Contribution
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on being persistent and finally securing this very important debate.
Few phrases in modern Britain ring as hollow as “world-class connectivity”. Speaking plainly, rural mobile phone connectivity in this country is not merely patchy or inconsistent; in some places, it is so poor that the advertised service bears no resemblance to reality. There are areas in which actual service levels are hundreds of times worse than advertised—that is not a rounding error, or the result of momentary network congestion. It is a difference between promise and performance that is so vast that it would be comic if it were not so economically corrosive.
Take Worcestershire, for example. It is a rural county, with lots of villages, small towns and industrious small businesses. There are farms and villages where the coverage map glows reassuringly in bright corporate colours, but the lived reality is far too often just a single bar if you stand at the upstairs window, facing north and holding your phone aloft like some kind of digital divining rod. We have already heard about how the River Severn Partnership in Worcestershire was a beneficiary of this. Quite innovatively, local councils stuck gadgets on the bin lorries that went up and down every single road, particularly the rural roads, and realised what we probably all suspect: how terrible the service is. In parts of Worcestershire, the mobile phone signal is around 900 times worse than the mobile phone operators claim.
We could forgive the odd dropped call. After all, rural topography presents challenges—there are hills, and trees are inconveniently organic. What cannot be forgiven, though, is the persistent gulf between what is claimed and what is delivered. It is the same with broadband; we hear broadband providers advertise speeds of up to 80 megabits per second, but the reality of what many of my constituents experience is very different. Those advertised figures are in the realm of fiction. This is not just anecdotal grumbling from the shires; a survey by the National Farmers Union has painted a sobering picture, with 21% of respondents reporting broadband speeds under 10 megabits per second in 2026. This is at a time when a single video could devour bandwidth instantly. What my constituents want is the ability to consume data and make voice calls at the same time. I cannot stress enough how sick and tired I am of hearing from mobile phone companies that everyone is just consuming data. As the traditional telephone service is switched off, constituents—particularly those living in rural areas—are increasingly reliant on the ability to make voice calls.
The lived reality for a business in rural Worcestershire attempting to submit mandatory forms online to a regulator or placing an order, is that they must drive to the nearest town to do so. Businesses cannot reliably place orders or process card payments. As banks close in our towns and villages, people are shifting or being pushed towards more online digital services, so it is crucial that we have the mobile connectivity to back that up. If I may say so, there is also a little bit of cultural condescension at work. Rural Britain is far too frequently romanticised as a place of bucolic tranquillity; it is that, but it demands parity with urban Britain at the same time. What does that mean? It means that we want a reliable mobile phone signal, so that we can drive down the road on a short journey without it cutting out, and if we need to receive a call from a loved one, a relative or perhaps a GP, we can have certainty that that call will come through.
Coverage maps have been drawn with a particularly optimistic crayon, and the problem with advertised speeds being hundreds of times better than reality is not merely technical; it also erodes trust. Quite often, those conditions are laboratory conditions that do not bear any resemblance to reality, so I invite the mobile phone companies to come and do a very thorough inspection across Bromsgrove and the villages.