Public Telephone Boxes (Closures)
The next item of business is a members' business debate on motion S2M-1706, in the name of Bruce Crawford, on the closure of public telephone boxes by BT. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament recognises the value of public telephone boxes as an important public service throughout Scotland in terms of social need and access to emergency services; is concerned about the plans by British Telecom (BT) to close 165 call boxes in towns and villages throughout mid-Scotland and Fife and around 1,000 around Scotland; supports the many community councils who have expressed grave concern at the planned closure of public call boxes in their communities; considers the consultation process conducted by BT to be inadequate, and therefore believes that BT should consult directly with the communities affected and reconsider its plans.
In the 20th century, the red public call-box established itself as a much-cherished and valued part of our street scene. Call-boxes provide a service that is valued by the many people who still have no land-line or access to a mobile phone. The service is valued by those who happen to live in an area that mobile-phone network operators do not serve and by those who choose for health reasons not to have a mobile phone. The service is valued by tourists, by those who might find themselves in an emergency and by the elderly in particular. All those reasons have been submitted to me by various community councils that want the public call-boxes in their communities to be retained.
However, as we enter the 21st century, a huge increase in mobile phone ownership has led to a culture change in the communication world and means that far fewer people use public call-boxes. A review of the number of call-boxes was as inevitable as the fact that night follows day. However, people have the right to expect any review process to be robust and any consultation process to reach the communities that are to be affected.
We have been told that in the past three years alone, the number of calls that are made from BT's public call-boxes has almost halved and that revenue has plummeted by about 41 per cent. Scotland has 6,113 boxes, of which a stubborn 3,800 are not in a position to pay their way. It is therefore clear that BT has a difficult balancing act to perform. It is understandable that, as a public limited company, it wants to ensure that its shareholders' interests are upheld but, at the same time, it is required to discharge its universal service obligations as laid down by the regulator.
In Scotland, 1,030 non-profit-making call-boxes that attract less than £200 per annum have been targeted for removal, and 165 of them are in Mid Scotland and Fife. By far the majority of the call-boxes that are targeted for removal are in rural areas; the cities and larger conurbations fare much less badly.
There is a real danger of the process leading to discrimination against rural communities. To be fair, BT has told us that if a community objects to the removal of a call-box it will not proceed, but the reality is that Office of Communications regulations do not allow BT to proceed with removal if it has received a simple written representation with reasons for objection. That shows that the Ofcom regulations are very weak; they place no requirement on BT or the other providers to construct a reasonable, criteria-based solution by which call-boxes can be removed.
To be fair to BT again, it has said that it is intent on retaining 850 call-boxes on the ground of social need. However, there is a fatal flaw in BT's procedures. If one does not establish clear and objective criteria for removing a public call-box where there has been no objection because the community or persons affected have been unaware, it is inevitable that unsafe decisions to remove call-boxes will be arrived at. That is one of the main reasons why the motion states that BT should "reconsider its plans".
In addition to the lack of clear criteria, BT's consultation process has not been as robust as it should have been. I say that because, in July 2003, Ofcom issued a new direction that clearly laid down the requirements that BT must follow if a proposal to remove a call-box is being considered. BT is required to give community councils notice of a proposal to remove a call-box and, when all reasonable efforts to do that have failed, BT can ask the local planning authority to give such notice. BT has chosen to use the route of consulting Scotland's community councils through the planning authority—I presume that it has done so on the basis that it thinks that it has made reasonable efforts directly to consult community councils. If that is its argument, I would dispute whether all reasonable efforts have indeed been made. I simply do not believe for one moment that an organisation of the scale and with the resources available to BT cannot make direct contact with the community councils that will be affected by the potential removal of call-boxes. If I, as an MSP with limited resources at my disposal, can get to a large chunk of Mid Scotland and Fife community councils, surely BT can manage to consult directly community councils in Scotland.
Some people might ask why the local authority is not relied on to do that job for BT. No matter how much we love oor cooncils, we all know that some are good at consultation, but that some are quite dreadful. In such circumstances, BT should surely make much greater attempts to consult community councils directly.
I would like members to hear the words of a couple of community councils that responded to BT. One community council said:
"We are ... deeply concerned that your version of ‘consultation' appears to have been no more than a Notice displayed on the kiosk. In all previous exercises by yourselves of this description, we have been consulted as a COMMUNITY COUNCIL (even where the kiosks were not within our area). We suggest that your inadequate consultative procedure, should lead you to re-launch this current exercise."
Another community council said:
"We again have to raise our concerns over BT's very poor local consultation procedures … BT are obliged to contact local authorities down to Parish or Community Council level. Why has this not happened? … Why is the first intimation … beyond reports of notices in the boxes, via an MSP?"
