Part of 2. Questions to the Leader of the House – in the Senedd at 2:40 pm on 24 January 2018.
No, I can't, because until I know what the engineering difficulty or other difficulty was that prevented them from being included, I'm not able to give you a cast iron guarantee that we will be able to overcome those difficulties. I can tell you that they're absolutely the top priority for us—people who've been in that situation—and we're working very hard to make sure that we can overcome those, but there are a large number of reasons why. So, for example, we know that we have a large number of premises stuck behind wayleave difficulties. So, I'm not in a position to be able to say that we are able to sort out the wayleave difficulties in time to be sure that we can connect people, but I can tell you that we're working very hard to do so.
There is an issue around the way that the UK Government deals with some of this, which the Member will be very much aware of, and that's to do with how we regard broadband. And I'm afraid it's still regarded as a luxury, despite the conversations about the universal service obligation. Because it's not a utility, we don't have the right to cross people's land and we don't have the right to insist that they allow wayleaves, and so on, and that is causing difficulties in a large number of areas. That's one of the reasons—not the only one—why I cannot give that cast iron guarantee. Would that I could, but we don't have the powers to enable me to do that. I can, though, say that we are very aware of the problems that the Member is mentioning, and everybody else is mentioning, and we are working very hard to make sure that we get to as many of those people as we possibly can.