of visibility on business take-up of superfast broadband due to the absence of relevant data? However, it was estimated that this was as low as 28 per cent after six months of availability. I think Dai Lloyd actually touched on this when he spoke to you earlier on. And given that the take-up by business is the main driver of economic growth anticipated through superfast broadband, can the Secretary indicate whether these two shortcomings have been, or are being, addressed? Can you also comment on the disparity in different areas of Wales? One may, to a certain extent, understand Powys lagging some way behind other areas, though, of course, this is not entirely acceptable, but it's very difficult to understand why Torfaen, one of my constituencies, also lags behind similar built-up regions.

Okay, well, thank you for that, and thank you very much for your kind remarks. We’re very proud of the fact that we've got Wales to be one of the leaders in digital connectivity right across Europe, and it's a matter of some concern to us that we get people to take up the benefits of it now that we've spent the money in rolling it out.

In terms of business take-up, one of the reasons that we have got our marketing back in-house is that we want to target it. BT were doing it previously, but, obviously, it's caught up in their commercial roll-out as well, and we very much wanted to emphasise the point that I was making earlier to Dai Lloyd, that many ISPs are available; you can shop around, you can get a better service for your business and so on. But also, our business advisers are running sessions right across Wales alongside this to demonstrate the benefits of broadband for businesses that hitherto haven't had it.

And if I can just tell you this little anecdote, because you'll appreciate it, I often meet with people who say they haven't got any, ‘I just want 1 Mb—please, anything’, and I say, ‘Well, no, we don't want to do that. We want to get you to the point where you can do things that your business requires.’ ‘No, no, we’d just like to have the ability to download things.’ I always use the analogy of people who don't have electricity wanting enough electricity to have a light bulb in the middle of their house, but, actually, as soon as they've got that lightbulb, realising how many other things they should’ve asked for and, not having had the house wired in the first place, it's then much more expensive. So, it's a similar analogy—1 Mb will not get you very much at all; you cannot do cloud servicing, for example, off 1 Mb.

So, what our business advice is now doing is it gives you a sort of menu at the back of what service you need to do what. So, you know, if you are a hotel venue in Wales, and you want to just offer those internet services that give you 2-for-1 vouchers and so on—there are a lot of companies that do that—because you want to fill up your venue on hitherto difficult-to-fill-up days—Tuesdays and Wednesdays, for the sake of argument—then, great, you can do that. You can get online and you can get people to book that way and so on, and lots of people take advantage of that. But, once you've filled up your hotel, you realise that the people who are there will want to streamline television on their devices, they want to upload their photographs, they want to tell their friends how great it is, and if they can't do that in your rooms, because you have no Wi-Fi, because you don't have enough broadband to allow people to log on all at once, then they will put a very nasty remark on TripAdvisor about your service and you'll suffer for that. And so what we're trying to make people see is what is available to them before they have the broadband in the first place, rather than them wait to get it and then try to upgrade it, because that's more expensive. So, that's the purpose of the business intervention. That's just one small example; there are many, many others that we could go into. So, that is what the take-up driver is for. That's what the marketing is for, and it's very targeted, and Members will hopefully see it happening in their areas, on their local radio stations. We'll have billboards up and so on. Lots of the business organisations in the area will be invited. So, I hope you will see that happening very much.

And then, lastly, in terms of the geographical disparity, as you put it, I'll answer this again, even though I've answered it for every Member so far. We don't control the contracts on a local authority area; we control the contract for Wales. So, BT have to get to the number of premises in Wales that they need. I have no control over where that is. I don't know why it's more difficult to get it in Torfaen, but it could be something like the ducts are blocked, the cabinets could be at capacity, the previous phone network line hasn't been up to speed. I have absolutely no idea; there are all kinds of issues that come up in this contract. Rurality is not the only problem here; sometimes the streets are a problem, sometimes there are problems with, you know, all kinds of blockages and so on. But they have to get to the premises number for Wales that we have set, and then we will use the gain share money to get to the rest. So, it doesn't matter whether the percentage in Torfaen is lower at the moment. At the end of this administration it will be at 100 per cent.

My understanding, Minister, is that this wasn’t exclusively a contract to connect rural communities, because I do recall that the Penylan notspot in my constituency was one of the early wins of this contract. As they no longer bother me about this issue, I can rather assume that they’re now very happy bunnies.