In considering the motion that is before the Parliament, I ask the minister to take on board the points that I have made, to support my motion and to ask BT to reconsider its plans and to start the consultation process again so that we can get directly to all the communities that are affected and so that no unsafe decisions are taken.
I thank the 29 MSPs who signed my motion.
The debate is heavily subscribed. I will try to get in as many members as possible.
I am grateful to Bruce Crawford for the opportunity to debate this matter. Although his motion mentions plans to close 165 call boxes in Mid Scotland and Fife, I remind him that, of the 1,300 call-boxes under threat, 257 of them are in the Highlands, which is probably one of the most remote areas in Scotland.
Bruce Crawford criticised the consultation period, but I am sure that he is aware that it has been extended by a further three weeks.
Last week, along with many other MSPs, I attended a meeting arranged by my colleague David Mundell with the director of BT pay-phones. I attended that meeting precisely because of my concerns and because people had written to me about theirs. It comes as little surprise to any of us that, in an age when the popularity and use of mobile phones is ubiquitous among people of all ages, the revenue produced by pay-phones is reduced. Likewise, it is understandable that BT, as a company with profit margins to keep, will try to make changes in those areas of business that perform less efficiently.
Some £1,500 per phone box is a substantial amount. Perhaps we should look at why BT has to subsidise the phone boxes as that might be another issue. However, there are concerns about public safety and communication. On the point that Bruce Crawford raised about community councils and people being made aware of the situation, I say to him that the matter is not that simple; many areas in the Highlands do not have a community council. My worry is that such areas will not be part of the consultation process.
My other worry, which was raised at the meeting, is that the objection response rate in Scotland is 26 per cent. That is not high, given the huge change that the proposed closures will impose.
Does the member agree that, when BT wants to flog us something, it manages to get itself into every home in the country? Could it not apply that same logic and expense in the current situation?
I am sure that BT is well aware of how to implement its ideas and that is important for it.
Pay-phones serve an emergency need for tourists whose cars have broken down, for example, but that is also why BT has to act sensitively when working with local communities. Bruce Crawford did not raise certain points that were made at the meeting so I will raise them. BT needs to ensure that all phones are in working order because it cannot complain that phones are underused if they are not in proper working order. BT has to rely on members of the public to report those phones and many people do not bother.
However, there are three other options to pursue and I hope that, rather than remove the telephone kiosks, we can use and advance those three options. I also hope that they will be available to community councils as part of the consultation process. One option is for kiosks to be used as tourist information points—I believe that that is being considered for a kiosk beside Loch Ness. That would cost around only £200 a year and I understand that local authorities are also looking at that option. There is also the option of modernising pay-phones to make them into multimedia terminals that would be accessible throughout many areas of the Highlands where broadband and internet access do not exist. The third option is to use the telephones to contact the emergency services. No cash would be used, but people would be able to telephone emergency numbers, dial 0800 numbers and to reverse the charges. Rather than looking at the threats, we should look at the opportunities.
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and I begin by congratulating my colleague Bruce Crawford on securing this important debate on ensuring the protection of an important part of the public services of rural Scotland in particular.
Some 54 call-boxes in my North Tayside constituency are under threat of closure by BT. In addition to the fine efforts that Bruce Crawford has made in leading the debate, I have written to each of the community councils that cover the phone boxes concerned to encourage them to be part of the consultation process. It is essential that community councils raise their voices to protect this vital public service.
It is a pleasure at any time to visit any part of my constituency, but it is a particular pleasure when I go to Kinloch Rannoch, Glenisla or Glen Esk. Those are some of the very few parts of my constituency where my mobile phone does not receive a signal and I can escape from the travails of political life. "He's up in Kinloch Rannoch and uncontactable" is a great excuse for avoiding calls from the press, but the fact is that in many areas of my constituency—and particularly in a number of areas where BT proposes to remove the phone boxes—there is very poor or no mobile phone coverage. We cannot assume that because most people in our cities and across central Scotland are able to use mobile phones they are accessible to everyone in every part of the country.
We must also address individuals' access to public services. Some low-income households might not have access to a mobile phone—indeed, they might not even have a land-line—and public telephone boxes are the only way that those people can access telecommunication services. In the interests of fairness and access to services, the network must be preserved.
Obviously, tourism forms a substantial element of my constituency's economy. As a result, we cannot assume that every visitor who gets into trouble in our area can put their hand in their pocket, pull out their mobile phone and make the required connection. We need a credible communications network that is available to everyone, no matter whether they are people in low income households or tourists. The obligation is on us to encourage the network's retention.
As I said at the start of my speech, I have encouraged community councils in the north Tayside area to make representations directly to BT. I want to reinforce that in this debate. Many of our parliamentary debates centre on the deterioration of general practitioner out-of-hours services, ambulance services and other public services in our rural areas. I really hope that we can make a powerful case to BT that it should rescind its decision, because removing these phone boxes will inevitably undermine the quality and range of public services that are available to people in rural Scotland. We must resist any such move if we are to protect the public interest.
