Boris Johnson:
Unleashing full-fibre internet across rural areas and the North will help us to tackle the ‘digital divide’
Iwas speaking to some Lincolnshire Conservatives the other night, and there was one thing those farmers wanted me to do to improve their lives – and they wanted it done as fast as possible. Yes, they want a good Brexit by October 31, and if I am elected, that is certainly what we will do. Yes, they want a government that will champion British farming and British food production; and as someone who partly grew up on a family farm (milked cows, dipped sheep), I am totally committed to supporting farming and rural life.
But when I mentioned another priority of mine – almost casually – those farmers smote their weatherbeaten hands together and roared their assent. They want better broadband. They are indignant at the current failure to provide it – and they are absolutely right.
A fast internet connection is not some metropolitan luxury. It is an indispensable tool of modern life. You need it for your medical prescription, for paying your car tax, for keeping up with the news and with your family and friends. It is becoming the single giant ecosystem
in which all economic activity is conducted. It is the place you find bargains. It is the place you find customers. It is not only the place you can find a job; it is the means by which you can be interviewed, and your talents uncovered, without incurring the cost of a rail ticket. If your area has a truly fast broadband connection, that area will be a better place to live, to invest, to set up a business; and that area will have a better chance of retaining talented young people, and allowing them to start businesses and bring up their families.
It is therefore a disgrace that this country should suffer from a deep digital divide, so that many rural areas and towns are simply left behind. They can’t rely on teleconferencing. They can’t Skype properly. Sometimes the coverage is so bad that they can’t even email properly. This is 21st-century Britain – the country that helped to pioneer the very idea of the world wide web – and yet we have only 7 per cent coverage of full fibre broadband. In Spain there are now 85 per cent of households that have full fibre-optic broadband, with its almost limitless capacity to pump data to and from the home. There are remote Galician pueblos that have speed-of-light access to all the commercial and cultural glories of the web. There are whole towns in Britain where people are still being driven wild with frustration as they stare at the slowly revolving pizza wheel of doom.
It cannot go on like this. The Government has just set a new target for the 100 per cent roll-out of fullfibre broadband – by 2033! Tell that to rural Lincolnshire. As a deadline, that is laughably unambitious. If we want to unite our country and our society, we should commit now to delivering full fibre to every home in the land not in the mid-2030s – but in five years at the outside.
Of course they will say it can’t be done. They will say that we don’t have what it takes to emulate the Spanish. They will claim that I am succumbing to my perennial habit of optimism. But it can be done, and there are bright young MPS on my campaign team who can see the way ahead. We need to prioritise the rural areas that are currently at the far back of the queue, the three million homes and business that are rated among the 10 per cent most difficult to cover.
This will cost some public money, but the productivity gains are immense. Every pound invested in full-fibre broadband will lead to economic gains worth many times the cost. At the same time, we need to galvanise the roll-out of full fibre in all the towns of Britain that have been so long neglected, but that have such potential for regeneration.
It is outrageous that places such as Boston and Mansfield and Bishop Auckland and Newcastle-underlyme are currently being asked to wait until the mid-2030s to have a speed and richness of internet connectivity that, say, Londoners take for granted. No wonder they talk of a sense of alienation, between the south east of England (the most productive region in Europe) and the rest, when there is such a gulf in the provision of basic modern infrastructure. No wonder that division has been growing, and no wonder northern newspapers last week banded together to protest.
The good news is that we can fix it, and bridge that gulf, and bring our country and our society together. As I said last week, my plan for this country is to close that opportunity gap – partly by levelling up our education funding and providing superb transport infrastructure; and now I also pledge to end the digital divide with a programme that ranges from sensible changes to planning law to stimulating the private sector to get it done.
Yes, it will require a great national effort and a visible public campaign. We will have to step up very substantially the rate at which we install full fibre – currently running at about 20,000 premises per week. But this is not only a huge economic opportunity – it is part of our moral mission to unite Brexit Britain.
If there was one lesson from that referendum in 2016, it was that too much of the country feels unable to take part in the national success. This rampant inequality in broadband is not just a symbol but also a practical cause of that division. So let us address that injustice, and end that frustration. As it happens, the UK is already one of the most sophisticated digital economies in the world. We shop more online than virtually anyone else. We are doing astonishingly well in spite of our self-imposed handicap, like a Formula One car that is somehow achieving Grand Prix speeds while firing on two cylinders.
Think what we could achieve if the whole country had the same lightning-fast access to this essential tool of progress. If the Spanish can do it, why can’t we? Let’s say goodbye to the UK’S mañana approach to broadband and unleash full fibre for all by 2025.
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