But I recently visited, with the Climate Change and Rural Affairs Committee, Ceredigion—in the last two weeks—and there farmers were very concerned that they had almost no connectivity at all, which, for rural communities, is a massive problem. How they are expected to run their business and submit their basic payment proposals online when they don’t actually have any connection in their homes is obviously a major issue for their businesses, particularly when new technology is increasingly being used to enable farmers to be more efficient. For example, in New Zealand I understand they’re using pasture meter sensor technology to examine every blade of grass on people’s land to ensure the right piece of grass to be directing their animals to. So, we are clearly going to need that sort of technology in the future here in Wales, with all the challenges posed by Brexit.

So, I’m a bit unclear as to why the fact that wireless technology is not devolved in some way prevents us insisting with BT that, in this second contract, they use the wireless connections they now have, since they took over EE, because it’s perfectly clear that it’s going to be almost impossible to connect every single remote farm in every part of wales, or it’s going to be hugely expensive. Surely, wireless technology is going to a much more efficient way of doing it. But technology has moved on so much in the last five years, since you signed the contract with BT, that it seems that we’re in danger of missing a trick. You didn’t mention in your statement that Airband community internet is providing wireless solutions for around 2,000 business premises. Why is it therefore not possible to insist with BT that they use wireless solutions to connect the more remote communities? That would enable them to get much more quickly connected, and clearly they are not going to be able to run these rural businesses in the future unless they are connected. So, I’d be grateful for some guidance on that.

So, on your first point, of course it’s not just rural, it’s just that most areas where there’s no commercial roll-out are rural. But you correctly identified a place in your own constituency that didn’t have commercial, although, weirdly, there’s a triangle in the middle of Swansea that didn’t have it either. But it’s just a sort of generality that, for the most part, it’s where there’s not a concentration of population.

In terms of the farmers, actually the Cabinet Secretary and I have already spoken about getting data on how many farmers are not connected in Wales. We don’t actually have those data, because that’s not how we collect them, but we’re doing a piece of work at the moment to get the data on exactly how many farmers are not connected. We don’t have the data to know that. But I would say this: first of all, everybody is included in the roll-out, and there’s another year to go, as I’ve just said, for everybody else. Plus, we have the two schemes, the Access Broadband Cymru scheme and the ultrafast connectivity scheme, so if people want to invest in it now, they can do that, and we’ll help them. There’s a sliding scale of how much money the Welsh Government will help them with on that, depending on what improvements in their connection speeds they get.

I recognise the problems that you mention, and everybody has them, and that’s why we want people to take it up. So, that’s why we have those schemes. We’re also working with communities to band together so they can get them as a community scheme as well.

In terms of why we don’t insist that BT does that, the simple answer to that is because it’s not in the contract. It was a tendered contract done through European procurement. The contract is as it is. That’s what BT tendered for. They won the contract. Airband tendered for the 2,000 business premises, and they won that contract, so they’re putting their technology into it.

Our ultrafast and ABC schemes, though, use any technology that’s available to get to the premises. So, the last 4 per cent that I’m always talking about probably won’t be cable fibre. It might be, but it probably won’t be—it will probably be satellite or other digital technologies. That’s not to be confused with the roll-out of 4G and 5G and the mobile infrastructure, which is not devolved to Wales. Although I have constant meetings with the mobile network operators, I have no power over them, so we are just simply enjoining them to do their best and putting a lot of pressure on the UK Government to make sure that we have geographical coverage in Wales as well as population coverage.

Quick questions and quick answers and I’ll try and get through as many of the people who have made an application to speak. Paul Davies.

Diolch, Lywydd. Like others, I also welcome that the Welsh Government has committed £12.9 million to reaching those final few per cent of properties. But can the Minister perhaps provide any further details at this stage on how that funding will actually be allocated across Wales, given concerns raised by many of my constituents regarding the lack of action in some areas? I know that the Minister has said today that the Government monitors the delivery of broadband services very carefully, but can she tell us specifically how the Government will be monitoring to make sure that these services are actually being delivered on time or within acceptable timescales? If they’re not achieved, I think the Minister confirmed earlier that penalties can be imposed by the Government if the work is not carried out in a timely and appropriate manner. So, can she confirm if she believes the penalties she has at her disposal are sufficient to ensure that the work is undertaken in a timely and appropriate manner?

