Superfast Broadband

Part of 4. Questions to the Leader of the House and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 3:52 pm on 11 December 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:52, 11 December 2018

Right, well, thank you for that, I think. The meeting was indeed packed. I did explain at great length—as I have at all of the meetings around Wales that I've attended, and I think I've been almost to every constituency now—that the big problem is that this is not regarded as infrastructure; this is still regarded as the procurement of a luxury product. And so, we have to go through a very complex process, including with Broadband Direct UK, to get state aid cover for what we do. And, as I explained in the meeting, would that I could. If I had the power to roll it out as infrastructure, then I would be doing that, but we do not. We have to go through the process of the procurement, we have to do the open market review, we have to find out where the commercial companies are going, and we then have to procure. We have to see what the procurement brings back, and that’s brought back the 3,773 premises. We're in the process right now of identifying exactly which those premises are, and then we'll be trying to fill in the gaps for the rest of it.

Actually, since the last time I spoke about this in the Chamber—I do have a slight groundhog day feeling every time I stand up to do questions—since the last time, the UK Government has actually announced a way forward for its universal service obligation. So, it does look as if we will have some clarity on that in the foreseeable future. There are some issues with that. There is a cost cap on it, and, actually, most of the premises that you're talking about will fall outside the cost cap. So, there’s some work to be done, but I think there will be some movement around the universal service obligation that will put another string to our bow about getting there.

But, if Members do have a whole community, or actually five or six houses together that are isolated, then we'd very much like you to proactively tell us about them, because we're very happy to get our business exploitation teams out to them to see if we can get a community solution out to those communities. And those community solutions have been very effective across Wales; they can be bespoke to the particular community, and there are various arrangements for doing that. So, I encourage the Member to proactively tell us about any clusters of people who we might be able to help.

With the others, we will be able to say very shortly now exactly which premises. That will obviously identify the ones who don't get it as well, and then we'll be able to do some more proactive work with them. But, with the best will in the world, Deputy Presiding Officer, some of the premises are tens of thousands of pounds to get to, and other solutions will have to be found.