As a committee, our starting point is that everyone in Wales should be able to access fast broadband. More and more of our lives are lived online—that's how we make appointments; we manage our bank accounts online, many of us; we talk to friends and family online too. And living without access to the internet means a life that is less rich, with less choice, and, very importantly, less access to essential services. And I can speak from personal experience—my children live in a home where there is no broadband worth speaking of. That then has implications in terms of using educational resources, their reliance on paper-based resources, which are far less exciting, and so on, and so forth. So, you can see how the inability to access broadband has a very practical impact on the lives of many people. And unfortunately, the provision of superfast broadband across Wales is uneven, and there is a digital divide between rural and urban areas, particularly. Too many rural areas are still unable to access a decent internet connection.

Because of the mountainous Welsh topography, that does mean that a higher proportion of properties are difficult to reach in Wales, compared with other parts of the UK. Ofcom estimates that around 10,000 premises cannot get decent broadband in Wales—that's 10,000 premises. The situation has improved significantly—and we must acknowledge that—in recent years. The Welsh Government has invested considerable funding in this policy area. As a result of the original Superfast Cymru scheme, which ran from 2012 to 2018, an investment of £220 million was invested to connect about 700,000 premises to superfast broadband. But this is a reserved policy area, and, put simply, it's not sustainable for the Welsh Government to continue redirecting funding from devolved areas to plug funding gaps that are the UK Government's responsibility. The Deputy Minister for Climate Change told us as a committee, and I quote:

'UK funding has failed to reflect the true cost of deploying in the Welsh landscape'.

And I agree entirely with that statement. We need to tackle that funding shortfall. I'm pleased that the Minister has accepted our recommendation as a committee on this issue, but I’m not particularly hopeful that there will be a change of heart from the UK Government on this—we'll see.

So, how do we reach that last 0.6 per cent of properties that can’t access decent broadband? Well, since March 2020, households that can’t get decent broadband can request an upgrade for their connection from BT under the universal service obligation. This obliges BT to improve the connection free of charge if the installation cost is estimated to be below £3,400 for the customer. But if the cost is greater than that cap of £3,400, then the customer must pay the excess. That's not affordable for most people—particularly in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis—and we as a committee have urged the Welsh Government to discuss raising the level of that cap with the UK Government.

In 2020, the National Infrastructure Commission called for the establishment of a barrier-busting task force, to improve the roll-out of digital infrastructure. We supported this as a committee, and I am pleased that the Minister was able to announce last week that the taskforce’s report was being published. We look forward to hearing from the Minister, as he responds to this debate this afternoon, about the conclusions and recommendations of the taskforce, and perhaps he could explain the next steps in terms of acting upon it.

Some contributors suggested making full-fibre connectivity a requirement in all new housing developments. We support that suggestion and believe that the Welsh Government should explore how such a requirement can be introduced in Wales. We were interested to hear also that housing developers are considering digital connectivity when they are planning developments. Indeed, one developer has established its own internet service provider. In one sense, that's a positive step, but we are a little concerned that there is a potential there for developers to tie in homeowners in this way to the provision that they make, excluding all others. This could potentially restrict the choice available to homeowners and make the market less competitive. We have asked the Welsh Government to keep this under review to ensure that there are no inappropriate developments in this area.