Chris Bryant

Mr Stuart, what a delight to see you in the Chair. I congratulate the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) on securing the debate. She probably should have secured an hour and a half, or three hours, or even a whole day, because this issue obviously matters to a lot of people. The two key things to discuss are mobile and fixed connectivity. Both of those could occupy all of us here, because many of the issues apply equally, I would argue, to rural and urban constituencies, albeit in slightly different patterns. I will push back slightly on the idea that rural areas are getting a worse time than urban areas; actually, in some urban areas, the fibre is theoretically passing down the street, but it is not going into the building where the flats are because of wayleave issues. There is a problem in cities as well as in rural areas, and we need to address both—they probably need different answers, but we need to address both. In the end, our ambition is to get to 5G stand-alone across as much of the country as we possibly can, as fast as we possibly can, and to get full fibre to premises. Full fibre will not be for 100% of the country; that would be impossible, and financially it would not make logical sense. In some cases, getting to the cabinet is good enough, where it is a relatively short passage from the cabinet to the premises and there are only a few premises, so there will not be the same contention problems as there would be with a lot of premises on that same passage. We want to go as fast as we can and as far as we can, and the hon. Member made some very strong points, although I will come to another area later where I completely disagree with her.