Richard Foord

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Western. In eastern and mid Devon, we have many ordinary medium-sized and small businesses, but they are facing extraordinary barriers, including being held back by a lack of reliable broadband in rural areas. I appreciate that that is not in the Minister’s brief, but I urge him to lobby and talk to his colleagues in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to try to get some movement on the issue. Under the recent spending review, the 99% target for national coverage moved from 2030 to 2032, which was deeply disappointing. According to Ofcom’s “Connected Nations” update in January, only 56% of premises in mid Devon have access to full-fibre broadband, which is way below the national average. Daniel Lennox lives in Sidbury with his family. He works remotely and he runs a home-based business called Stagely, a digital platform that helps people to discover regional theatre productions. The business sets out to showcase local productions, and it is backed by Innovate UK. It is exactly the kind of enterprise that we want to be encouraging. It is creative, based in the community and part of the future digital economy. However, it cannot run properly, given the lack of a decent internet connection to Daniel’s property, which has been left with a part-copper line that is unreliable, slow and not sufficient for a digital business. Daniel’s case is far from unique, and while I welcome the Government’s £5 billion investment in Project Gigabit, the delivery is falling behind. We must ensure that rural businesses such as Daniel’s on the edge of villages succeed, and that they do not fail because of unreliable or unavailable broadband.