Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:58 pm on 15 May 2018.
I'll take some of those in reverse order, since they are fresh in my mind. I disagree entirely with Russell George's analysis of the situation with mobile there, at the end. As I've said many times, Deputy Presiding Officer, in this Chamber, the geographical problems in Wales are unlike anywhere else in the United Kingdom. We have to have a very large number of masts in order to get the sort of coverage, unless the mobile operators are a good deal more able to plan better and to share and to act, actually, with some civic responsibility for it. Nobody wants to see masts every 50 ft or so right across all of our national parks. [Interruption.] No, tall doesn't do it. They have to be line of sight. It doesn't get into every nook and cranny. The other issue we have made significant progress on, which I'm very pleased with, is the issue around geographical coverage. We've battled with Ofcom, we've battled with the UK Government, who see these products as luxury products, which we do not see them as.
Actually, a lot of this would be solved if we had sensible conversations about, for example, the need to allow roaming in rural areas. It's quite obvious that it's possible to have a competitive attitude to this in areas of high population where a large number of mobile operators are in evidence, because obviously there are high volumes of customers there. But you know as well as I do that, in large parts of Wales, only one operator is present, and the idea that you say, 'Come to Wales as long as you're on this operator, Mr Tourist, because otherwise you can't get coverage in this area,' is clearly not one that is sustainable. It's obvious to me that the UK Government is going to have to review its view of this as a luxury product and allow roaming in rural and very rural areas, because there's never going to be a large coverage of several mobile operators in that area. As I say, this isn't devolved to us, more's the pity, and if it were, we would do a number of things that I would very much like to see, including treating it as infrastructure. But anyway, we have made significant progress in the planning consultation and we're about to consult specifically on permitted development rights in particular areas of Wales. But, as I say, it's right to have a balance between what the local communities want to see and the coverage that we all need and expect.
Turning to the specific details of the superfast programme, the contract has very specific obligations around postcodes in it and the number of premises identified in each postcode. It's obvious now that more premises have been covered in postcodes than was hitherto the case. That doesn't mean, though, that the grant attaches to all of those premises. There's a very complex calculation to be made about which premises that now are covered are actually covered by the grant agreement. So, it's quite a complex exercise.
We're also revisiting, as I said in my statement, all of the claims packages made over the last five years, and we're doing that partly as a result of my tour around Wales and meeting with various communities where it's been obvious to me that places we thought were connected have not actually been connected. There've been problems with the fibre—one of them was in your own meeting, actually, which identified one of those. So, we've gone back over the claims packages to ensure that we're not paying for something we haven't received and to make sure that all of the data is robust. I make no apology for that. I'm very pleased that that was highlighted as part of my ongoing tour of Wales, and that's a good thing, and we're going through that process. So, that's why it's slightly delayed, but I've always said it would be at the end of May, and, as we approach the end of May, we're still on target to be able to say that.
We're having a complicated conversation with BT around the connection of the stranded assets. There is a complex commercial negotiation—'negotiation' is the only word I can think of—going on about who should pay for them. So, BT have sunk an enormous amount of capital into the ground. They haven't got a penny from us for that, because they've over-bulked the programme. The conversation is: who should pay for the last bit of the connection? That's a complex commercial conversation that is ongoing, and, as soon as we've reached the end of it, I'm more than happy to report it here in the Chamber. But I make no apology for the fact that, obviously, what I want to get out of it is the maximum number of premises for the least cost. So, quite clearly, where we're coming from is we want as many of those assets connected as possible for as little part of the gain share as is humanly possible.
The figures in the gain share are £62.5 million we're allocating to the new procurements from the £80 million available. The rest is being kept back for the bespoke community arrangements that we've discussed at great length. I'm only saying 'ish' because it depends what the procurements come in at, but we've deliberately kept a pocket back in order to get those bespoke solutions for some of the communities, and the investment from the intermediate plan is additional.