We now move to the short debate, so if Members are not stopping for the short debate, can you please leave quickly and quietly? If Members are not staying in for the debate, can they leave quickly and quietly? We now move to the short debate and I call on Paul Davies to speak to the topic he has chosen—Paul Davies.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm pleased to once again take the opportunity to raise the issue of broadband connectivity in this Chamber, and I'm happy to give Russell George a minute of my time. 

Aside from the issue of protecting services at Withybush hospital, the issue of broadband connectivity is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most frequently raised matter amongst my constituents, and has been since I was elected to this place back in 2007. Whilst I accept that the Welsh Government has announced funding to expand broadband services throughout the whole of Wales, it is essential that the needs of those with limited broadband or no broadband at all will be met and not neglected at the expense of delivering superfast broadband in other areas. People in rural areas of Wales, and particularly people living in Pembrokeshire, continue to struggle to achieve basic broadband provision, while some people living in other areas are now moving forward and enjoying superfast broadband services.

Superfast broadband coverage in Wales has increased to 93 per cent of homes and businesses from 89 per cent last year, according to Ofcom's 'Connected Nations 2018' report, and so, whilst I accept that some progress is being made, much more needs to be done to tackle those areas left with substandard broadband provision. I'm sure that the Deputy Minister will agree with me that it's absolutely crucial that areas like Pembrokeshire are brought up to speed to enable local communities to be on an even playing field with the rest of Wales, and indeed the rest of the United Kingdom.

According to the Welsh Government's own figures, £85 million has been allocated for the second phase of Openreach's efforts to roll out an adequate broadband service across Wales. Now, we know that phase 2 of the project is expected to cost £22 million, which would leave over £60 million left in Openreach's pocket. I understand that, in responding to recent questions on this specific matter from my colleague Russell George, the Deputy Minister confirmed that he was not aware of how the surplus money will be used, as the Government is still thinking through the implications of how to do just that. Therefore, perhaps, in responding to today's debate, at the very least the Deputy Minister will now commit to providing a breakdown of exactly how much money will be spent in each local authority area so that, in the interests of transparency, the people of Wales can see where the money will be targeted and how their communities will be prioritised once the Welsh Government makes a decision on how to move forward.

Now, Members will remember the 2012 Welsh Affairs Select Committee report into broadband in Wales, which found that

'Increasingly, reliable internet access is seen as a driver of economic performance and vital for business, education and people living alone or in isolated areas.'

Indeed, that's certainly the case in my constituency, where small businesses and farmers have been disadvantaged by limited broadband coverage. That Welsh Affairs Select Committee report highlighted evidence from the Country Land and Business Association, who argued that, and I quote:

'Without broadband, rural areas will continue to struggle, this being exacerbated by Government efforts to digitalise most forms of administration, such as the single farm payment and the whole-farm approach.' 

Unquote. Indeed, the annual National Farmers Union broadband and mobile survey also showed that 45 per cent believe their current speed is not fast enough for their business needs. At this point, it's worth reminding Members that farmers in Wales are having to become increasingly reliant on online services and applications, and so it is crucial that they have adequate access. In areas like Pembrokeshire, farming is a hugely important industry for the local area, and so it is crucial that those farmers have every tool possible to help their businesses continue to flourish. Therefore, the Welsh Government must redouble its efforts to provide adequate broadband in rural areas so that these farmers can continue to be competitive in the future.

However, it's not just farmers in Pembrokeshire that are struggling, but small businesses, families and even a school. As Members will be aware, Pembrokeshire enjoys a healthy tourist industry, largely made up of smaller accommodation providers and food and drink businesses. It goes without saying that those businesses desperately need to be able to market themselves online in order to attract and generate business and to attract visitors from other parts of the UK and, indeed, from all over the world.

Dennis O'Connor, tourism liaison manager for Pembrokeshire Tourism recently said, and I quote, 'Tourism is worth circa £585 million annually to the Pembrokeshire economy, but, in order for future growth to be achieved, tourism providers need to have a good connectivity to be able to maintain or increase market share. They are no longer able to rely upon destination marketing being undertaken by the local authority, because of shrinking budgets, which means increased emphasis is on the business to carry the burden.' Unquote.

It remains the case that Pembrokeshire's tourist operators are at a disadvantage compared with other parts of Wales, and certainly the rest of UK.

Now, the 2017 digital exclusion heatmap by Go ON UK has identified Pembrokeshire as one of the Welsh counties where digital exclusion is high. It shows that 3,747 households in Pembrokeshire do not receive broadband speeds of at least 10 Mbps, with just over 13 per cent of adults in the county having not been online in the last three months.

