3. Will the Leader of the House provide an update on the latest roll-out of broadband in Preseli Pembrokeshire? OAQ52707

Although we do not hold information specifically relating to Preseli, I can confirm that the Superfast Cymru scheme provided access to fast fibre broadband to over 60,470 homes and businesses in Pembrokeshire, delivering average speeds of over 77 Mbps and investing £15.7 million.  

I'm grateful to the leader of the house for also attending a public meeting in my constituency earlier this year to discuss my constituents' concerns regarding broadband. She will be in no doubt about the frustrations that my constituents feel in being unable to access sufficient broadband service. I appreciate that she will be making a statement on the new contract next week, but can she reassure my constituents that communities like Mynachlog-ddu will no longer be left behind, and that this new contract will, in fact, deliver a sufficient broadband service for communities such as Mynachlog-ddu?

As I said at the meeting—thank you for inviting me, and, as usual, I say to Members where I haven't gone that I'm very happy to go to communities; they're always very useful—the meeting was very useful. It allows me to explain why we are where we are and what's actually happening, and also to understand at first hand some of the frustrations. I think your meeting was no exception. It's very nice when there are one or two people there whose problem we can solve instantly, as well, which is always lovely, and there were, I think, a couple in the room on that occasion. 

So, what I will say is exactly what I said at the meeting, which is that if the properties there are not included in the actual contract that's rolled out—and I'm not able to say anything about that until I make the statement, unfortunately, but, as I said to you, we've asked for specific properties so that we don't have some of the comms problems we had with the first phase of superfast—then we will know if they aren't, and we will have an innovative pot of finance specifically to get to communities that are not specifically targeted in those contracts. So, one way or the other, we'll be able to work out a solution. Fast fibre broadband might not be the solution, but we will get fast internet into people's homes.  

Thank you for your response to Paul Davies. You'll obviously be aware, leader of the house, that rural businesses are particularly impacted when they're unable to access effective broadband services, and this has an ongoing effect on the rural economy. Can you reassure us that, when you're rolling out the new contract—and I appreciate you can't say much in detail about that today—you will be ensuring that all businesses are enabled to access the broadband services that they badly need in Pembrokeshire and in the rest of mid and west Wales? 

Yes, so, as I said in response to Paul Davies, you’ll be able to see, once we have the contracts, which premises are and are not included, because we’ve deliberately tendered it in that way. I would encourage business—. I have this conversation—and I’m not sure that I’ve visited alongside you, Helen Mary, so perhaps we should facilitate that as well—and, as I explain, quite often it’s frustrating because businesses wait until the superfast programme gets to them, only to discover that actually it’s not adequate. We run a voucher scheme specifically aimed at businesses and we have a business exploitation team who are very happy to speak to any business about their actual requirements and what the best way of satisfying those is. So, if you do have people who are not in the contract, or actually even if they are, and if you think that they’re underestimating their need for broadband services, then I’m very happy to facilitate the exploitation team coming out to speak to the individual businesses by way of doing it.

Deputy Presiding Officer, if you would just indulge me for a minute, I want to give the example because it’s very common across Wales, so if people are listening, they can hear it: if you run a tourism business and you wait for Superfast Cymru, but you expect more than 40 devices to connect to your system, which is probably 10 people or 20 people at the absolute outside in today’s world, it will not be adequate. So, you need to do something more and so you should contact the business exploitation team.