I apologise to Bruce Crawford for not being in the chamber for the beginning of the debate. I did not realise that it had been brought forward so much.
I welcome Bruce Crawford's motion and this debate. I certainly reinforced many of his points in my amendment, which dealt specifically with Stirling constituency. I should point out that my remarks concern both urban and rural areas, although I accept the point that the rural dimension is very important.
I first heard about BT's proposal in an e-mail from Ian Shanks of BT. My colleague Anne McGuire, the MP for Stirling, was informed about the matter in a letter from Tim O'Sullivan. I assume that that the same happened throughout Scotland. As the e-mail and letter made clear, the rationale for the decision is that the increase in mobile phone use has meant a fall in the use of pay-phones. Indeed, that rationale was elaborated on in the meeting last week that Mary Scanlon mentioned.
However, BT's e-mail and letter also acknowledged social need and stressed the new initiatives that it was introducing. Perhaps the picture is not all black, and I hope that in the few minutes available I will be constructive as well as outline some of the concerns that have been expressed.
BT intimated that in its consultation process it had written to councils to ensure that they would communicate with community councils. When I found that that had not happened in my constituency, my colleague Anne McGuire and I wrote to every community council to tell them exactly what was happening and to ask them to get involved in the consultation process. As Mary Scanlon has said, the deadline for the consultation has been extended from 10 October to 22 October, largely because of difficulties that have been experienced during the process.
The six replies that I have received so far from community councils have welcomed our intervention, which has at least allowed them to know what was happening. They were surprised that BT communicated with me by e-mail, feeling that that was possibly not the best way. They recognised some of BT's rationale, as outlined in that communication, and two of the community councils agreed that some phone boxes were not being used and should be removed. However, that was not one of the big issues that the community councils wanted to get over to me.
The main issue was that consideration of social need was paramount—especially in disadvantaged areas where access to a phone is not always available. The community councils also emphasised the emergency issue, and mentioned—just as John Swinney did—areas where a mobile cannot be used. That issue becomes even more important when we consider tourists coming to national parks.
It was very useful to meet Ian Shanks and Paul Hendron last week. They agreed that if community councils approached their councils and put forward a case—with information that would then be sent to BT—the phone box would not be removed. That is exactly what they said at that meeting.
I am confused about what has been said about Ofcom and I would like the minister to clarify. As I understand it, Ofcom will be consulting in November and considering pay-phones and cashless phones—which could include emergency pads, for example. It could be argued that some phone boxes should be replaced with new ones equipped with emergency facilities—for example, in national parks, to follow on from what John Swinney said. I wonder whether it might have been better to wait and have a consultation that considered all the issues together. Perhaps the minister will comment on that. There is great concern about these issues and I hope that the minister will address them.
I congratulate Bruce Crawford on obtaining this short debate and I am grateful to the minister for allowing me to make a few constituency points.
Of the 136 pay-phones in my constituency, 56 are said to be profitable and 54 have been scheduled by BT for removal. BT says that it will retain 26 loss-making pay-phones
"to provide an essential community service."
Although one or two of the 54 that are scheduled for removal are redundant or duplicate existing provision, the majority of the 54, in my view, provide an essential community service, especially for emergencies.
As with John Swinney's constituency, it is possible in parts of my constituency to escape the mobile phone. In northern Berwickshire and around Newcastleton, for example, there is no mobile phone signal. It is therefore especially important that those areas should have a continuing pay-phone presence. We must also remember that mobile phones can run out—of battery or credit—so, again, it is important to have a network of emergency phones. In other constituencies, there are doubtless overwhelming social reasons for retaining certain pay-phones even if they collect little money. There are plenty such instances in my area.
I am particularly concerned about the maintenance of pay-phones. Recently I tried to use a pay-phone at Ellemford in north Berwickshire only to find that it was for 999 calls only. For some reason that pay-phone is included among the loss makers, but it is no wonder that it makes a loss when it is out of order and people cannot put any money in it.
If we regard the pay-phone network as providing an emergency service, we must ask Ofcom to look at the regulatory framework. It appears to me that BT is under some constraints, and I agree with Sylvia Jackson that it might have been far better for Ofcom to have conducted its review of emergency service provision before the present initiative was embarked on.
Like many other members, I would encourage community councils and individuals to make known the detailed implications of the removal of phone boxes in their localities. It was helpful to have the assurance from BT's pay-phone director and I appreciated the manner in which he approached the meeting. I urge all those concerned to approach BT with the relevant reasons, but BT must then respond, because it is no use its making commitments and then, in the fullness of time, not delivering on them.