Once again, yet another report that makes for grim reading if you live in Pembrokeshire, and it again reminds us that Pembrokeshire continues to lag behind other areas. And the seriousness of that digital exclusion cannot be overstated. Sadly, one of the most serious and pressing matters relating to broadband provision in Pembrokeshire is at Ysgol Llanychllwydog in north Pembrokeshire, which continues to hold the title for being the only school in the entire country not to have access to broadband. Earlier this year, the school's headteacher, Mrs Lawrence, said, and I quote:

'It's important to me that a child has the same rights and access to education wherever they are.'

Unquote. And she's absolutely right. Whilst I appreciate that the location of the school provides a particular challenge, surely the fact that this is the only school in Wales without broadband should be a wake-up call. It's simply unacceptable that in 2019 there are learners at a disadvantage simply because the school that they attend does not have an adequate broadband provision. However, I do understand that some progress is currently being discussed, and perhaps, in responding to this afternoon's debate, the Deputy Minister could update the Chamber on what immediate steps the Welsh Government are taking to ensure that the problems at Ysgol Llanychllwydog are now addressed as soon as possible. If urgent action isn't taken to address these problems, then learners living in rural areas like Pembrokeshire will continue to fall behind, and this will affect children's education.

Now, as I said earlier, I accept that the Welsh Government has committed to resolving Wales's digital connectivity problems and that additional money has been allocated to addressing those communities that cannot access superfast broadband. However, it's also important that all communities across Wales feel engaged in the process and that there is a healthier interaction with service providers, and so I hope the Deputy Minister will do all that he can to actually facilitate this.

Now, as the Deputy Minister is aware, I've received concerns from people in Pembrokeshire who genuinely believe that service providers aren't doing enough to help communities access better broadband services, and that is deeply worrying. A constituent recently sent me this message, and I quote: 'We are still all suffering with download speeds around the 1 Mbps to 1.5 Mbps download. Very occasionally it can reach close to 2 Mbps download. We all feel we are totally forgotten. Banks close locally, shops close. Our internet speeds are so low it is sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to use the internet to do online banking. We have to drive further and further to use banks, shops and other services that are available online. We were supposed to have a smart meter fitted, and a technician drove from Llanelli to fit one. There was not sufficient mobile coverage or internet to make this work. Our mobile phones only work here if they are set to "internet Wi-Fi calls".' Unquote. 

I think it's fair to say that better engagement and support for rural communities is now vital in moving Wales forward, and service providers have a role in strengthening their relationships with local communities. Therefore, I extend an invitation to the Deputy Minister to come to Pembrokeshire, to meet with people directly affected by substandard broadband services, so that he can tell them first hand exactly what the Welsh Government will be doing to address their specific concerns.

As I understand it, currently only 375 properties in Pembrokeshire will be taken forward as part of the Superfast 2 project. The disappointing announcement comes against a backdrop of Pembrokeshire being eighteenth out of 22 counties in Wales who have access to superfast broadband. I think it's fair to say that, yet again, Pembrokeshire remains one of the lowest constituency areas for the next roll-out phase, and that begs the question why. Surely it's time for the Welsh Government to redouble its efforts and ensure that those areas that have previously not been served by previous roll-out phases are now actually prioritised. 

For many communities in Pembrokeshire, people are asking to simply be put on a level playing field with other parts of Wales. Until then, Assembly Members like myself and other politicians will continue to receive correspondence telling us that the lack of broadband in their local area has left people isolated and businesses being less commercially competitive. 

Let me also remind the Deputy Minister that areas like Pembrokeshire are also seeing a particularly high number of bank closures. We know that Barclays will close its Milford Haven branch in July, and that follows on from previous bank closures in recent years from NatWest, HSBC and Lloyds. In fact, the town of Fishguard is now a town without a single bank, which, considering the strategic importance of the town to the regional and national economy, is simply staggering. So, without access to a decent broadband service, many people living in these communities feel unable to make the simplest of banking transactions without having to travel further afield. Dirprwy Lywydd, that is simply not how twenty-first century Wales should be.

Therefore, in closing, something urgently needs to take place. I'm sure that we'd all agree that, in modern times, a successful economy is dependent on a fast and efficient broadband service. However, rural areas like Pembrokeshire must not be left behind. Sadly, while some parts of Wales are taking steps in the right direction, limited broadband coverage in my constituency is disadvantaging farmers, businesses and local communities. So, it's essential that no stone is left unturned in ensuring that communities in Pembrokeshire have access to a decent broadband service. Therefore, the Welsh Government must ensure that its digital policies fully take into consideration the needs of communities right across Wales. When substantial amounts of money are being allocated, a detailed strategy must be delivered, delivering much-needed broadband services for those living in rural areas. My message is quite simple here this afternoon, Dirprwy Lywydd: Pembrokeshire must not be left behind. My constituents deserve a broadband service fit for the twenty-first century.  