I thank the Member for those important questions. We had a long meeting very recently to discuss some of these issues. I think it’s important not to conflate two separate issues. One is the ‘promise’, if you like, that BT used to have on their website that you might be in scope in the next three months. People were rightly very cheesed off when the three months went past and they weren’t connected and it rolled on another three months and so on. One of the reasons we’ve taken those functions in house is because we too were very cheesed off with that. That is not a matter for the contractual arrangements of the contract, however. As I say, the contractual arrangements of the contract are simply for Wales in the time available. So, we were putting a lot of pressure on BT to give people proper information, and not to give them overly optimistic information, to enable, for example, people to make sensible arrangements about whether they should invest in the ABC scheme. It’s very annoying to find, after a year, that you’ve been told every three months you’ll have the connectivity, when a year ago you could have invested in it and had it, for example.

So, I have forcibly made those points to BT and, in fairness to them, they have changed the information. The website is now very different and gives you a lot more specific information and it doesn’t give you overly optimistic timescales. We’ve worked hard with them to do that. That’s not to be confused at all with the end date of the contract and the number of premises passed. So, I don’t have any control over whether they went to 32 Acacia Gardens or not, what I have control over is how many premises in Wales that they will get to. I’m confident they’ll meet that because there are severe penalties for them not doing so, but there aren’t rolling penalties in the contract.

We do have quarterly review targets that we look at with BT and, because the technology has changed recently, for example, in how you make a cabinet have more connectivity to it, we flex those targets occasionally. But, so far, they’re on target. So, I have no qualms. I have no reason to believe they won’t make the target at the end of next year. I have every sympathy with people who expected to get it in the next three months period and then don’t. I didn’t want to move the website to saying, ‘You’ll get it by the end of June 2017’, because I felt that wasn’t very helpful either. So, what we’ve done is we’ve asked them to be very pessimistic about where people are and give them that information. So, if it says ‘in the next three months’, they would be 90 per cent certain of getting it in the next three months. I share the Member’s frustration about the rolling targets. I’ve similar problems in my own constituency.

So, we’ve worked with them very hard to overcome some of those problems, but the contractual obligations are not to be conflated with these ongoing timing issues, if that makes sense.

Can I thank the Minister for her update today? She’ll no doubt be familiar from her postbag that access to superfast broadband is a hot topic for many of my constituents in Delyn. Not only does that highlight the problems people are having in terms of accessing that provision and the provider, but I think, for me, it shows just how far we’ve shifted in the past few years in terms of moving from superfast broadband being a luxury good to being an essential utility that we expect to receive now, with demand rising in line with that. I welcome the commitment and the intervention by the Welsh Government to ensure communities are able or will be able to access superfast broadband, but, echoing what many have said today, part of the process is ensuring that providers such as BT do meet their obligation to homes and businesses and communities across Wales.

Indeed, and the Member is indeed a prolific correspondent on the subject, as are many Members in the Chamber. But, yes, I think it is important to recognise the cultural change that’s happened during the course of this programme. In 2013, when we started this programme, amongst the most common comments from people were, ‘Ah, you’ll never get it to us, and we don’t want it anyway. People want to come to’—name of place—‘to get away from it all, and to come offline’ and all the rest of it. That was a common thing said to us, and now the most common thing said to us is, ‘When am I getting this broadband?’ So, those three years have seen a big cultural shift in how people regard it. You don’t come to Wales to get away from it all, you come to have an adventure, and you want to tweet that adventure as you’re having it. And that’s great, but we want to keep pace with that. Again, I want to assure Members that we will get to everybody. It is difficult for the people who are at the end of the programme, but, as with all programmes, some people are at the beginning and some people are at the end. It’s frustrating if you are at the end, but we will get to you.

Minister, I’m afraid that many people across Wales are just fed up of waiting for this. You’re in a Government that has overpromised about superfast broadband and absolutely failed to deliver. This was in your programme for government—[Interruption.] It was in your programme for government back in 2011 that you would deliver to every household and residential business in Wales superfast broadband. You’ve failed on that, and you can blame BT Openreach all you like, but you are the ones that gave them the contract, you are the ones that have moved the goalposts twice now in terms of delivery against that contract, and you’re the people who are letting the people and businesses of Wales down.

Frankly, Minister, I’m not convinced that, even by the end of this term of this coalition Government, you’re going to achieve your objective, either. You’ve already said very clearly in your statement today that you cannot provide fibre connectivity at any cost, because you need to provide value for money. I accept that you need to provide value for money, but you also need to stop promising things that you’re failing to deliver. You failed to deliver it in the last term, and I suspect you’re going to fail again.