I hope that the vast majority of the pay-phones in my constituency and beyond can be saved. If in due course there are opportunities for new technology and new development, so be it, but we should not deny the access that is vital to a number of people and in emergency situations before the alternatives are in place.
I congratulate my colleague Bruce Crawford on securing this important debate. Listening to John Swinney talk about Kinloch Rannoch and to Euan Robson, I thought for one moment that they were going to say that they held their surgeries in telephone boxes in some areas—although I am sure that they get many more people along than would fit into a telephone box. That helps to illustrate my next point, which came across at the meeting with BT. Telephone boxes in some areas are often used for purposes other than making telephone calls—I refer to the ones that are used as bus shelters and will take that line of argument no further.
Clearly their use qua phone boxes is minimal, because they are often used only in an emergency, whether by a passing motorist or a local inhabitant whose land-line has gone down. When the land-line is not available, there is a real emergency and there is no mobile phone coverage, there is a real problem.
I am not quite as critical of BT as Bruce Crawford's motion is, in respect of its not using community councils. There should be a seamless way in which local authorities can automatically pass down consultation to community councils. Local authorities should not have to think twice about that, but I suspect that that is not the case; I suspect that local authorities sometimes do not have up-to-date records of who the secretaries of community councils are. That is symptomatic of the way in which community councils are often treated in the local government structure—they are not seen as an important part, but in many areas they are the only representative true local voice.
If community councils have not been spoken to and the phone box in question is used only occasionally when there is a dire emergency, what on earth is the point in putting up a notice to say that it is going to be taken away? The reality is that someone who is likely to complain would have to go into the phone box during the consultation period; not everyone takes up their opportunities to make their voice heard and perhaps we should not be surprised that, in many cases, nobody has come forward to say, "That phone box could well be essential to me."
BT should be congratulated on some of the innovative ways in which it is using phone boxes in certain places to try to make them more valuable and on co-operating with local authorities, which are using the phone boxes as ways of delivering local services that they might find uneconomic in other circumstances. That being more widespread presupposes that local authorities will have sufficient budgets, because somebody has to fund those phone boxes. I am a bit worried that local authorities, which would be the obvious bodies to do that, might find that there is so much pressure on their budgets as a result of successive settlements from the Parliament that they cannot go down the social routes that do not involve a legislative requirement. BT is a commercial firm whether we like it or not—some of us might not like it—and we cannot expect it to deliver every social service that we as legislators think should be delivered.
I thank Bruce Crawford for introducing this topic for debate. The issue concerns many communities in Mid Scotland and Fife and throughout Scotland.
In many ways, the debate is a microcosm for a lot of our debates about the provision of public services. What we are talking about is a form of centralisation and rationalisation of a public service. There is also an issue about the way in which major private and public bodies that supply the services on which we all rely consult members of the public. Additionally, it is about the balance that we strike between the facilities that private individuals have—in this case, mobile phones and land-lines—and the public facilities on which we all rely.
Rather than centralising, we should look to localise services where that is appropriate. However, that does not mean that those services should just stand still. A good example is the way in which the Royal Mail has enabled post offices to work with Clydesdale Bank, which has enabled new services to be brought into post offices to keep them viable as places that we can all use in our communities. We need to look at phone boxes in the same way and start to offer additional services in them. I am not talking about time travel; I am talking about enabling people to access the internet through phone boxes, especially in remote areas that do not have broadband coverage, so that they can shop and pay their bills. Walkers could gain access to information on weather and local walking routes, and tourists could access other forms of information. All those additional services could be provided through our phone boxes as part of our localising of the services that we all need.
It is clear that there have been flaws in the way in which British Telecom has conducted its consultation, and communities have often had to run campaigns to get proper dialogue with BT on the issue. For example, the community in Glen Lyon had to run a campaign to get BT to reconsider the closure of a phone box there. In the 21st century, we need to move away from that kind of dialogue between service providers and communities. We need a much less confrontational approach and a process of greater engagement to come from companies such as BT. I would like BT to go to communities to spell out why it feels that some of the phone boxes need to close and what the options are to make them viable in the future, including the building of additional services into the phone boxes.
As has been pointed out, not everyone owns or wants a mobile phone, just as not everyone owns or wants a private car, and lots of people do not even have access to a land-line. There are unanswered questions about the long-term safety of increased mobile phone usage, and many people want the choice not to use a mobile phone.
Phone boxes provide a valuable social service. In Perthshire, a lot of migrant fruit pickers come into the area over the summer to pick the fruit, and in one village every season there is a huge queue of fruit pickers who want to call home from a public phone box. That phone box is extremely well used and provides a valuable social service for those people, who do not have mobile phones or access to a land-line in their accommodation. The irony is that many of them make reverse-charge calls when they phone home. I wonder whether BT, as part of its economic rationalisation, is taking into consideration the fact that people are not always putting cash into the phones but are sometimes using them as a vital public service to make reverse-charge calls.