I'd like to thank Paul Davies for allowing me a minute of his time in this debate today. It remains the case that 13 per cent of premises in Montgomeryshire are unable to receive decent broadband connectivity, and the urban-rural divide only frustrates people all the more. What frustrates people further is when they see infrastructure hanging from poles but not being able to access that infrastructure—so near but yet so far.

The Deputy Minister will, no doubt, talk about phase 2 of the project, but I would point out that 10,000 premises in Montgomeryshire are yet to receive any kind of superfast broadband. Only 11 per cent of those 10,000 properties—just 11 per cent—will be serviced by phase 2; 89 per cent will not be. So, it would be useful if the Welsh Government could confirm now that they will consider providing financial assistance to meet the excess cost in part or in full if the cost of providing broadband to a property is above the universal service obligation cost threshold of £3,400.

Paul Davies invited you to his constituency to speak to constituents about broadband issues. I would like to offer the same invitation myself to Montgomeryshire. I thank Paul Davies for using his time in this short debate today to highlight the plight of broadband when it comes to issues in rural Wales.

Thank you. I now call on the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport to reply to the debate. Lee Waters.

Thank you very much. I'm delighted to be invited by so many Members to be shouted at by their constituents in village halls across Wales. I've already had the pleasure in Carmarthenshire, and in the next couple of weeks I'm going to Breconshire, where I shall also meet very frustrated people, and I completely understand their frustration.

The Minister for housing very generously recounted much of the Government's position in her winding-up speech in the last debate, so I shan't go through the litany of achievements that the Welsh Government has done—in the space of five years doubling the number of premises in Wales that have access to superfast broadband. But, just to note, there has been considerable improvement. I do want to make three points. I appreciate the constructive way that the Member has made his case, and I'd like to respond in kind, but I think there are three points that do need to be made.

First of all, this is not a devolved area. This is no small matter. In any telecommunications revolution, the pace of change has been rapid but it hasn't been even. It took some time for telephone poles to go up all over Wales and for television aerials too. The same is true of this telecommunications revolution. It is particularly hard to reach rural areas. It is more expensive than it is to reach urban areas. The geography and the topography are very difficult, and that has a very real and very practical impact. This is something that has to be dealt with on a UK-wide basis until it's devolved.

Now, unfortunately, the UK Government have not taken the view of treating broadband as a key utility. I agree with what Paul Davies said: in modern times, we expect the ability to connect quickly to a fast online service to be able to reach the services that we all now take for granted. That is why there should be a genuine universal service obligation. Just as Royal Mail has to deliver a postcard down the end of a farm track in the same way as it does in a row of terraces in an urban centre, or electricity has to be provided to everywhere that wants it, the same should be the case of broadband, but it is not. The UK Government has refused to treat broadband in the same way as it treats other utilities. I think that that is a mistake, and I certainly welcome the support of the leader of the Welsh Conservatives to make the case to his own Government for a change of view. And we would certainly work together on that one.

They have announced something they call the universal service obligation, which is not quite what it seems on the surface, because it is a right to request a connection, not a right to have one. And the amount of money that is able to be claimed is far short of the amount of money that would be needed. You’re only able to request a download speed of 10 Mbps and claim up to £3,400. Anything on top of that has to be funded by themselves. Now, that is not by any common sense definition a universal service obligation. We think it should be set at 30 Mbps and there should be no threshold financially of that order.

So, I think it is legitimate to point out that it’s not devolved. We do recognise its vital impact; that is why we have been willing to spend devolved moneys on trying to intervene where the market and where the Government have failed. We have spent £200 million of Welsh Government and EU funding in the last five years on the Superfast Cymru broadband scheme, and that is money that is not available for schools and hospitals and public services, because we've had to intervene where the UK Government has not. So, I think it’s only fair to recognise the efforts the Welsh Government has made in an area where it shouldn’t be having to do any activity at all, because it is the responsibility of the UK Government.

The second point to make is that there is failure of the market here. Paul Davies mentioned the phenomenon we're seeing, where service providers are falling over themselves to get even faster speeds to people in urban settings and are not interested in providing any speeds to people in some rural settings. Now, that is a market failure. We hear often from the benches there of the importance of allowing the market to be supreme, and this is what happens when the market is supreme: there is exclusion.

