Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Leader of the House – in the Senedd at 2:32 pm on 28 February 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:32, 28 February 2018

But of course some of the levers are within our control. We undertook a piece of planning research to look at what attitudes across Wales were to just increasing mast sizes. And, as I said in my earlier answer about digital radio, the problem with Wales is the population is spread out into every nook and cranny. Just making the masts higher doesn't solve the problem—it's not a silver bullet in any way. And very large numbers of the communities who live in the most beautiful parts of Wales don't want their landscape covered with a lot of very high masts. So, we must come up with some other solutions to that.

So, it is a conversation between us and the UK Government, because we think that, for very rural areas, and low geographical population coverage, we will have to have some solutions that are unpalatable to the industry, such as the ability to roam, for example, between networks. So, if you have 97 per cent coverage for a single network, that's of no use to you at all if you're not on that network, and it doesn't solve the tourist problem either. So it may well be that everybody who lives in the area can swap to that network, but that's useless if you're trying to run a tourist business, and you've got people coming in on the other networks. So, I'm afraid I think there are some more innovative solutions that will need to be put in place by the UK Government in order to allow us to have the very best coverage in Wales, and I continue to press for that.

In the meantime, of course, we have gone out to consultation on the revised 'Planning Policy Wales', in order to gauge what appetite there is in those communities for increased mast coverage, and increased mast height, as a balance for coverage as against the destruction of our very beautiful landscape.