As Murray Tosh said, the debate is oversubscribed. I therefore invite a member to move a motion without notice to extend the debate by 15 minutes.
Motion moved,
That, under Rule 8.14.3, the debate be extended by 15 minutes.—[Bruce Crawford.]
Motion agreed to.
I, too, congratulate Bruce Crawford on securing the debate. Although he referred specifically to Mid Scotland and Fife, the issue concerns all MSPs who represent rural areas throughout Scotland.
I, too, attended the meeting that was organised last week by my rival, David Mundell. He is not here today—I presume that he is detained somewhere down south. The meeting, which was very interesting and useful, gave some of the background to the debate in Paul Hendron's exposition of the problems that BT faces in the delivery of the pay-phone service. Because of the increase in the use of mobile phones and the decrease in the use of pay-phones, BT cannot continue with the status quo and has to look at something else.
There is definitely an issue about the way in which information was sent out to elected members and local people. As Sylvia Jackson said, the information was sent to members by e-mail. I did not pick up my e-mails on that Friday night and the first that I knew about the whole thing was when I heard Alasdair Morgan's dulcet tones on the radio on Monday morning saying that people should get involved. I was ready to be insulted by the fact that BT had not consulted me, but found that it had, in fact, done so. I am not sure that e-mail is the best way of reaching people who might not have good telecommunications in their constituency offices.
More concerning is the way in which the situation was passed on to local authorities to deal with through community councils. As has been said, not every area has a community council; not every community council meets regularly; and not every local authority has the address of their local community council secretary. People can slip through the consultation net. Of course, everyone has a councillor and perhaps local authorities should consider the way in which they communicate through their councillors on such matters. Councillors should attend community council and tenants and residents association meetings where such organisations exist; that is part of their role in representing their community. Perhaps a bit more attention should have been paid by the local authorities to the way in which councillors could deal with some of the consultations.
We have examples of consultations from other private companies. For example, ScottishPower has been consulting on various wind farm proposals in my area. Other companies are going around with roadshows and inviting local people to come along and see what is being suggested. There are models available that BT might have considered.
I agree with Sylvia Jackson and Euan Robson that the consultation in November on the provision of cashless and emergency phones could have been better co-ordinated with what is going on now. If it were properly organised, that initiative could offer a solution to some of the problems that will arise in rural areas if the pay-phones are removed. As Paul Hendron told us, cashless phones are considerably cheaper because they do not have to be emptied and they do not need to be located in a kiosk, so people cannot use them as bus shelters or for any of the other nefarious purposes that pay-phones are sometimes used for. Hopefully, if such phones are vandal-proofed, they should be considerably cheaper to operate. They allow people to make 999 calls and reverse-charges calls. It was suggested that credit cards or phone cards could be used in them, and that would allow people to make normal communication from them.
It is important that the various people who run public services and the private companies that have an obligation to provide such information technology—including the new IT such as broadband and the multimedia centres to which Mary Scanlon referred—get together and speak to each other about the best way in which services can be provided. There are examples of good practice from other parts of the UK and Scotland, but I do not get the impression that people are working together and talking to each other. That is what needs to be done.
I thank Bruce Crawford for introducing the debate. The possible loss of phone boxes is an issue that is being discussed by people in communities the length and breadth of Scotland, including people in my constituency. I therefore welcome this opportunity to consider the matter in our own Scottish Parliament.
As members will appreciate, I come at the debate from a Highland perspective. I recognise that in towns today, mobile phone coverage is probably universal. Regrettably however, there is a major problem with vandalism and I therefore appreciate the problem that BT faces in maintaining its phone kiosk network. However, things are very different in rural areas, particularly in much of the area that I represent, where coverage is erratic at best or non-existent in some parts.
Maintaining access to a network of pay-phones is important and, in some circumstances, could be a matter of life and death. For example, motorway travellers are provided with emergency phones at regular intervals. I can assure members that the local road authority provides no such facilities on the A87 between Invergarry and Kyle of Lochalsh. Travellers in the north have no such luxury and must rely on pay-phones.
Our friends in the Tory party privatised BT and the company's board obviously has a duty to its shareholders. However, I argue that BT and all private companies still have a duty to the communities that they serve. That argument should apply to the provision of telephone boxes in rural areas of Scotland. Should some telephone boxes become unviable, BT should approach the Government and ask it to help maintain them because, in many cases, they are vital community assets.