Let’s just remind ourselves of those things that were promised. In your programme for government back in 2011, which I note, Llywydd, has been deleted from the Welsh Government’s website, you said that, by the end of 2015, all homes and businesses would receive superfast broadband. Then you moved the goalposts into 2016, then you moved it to the end of 2017. By now, there should be at least 655,000 homes and business premises attached to superfast broadband, but there aren’t. You’ve said in your statement today that there are only 610,000. So, what you’ve done is you’ve nudged the goalposts further and further along; I suspect you’ll move them beyond the next election as well, because you don’t want the electorate to hold you to account for these failures, either.

What my constituents want to know is that, if they’re not going to get fibre broadband, how on earth are you going to address their needs? Why should my constituents in upper Colwyn Bay and in rural parts of Denbighshire and in other parts of Conwy, why should they put up with not being able to access these things, which are essential for those households today if they want to get the best deals on their utility bills, if they want their young people to get on with their homework and do the research that they need to support their education? It’s not acceptable; you need to pull your finger out and get this sorted.

Can I say to Darren Millar how very much I’ve missed his righteous indignation; it’s been absent from the Chamber for a little while now, so it’s nice to see it back in full flood. Sadly, it is a little over-zealous in this instance, because I think he failed, really, to listen very carefully to my previous answers to Members. So, I’ll just reiterate them. We haven’t moved the goalposts, we haven’t changed the outcome of these, what we’ve done is we’ve added premises in during subsequent open-market reviews in order to get to as many premises in Wales as possible. The original targets were for 96 per cent of the premises that were built in Wales in 2011. Clearly, you don’t have to be a genius to know that other premises have been built between then and now. Also, it’s a market intervention—it isn’t an infrastructure project, it’s a market intervention. We have to make sure that we only go where the market doesn’t go, and so we are obliged to go through open-market review processes in order to add other premises to that.

In the first open-market review, several telecommunications companies, for example, identified that they would commercially roll out to a number of industrial premises across Wales, and it became clear that they weren’t actually going to make good on those promises, and that’s why we conducted the second open-market review, in order to be able to include those premises. That’s what the second tranche was about. I’ve explained that to Members lots of times; I’m happy to explain it again.

You don’t need to explain it again, even if Darren Millar has asked you to.

Okay, Llywydd, I’ll refrain from explaining it again, but I have explained it several times already.

So, I don’t accept what he says. The final thing he said, though, I do accept very much: it has gone from a luxury to an essential, and that is why this Government is promising to get it to everybody. What I said about fibre broadband was that not everybody would be cabled. I said everybody would get fast, reliable broadband but it would not necessarily be via a fibre cable, and that is because other technologies have advanced very rapidly over the last three years. I mentioned one in another Member’s constituency, and, if Darren Millar would like to invite me to his constituency to speak to his constituents about what’s available, I’d be very happy to accept that invitation.

Finally, David Rees.

Diolch, Lywydd. I will be brief. Minister, you’ve identified broadband in the industrial areas by Airband contract. Can you confirm that there are no more industrial areas that will be requiring additional contracts, which is critical? Can you also tell us what market will be in those industrial areas once they have been connected up, so that we can get the message out to people as soon as possible?

You’ve also talked about re-capacitating today. As you know, I’ve got a problem with one of the boxes. Will you ensure that BT provides sufficient capacity in their cabinets so that there is no need to re-capacitate within that short space of time? Actually, they should be looking at a target of at least 50 per cent capacity for the houses in that box to ensure that it can deliver to the communities, and not put people on hold and they’ll come back in years to come when they’ve got time, not when people need it.

Thank you. On that last point, as I’ve said repeatedly, BT needs to get to as many premises as possible as fast as possible to get through its contractual requirements, and I know that it’s taken a review of the cabinets that it previously put forward to see if it can increase the capacity on it. And if you want to write to me again about cabinet 16, which is the one I assume you’re talking about—the Member is also a prolific correspondent—I will be happy to have a look at that with him again in our quarterly meetings.

In terms of the Airband contract, yes, absolutely, we will be extending the marketing to ensure that businesses are aware and available and all of the things I mentioned to David Rowlands earlier, so that they understand what the take-up can get to them; we will be doing that.

I can’t actually guarantee at this very moment that no industrial premises will be left out, but we are, as I said, looking at another open-market review in the autumn, and that will be the final tranche. So, if there are any left out there, which I hope there aren’t, they’ll be swept up in that last open-market review.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary—I thank the Minister.