Urgent action is needed to ensure that no community, no business and no household is left behind to prevent inequality. A Women's Institute survey found that over 50 per cent of respondents from a rural area did not feel that their internet was fast and reliable, and 66 per cent stated that they or their household had been impacted by poor broadband. They had difficulties in obtaining information, contacting providers and knowing what funding is available. So, we need to make every contact count, perhaps adding it to the cost-of-living grant support available.

Service providers need to play their role and commit to improving communication with their customers about the services available, accessing social tariffs. Going forward, for broadband infrastructure to be cost effective, it will need to be designed comprehensively, with long-term benefits in mind that serve everyone, including those in rural areas. In Liverpool, a joint venture project has been championed by Liverpool city metro mayor, Steve Rotheram. This partnership means that public investment gives the authority a stake in the organisation, and in turn, rather than profitability being the only concern, social benefit is also at the heart of the broadband project. And the public can continue to reap the benefits for years to come. Such a joint venture project would be in the interests of the Welsh public. So, it would be good if officials and Ministers would be willing to investigate such an option to dynamically drive forward digital connectivity in north Wales and the rest of Wales, which is currently happening on a very piecemeal, very slow, basis.

Given the various statements in the report on digital connectivity stressing that the solutions required to bridge the digital divide between rural and urban areas require a mix of fixed and fibre wireless access, it’s pleasing that the Welsh Government has had the foresight to support the Bangor University digital signal processing initiative to provide such a hybrid solution on Anglesey, and I hope that this will be successfully rolled out. A member of the consortium was told by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport—the UK Government department—that it would be another two years before north Wales would see any investment, as other areas were a priority for the UK Government’s £5 billion infrastructure fund. So, we need to keep pushing for it to happen now, and for it to happen in Wales, and not make it a low priority for the UK Government.

Could the Minister please reinforce the Government’s desire to push the initiative forward in Anglesey to the delivery phase as soon as possible? It reflects the most up-to-date thinking in terms of the solutions required to provide digital connectivity and services to the most challenging rural locations, so that it could be rolled out across Wales—north and mid Wales.

In addition, can we ensure that we utilise to the maximum any existing fibre and mass platforms to minimise the cost of deployment, and so avoiding the unnecessary risk of funding duplicate infrastructure, with the aim of providing an open access network platform for any carrier to provide services to our rural communities? I’m told that there is dark fibre openly available that is Welsh Government owned and was installed with European funding a while ago, and that not all providers are using or promoting this—or may be aware of it, preferring to draw down more public funding to install their network. That needs investigating.

With more reliance on online communication for health, employment, business grants and education, we need more decent broadband connectivity for people. And I agree that it should be recognised as an essential service. Thank you.