Much of the impetus to remove boxes comes from a reduction in demand because of the prevalence of mobile telephones. We all know that most people today carry a mobile phone. However, as I mentioned, not everywhere in the north has mobile phone coverage, so it is vital that boxes are maintained in areas where there is no complete coverage by all the networks. More important, it must be remembered that not everyone has a mobile phone. It is possible that tourists will have no access to mobile telephones and they may well need a phone if they get lost or break down on their way to somewhere. In addition, those who do not own telephones are likely to be the most vulnerable in society, and to be poor and elderly. There is no doubt in my mind that BT phone boxes have an almost iconic position in the public's psyche and, for that reason, no one wants to see them go. However, there is a strong case for their being maintained in rural areas of Scotland on community and safety grounds.
Highland Council has recognised the problem and it suggested to BT that there should be no more than 5 miles between pay-phone kiosks in the rural network, except where there are large areas of uninhabited countryside. I support that proposal. BT should be encouraged to discuss the reduction in services with the various community councils in the most affected areas, so that a reasonable, practical and acceptable solution can continue to be available.
I thank Bruce Crawford for lodging the motion and securing the debate. We have heard about many issues regarding safety aspects and I will go over one or two of those. However, an important aspect that we have missed is the use by young people of the ChildLine helpline. Many young people who call ChildLine use a pay-phone rather than a phone in their house, if the situation concerns abuse problems within their household. There has been a huge increase in the number of young people who access ChildLine. I do not think that any research has been done to assess how many of them use pay-phones and how many do not, but if only one child gets help from using a pay-phone, it is worth having them.
Does the member agree that that issue is similar to the one that Mr Ballard raised, which is that BT gives us revenue figures for the telephone boxes, but of course an 0800 call to ChildLine does not generate any money at all?
That is correct; I was just coming to that point. There is no measurement of how many young people use pay-phones and what profits are made. Profit should not be part of the issue. What we are talking about should be a public service to which people have easy access for the kind of situations that we have described. We should point up strongly that that issue should be considered in much more detail.
Last year, more than 8,000 children in distress used a phone box to telephone ChildLine. Many youngsters, especially those who live in poverty, do not have a mobile. Even when they do, they may lack credit or a signal, or they may be uneasy about making a confidential call in public if they are unable to phone from home.
ChildLine's chief executive, Carole Easton, said:
"Public telephones are very important for children and young people in danger or distress, giving them direct and confidential access to ChildLine.
They are especially important as a means of emergency communication in remote and isolated, or rural, areas."
It is those remote and isolated areas that we have talked about today. I have been contacted by a number of people in the Borders who are concerned about the situation and who feel that issues such as the needs of young people and emergency situations have not been considered.
There are accident black spots at which there will be no access to phones in the area if the call boxes are taken away. There could be an emergency in which no one can make contact because they cannot get a signal from their mobile phone or because they do not have a mobile phone. We have to consider such situations. Phone boxes are marked on Ordnance Survey maps, which have been mentioned. If someone needs to get emergency help and is following an Ordnance Survey map, they might soon find that the phone box that they are looking for is not there.
The consultation process has been extremely poor—a lot of comments have been made about that—and BT needs to consider how it conducts consultations. Rosie Kane pointed out that BT is quick enough to phone us up to sell us stuff. If we are sitting at home having dinner at night and the phone rings, it is invariably BT. If BT can do that, I am quite sure that it can do a better consultation than it has done. I hope that everyone will support the motion, particularly with regard to ChildLine.
I begin by declaring a small shareholding in BT. Sadly, it is a modest one.
The constituency that I represent is the second largest in Scotland—and indeed in Britain—and includes rural communities from Ardnamurchan to Auldearn, from Drumochter to Dalcross and from Nairn to Knoydart via Loch Ness. If the proposal to remove pay-phones goes ahead, there will be about as many pay-phones on the shores of Loch Ness as there are annual sightings of the loch's most famous resident.
Broadly speaking, I endorse the arguments put by members of all parties who are representatives of rural constituencies. Rather than repeat arguments that have already been made, I shall ask the minister to address what seems to me to be a fundamental illogicality in the current process. In order to stop the proposed removal of any public pay-phone, all that is required under the existing rules is that a written objection to the proposal is made providing reasons for the objection. The rules do not define what the reasons are. If there are any reasons at all, the mere intimation of an objection will bring the proposal to a halt. That seems to me to be bonkers, but that is the regulatory regime in which BT finds itself operating and in which we, as representatives of largely rural constituencies, are making the valid points that have been put in this debate.
In particular, we have been pointing out that nowadays, when 99 per cent of households have either a telephone or a mobile phone and only 1 per cent lack that access, the primary role of a pay-phone should be—for the reasons identified by Rosemary Byrne, John Swinney, John Farquhar Munro and Sylvia Jackson—as an emergency service for locals and tourists, in areas where there is no mobile coverage and for use to alert the emergency services. It is an emergency facility, but under the same rules as apply to objections—and perhaps the minister could address this point—there is no power for BT to replace pay-phones with emergency phones. That seems to me to be absurd.