Now, we did put on the table a further £80 million in what is known to Members who correspond regularly as lot 2. We said there was £80 million for the market to bid for, to reach those properties that had not been reached under the Superfast project. And of the £80 million we made available to be bid into, only £26 million has been bid for by Openreach, able to spend by 2021. So, the market itself is not interested in getting public subsidy to reach those premises they’ve yet to reach under the previous programme that we funded. So, we have a problem. It’s not that the money isn’t there or that we’re not willing to spend it, even though it’s not devolved. It is there. We’ve made that choice, but we simply don’t have the private sector partners willing to spend and reach deep into the areas that we want to reach. Paul Davies has mentioned that, even though Pembrokeshire under Superfast has the third highest level of spending in the whole of Wales, with £15 million in Pembrokeshire alone, under the next scheme, only 300 or so premises are going to be included in lot 2, and that is deeply disappointing. It’s certainly not a situation that we want to see.

But I think that we need to confront the fact that the market’s appetite, even with subsidy, for reaching premises with fibre-to-the-premises broadband is coming to an end. And many of these premises—let’s bear in mind, 20 per cent of premises in Wales don’t have a gas connection, and yet we are expecting them to have fibre-to-the-premises superfast broadband, and it’s simply not going to happen in the short term. Now, if the UK Government is willing to step in and have a genuine universal service obligation, then that could be done, but the Welsh Government alone cannot do that, and I think we need to be honest about that and confront it.

So, my third point is: what can we do? And we are working closely with the UK Government; we’ve agreed to top up their gigabit broadband voucher scheme, so there is a much more generous subsidy available now in Wales than there is in England, because the UK Government and the Welsh Government have worked together. And it's under that gigabit connectivity programme that the school that Paul Davies mentioned, Ysgol Llanychllwydog, will be connected, we expect, by the start of the academic year. But that is a project that's been done directly with the UK Government. That's not something that the Welsh Government has been involved in, but hopefully they'll be able to get a connection for when they're back after the summer break.

We are looking now at non-conventional interventions, as I say, because we do think that fibre to the premises is reaching the limits of what the market is willing to provide. There's a very interesting project in Nick Ramsay's constituency, in Monmouth, where they're using what's called tv white space to deliver speeds of up to 10 Mbps. This is using the old analogue tv signal where gaps were left between the channels to allow for interference, and in that white space they're able to transmit broadband signals up to 10 Mbps. I've been to visit the village scheme that Monmouthshire council are doing a very good job in running, and it looks very promising. The advantage of using the tv signal is that it is able to reach across hills and into valleys in a way that fibre to the premises is clearly going to find very expensive and very difficult to do. So, a project like that, I think, does have significant potential, and we'd certainly be willing—[Interruption.] I'm happy to take an intervention if I'm allowed, Llywydd. 

Thanks for giving way, Deputy Minister. You're quite right—I'm aware of that project as well, and perhaps sometimes we do spend too much time worrying and focusing on the traditional ways of delivering broadband where, in certain rural areas, where it's going to be very expensive and very difficult to connect people up, perhaps what you just said, the use of white space, is one innovative area the Welsh Government could look at. 

Absolutely. It is being trialled, and they are certainly having issues about the stability of the connection, but the level of intervention is minimal—it's just a small aerial on the side of the house. Similarly, using 3G and 4G is a way of getting broadband to lots of people, which could be a lot more realistic and doable than fibre to the premises. So, we would certainly be keen to work with Pembrokeshire council to see if we can roll out the learning from the Monmouthshire project to Pembrokeshire. I know Carmarthenshire council, for example, have themselves employed somebody to work with communities to try and access the various vouchers that are available, which we provide and the UK Government provide. But it is often difficult for communities to be able to organise and access these funds, and it's right, I think, that local authorities recognise their role in this too. I see a number of local authorities now doing that, and I've mentioned already the good work happening in Monmouthshire.

So, I think there are things that we can do, but simply bemoaning the failure of the Welsh Government to reach communities in an area that is not devolved, in an area that the market has decided it isn't able to serve, when we have spent over £200 million already, and put more money on the table that the market isn't interested in accessing—I think it's only fair to give that account, too. But we are trying our best. My officials and I work patiently with Members when they do get in touch with correspondence to try and offer as much of a personal service as we can to overcome these practical difficulties. So, I think, in all fairness, we are doing what we can, but this is a really difficult issue. It is not a simple issue, and as I say, we are at a time of incredible pace of change and it is difficult to spread these benefits evenly. 

But to return to the point the Member made, I entirely agree that we must try harder to do it, because it is an essential service, and I'd like to work together, so far as we can, with local authorities, the UK Government and Members of all parties to give this essential service to all parts of Wales. 

Thank you very much. That brings today's proceedings to a close. 

The meeting ended at 17:59.