£1bn to fix phone signal black spots ...and Budget will invest in faster broadband by 2025
RISHI Sunak will vow to end patchy mobile phone reception and slow broadband in this week’s Budget.
The Chancellor will announce a £1billion deal with telecoms firms to boost 4G coverage in rural areas.
More than 280,000 properties and 10,000 miles of roads are expected to benefit from better phone signals. The biggest improvements are likely to be in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Whitehall sources said the money would ‘see poor and patchy mobile coverage become a thing of the past’.
Mr Sunak will also confirm a £5billion investment to achieve faster broadband across the UK by 2025.
During December’s election the Conservatives pledged to bring full fibre and gigabit- capable broadband to every home and business in Britain within five years. Gigabit broadband, which is 40 times faster than standard superfast broadband, will be rolled out to the hardest-to-reach 20 per cent of the country, the Treasury said.
Mr Sunak said: ‘We are committed to levelling up across every region and nation in the UK and that is why we are making the largest ever public investment into broadband.
‘This investment delivers on our promises to the British people, boosting growth and prosperity across the country.’ Mr Sunak, who became Chancellor last month following Sajid Javid’s resignation, yesterday refused to confirm whether he will stick to the fiscal rules of the Conservative manifesto when he delivers his Budget this week.
He said that he believes ‘very much’ in the responsible management of public finances, but declined to comment on whether the Government will abide by its election pledges. The Conservative manifesto for the election stated the party would not borrow to fund daytoday spending and would ensure debt is lower in five years’ time. Mr Sunak said he could not ‘comment on the exact forecast until Wednesday’, though he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘I believe very much in the importance of fiscal responsibility, about responsible management of our public finances.
‘It’s because there’s been very strong management of public finances over the last ten years by successive Conservative chancellors who have made some difficult decisions that means I can sit here today and say I will invest what it takes to get us through this because our public finances are in a good spot.’
Mr Sunak yesterday said around a fifth of HM Treasury staff will move to a new ‘economic campus’ in the North as part of its bid to spread prosperity throughout the country. Offices will also be opened in Northern Ireland and Wales.
He told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme: ‘We believe in making sure that wherever you live in this country there is opportunity for you.
‘ That’s what levelling up means in practice, it’s not just about building a road here or a railway station there, it’s about ensuring that everyone can fulfil their dreams, so it is spreading that opportunity.
‘I want to make sure that the Treasury is at the front foot of that.’
WHAT a baptism of fire for new Chancellor Rishi Sunak. Less than a month into the job and he is being bombarded with demands to soften the impact of coronavirus by signing a pile of blank cheques to cover as-yet unknown costs.
Wednesday’s budget should have been a blue- sky event, ushering in an era of infrastructure development designed to level-up Britain and transform it into an economic powerhouse. Instead, the most important budget since the 2008 crash is happening under a corona-shaped cloud threatening to rain down short-term chaos.
Yet, crisis can bring clarity. this is a lifeor-death situation and money will have to be spent – on the NHS, care of the elderly, supporting self-isolating workers without access to sick pay and saving small businesses from collapse. no one is going to blame Mr Sunak for using the fiscal headroom provided by a healthy economy and cheap borrowing to absorb this temporary shock.
But the Chancellor must go further. He should not allow the coronavirus to impede ambitious investment in infrastructure and research and development, or his strategic tax-cutting agenda.
With global growth threatened by the virus, this country needs tax rises like a hole in the head – and cuts for lower earners should proceed without delay.
In terms of small firms, the virus presents not only a threat but an opportunity. Mr Sunak should use the economic necessity created by the outbreak not only to ease payments of business rates but to reform this drag anchor on local enterprise entirely. And he should begin immediately to simplify our baroque tax system. Why, for example, are the self-employed asked to pay tax on predicted earnings in advance, much of which they must then claw back? this punitive practice should end.
Mr Sunak needs not only to calm nerves this week but to instil optimism. Coronavirus is a storm to be weathered. It must not be allowed to blow this government off course.