Thirdly, we understand that, although BT has put forward these proposals, it is only following the procedure that was set out in Oftel's direction of last July, which says that BT must consult community councils. Mr Ruskell made the rather bizarre and onerous proposal that BT should consult every community in Scotland. Even if BT were to consult even every community in my constituency, I think that it would take several BT employees an entire year to do so. BT is only doing what it has to do. Will the minister confirm whether BT consulted the Scottish Executive on whether the consultation procedure should be enhanced? If so, what was the Executive's response?
Even more perverse is the fact that, at the same time as BT is proposing the closure of a great number of pay-phones throughout Scotland, Ofcom is undertaking a review of the universal service obligation for pay-phones that could change the criteria for the retention of pay-phones. Surely the cart has been put before the horse. Does that not illustrate amply the utter idiocy of operating under a regulatory regime of which Westminster is in charge? Would it not be preferable if our Minister for Transport—whom I am sure all members would wish to support as appropriate—had the power to introduce a regulatory regime that determined the rules before they were applied to a given situation? Living as we do in the real world, we have to recognise that the present situation needs to be addressed.
Does the minister agree that any savings in expenditure that BT achieves through the closure of pay-phones—most of which will be in rural Scotland—should be reinvested in Scotland? Has the Scottish Executive asked BT to make that investment in Scotland, for Scotland and, in particular, for rural Scotland?
I, too, thank Bruce Crawford for securing the debate; it has come at exactly the right time. I also thank him for giving us the opportunity to debate BT's proposals for a reduction in the number of public telephone boxes. It enables us to highlight the issues and to alert our constituents to the proposals so that they might be encouraged to write to BT. We need to put the arguments for the retention of our local phone boxes in places in which there is a real need for them to be retained.
BT proposes a reduction in the number of pay-phone kiosks across the county from 6,113 to 5,083. Of the kiosks that are earmarked for closure, 103 are in Aberdeenshire, of which 37 are in my constituency. In fairness, I note that 32 have been identified for retention on social-need grounds. Although I welcome those reprieves, if all the proposed closures were to go ahead, only 80 public telephone boxes would be left to serve my constituents in a large rural area that has a scattered but numerous population. No pay-phones will be left in any of the rural stretches of the A96 between Aberdeen and Inverness.
According to BT, 3,800 of the current 6,113 phone boxes lose money. The number of calls that are made from BT pay-phones has almost halved in the past three years. Overall revenue from phone boxes has dropped by 41 per cent in that time. [Interruption.] I have a feeling that the automatic ventilation is working overtime, Presiding Officer—perhaps it is having to deal with too much hot air.
A review of the network of provision is inevitable. Undoubtedly, part of the reason for the drop in usage and profitability is the expanding use of mobile phones. However, although two thirds of the population own a mobile phone, one third does not. It is also the case that mobile phones can be out of range, out of credit or out of order. Furthermore, 1 per cent of homes have access to neither a mobile nor a land-line phone. Those households are completely dependent on their access to a public phone box.
Phone boxes provide an important service for people who do not have a phone and also for tourists and people who work away from home. Many speakers today have made constructive and innovative suggestions about other ways in which the public telephone network could be used to provide a service.
In an emergency, access to a phone box can be crucial. Seven per cent of calls to the emergency services are made from pay-phones. I guess that many of those calls are made from phone boxes that have low usage in relatively remote sites, but of the few calls that are made, some could be vital in saving lives. At the Liberal Democrat conference in Glasgow on Saturday, we voted unanimously to ask BT to reconsider closing public pay-phones in isolated areas where they could provide a vital service, and we called for BT's provision of service guidelines to be revised to include provision for emergency situations and tourist areas.
However imperfectly, BT has invited members of the public and their elected representatives to tell them which pay-phone kiosk removals should be reconsidered and why. The period for making representations has been extended until 22 October. I hope that the responses that BT receives—some of them, perhaps, prompted by this debate—will make it think again in respect of those phone boxes for which a reasonable case can be made for retention, and particularly where a phone might be required in an emergency. It might also be enthused and motivated by the various suggestions that have been made today that could extend service provision through the phone box network in the 21st century.
I, too, thank Bruce Crawford for raising this issue. There was a great deal of sense in his introductory speech.
The Executive fully recognises the points that have been made about the importance of public call-box provision. Call-boxes have a clear role to play in terms of social need and emergencies, particularly in remote and rural areas. I have noted members' concerns on the matter and assure everyone that those concerns will be reflected in the response that we will be making to Ofcom's imminent wider consultation on the universal service obligation, which will include its new proposals on public pay-phones.
It is important to emphasise that the regulation of call-boxes is a matter for the independent UK-wide body, Ofcom. Call-boxes have been, and remain, included in the concept of the universal service obligation, which is fundamental to the regulation of the telecoms industry in the UK. Under that obligation, basic telephone services should be available to everybody on reasonable request and at an affordable price. Ofcom set out a universal service condition that applies to BT in most of the United Kingdom, including in Scotland, which allows Ofcom to make a direction setting out the circumstances in which BT can remove a call-box. [Interruption.] Given the noise, I do not know whether one is being dug up outside at the moment. We will see whether the sound system holds out.
As has been said, BT cannot remove the last phone box from a site without a 42-day consultation period. In this case, the consultation period has been extended, and 22 October is now the key date. If a local planning authority or community council in Scotland objects in writing, for whatever reason, BT cannot remove the pay-phone. BT also has to place a notice in the phone box, as has been commented on today, but we should be clear that it is only if the local council or the community council objects to the proposal that it will be blocked. Somebody writing to BT after seeing the notice in the phone box would not, on its own, be enough to stop the removal.
Is the minister aware just how ridiculous the situation is? We were told by BT that a parish council in England objected to a telephone box being removed because light from the box shone on the parish signpost and therefore BT could not remove it. BT is obviously in a ridiculous regulatory situation.
It is important to have a clear understanding of the closure safeguards, but I would not like to defend the nature of those safeguards or the mechanisms that have been put in place. It is important that communities and local people are clear about the current arrangements.
Another two weeks remain for the consultation process in Scotland and I strongly encourage people who object to their local call-box being removed to make known their objection, but I repeat that that objection should come from the community council or the local council, if they wish to block the proposal.
Will the minister say a little more about the Executive's view of how the public call-box network fits into the wider network of rural public services? Is the Executive giving any thought to integrating some of those facilities with wider public information services, such as tourist information facilities? That would strengthen the availability of such services in rural Scotland.
We have considered that. I share many of the concerns that have been expressed today; I have already spoken of my concern about the removal of phone boxes, especially in areas in which mobile coverage is patchy, in rural areas and in the circumstances that many members have described, in which their local area or constituency is affected. There is no doubt that the provision of call-boxes takes on far greater significance in such areas, which are often, but not exclusively, rural. In remote areas, a call-box often stands some distance apart from the next one. Although such call-boxes might be used far less than those in urban areas, the nature of calls that are made from them can be very important. Calls to ChildLine have been mentioned. When motorists are involved in an accident or when walkers or climbers find themselves in an emergency, a mobile phone is not always available. Call-boxes remain an important part of the Scotland-wide telecommunications infrastructure and, in such circumstances, they are vital to communities.
We will emphasise concerns about accessibility and alternatives, especially in rural areas, to Ofcom in the forthcoming consultation. We will also support the examination of other approaches that could allow the provision of public call-box access in rural areas, some of which have been mentioned in the debate. Those include allowing BT to convert some of the less-used call-boxes into emergency phones. We should be clear that that is prohibited under the present Ofcom regulatory framework.
Will the minister give way?
It will have to be the last intervention that I take.
Quickly, please.
What is your interpretation of an emergency phone? Would such a phone allow an 0800 number, such as those for ChildLine and the Samaritans, to be dialled? Would it not be the case that children with a problem who used an emergency phone would be noticed? That might be a difficulty.
It is important that all such issues are examined carefully. We would wish it to be the case that 0800 numbers could be dialled. Given the technological advances that have been made with modern phone systems, just about anything is possible. It may already be the case that that issue can be resolved. Mary Scanlon might have some information on that.
As I indicated in my speech, BT said at its meeting last week that 0800 numbers would be free and that it would be possible to reverse the charges, so ChildLine and many other similar organisations could be contacted. I understand that that facility is available now.
I am grateful to Mary Scanlon for that information. It is clear that we need to address such issues and to ensure that there is a sensible solution.
We have alerted Ofcom's Scottish representatives to the situation. The Executive argued successfully for the creation of statutory Scottish elements to Ofcom's structure, such as an office in Scotland, a Scottish advisory committee and the presence of a Scottish member on Ofcom's consumer panel. I have no doubt that MSPs will want to contact the people in those bodies. In addition, the Executive is determined to play a full and active role on the universal service obligation and on the future of public call-box provision.
Some members have asked whether loss-making call-boxes that are at risk could be turned into multimedia kiosks. Highland Council is looking into that idea for the Inverness area and I hope that other local authorities will do the same, because it is worth further investigation.
The debate has been important and worth while and I welcome members' views which, I assure them, will be fed into our discussion with Ofcom and our response to the consultation process. We need to encourage regulation that sufficiently safeguards pay-phones in the long term. In the meantime, I repeat my call to local councils and community councils to use the remaining time in the current process wisely and to think carefully about all the phone boxes that are threatened with closure in their local areas.
Meeting suspended until 14:00.
On resuming—