Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Thursday, June 30, 2011

Official Report 1081KB pdf

---

Rural Connectivity

The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-00448, in the name of Richard Lochhead, on rural connectivity. I will give members a few moments to swap places. As the debate is undersubscribed, the Presiding Officers will be slightly more generous in allocating time. If members want to take interventions, we will do our best to ensure that they are not disadvantaged by that.

15:04

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I take it that you want this to be a 2G debate in which we all speak slowly as opposed to a 4G debate in which we go very fast and deliver next-generation speeches. Thank you for the allocation of ample time. If I do not take it up, Stewart Stevenson certainly will in his winding-up speech.

Last week, the Parliament had the opportunity to debate the future of rural Scotland. A major theme was rural connectivity in the context of next-generation or high-speed broadband. In that debate, I said that if we can

“connect our communities to the rest of the world, we can offer rural Scotland and the whole nation a brighter future.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2011; c 888.]

The purpose of today’s debate is to provide members with the chance to focus on the increasing importance of digital connectivity in rural Scotland. There is cross-party support for the view that a lack of ambition on the part of the United Kingdom Government should not be allowed to create a situation in which rural Scotland misses out on the digital revolution.

The absence of connectivity can hold back our rural communities and businesses, as I was reminded only last week when, like many other members, I was at the fantastic Royal Highland Show. I met the owners of a small, farm-based rural business in the Borders, who had received a modest amount of Scotland rural development programme funding to establish their butchery business, which sells premium produce that they have reared. They told me that the biggest obstacle to their future was the lack of broadband connection in their area. They want to offer an online ordering service, because they know that that is where the future of their business lies, but they cannot compete on a level playing field because—in the 21st century—the infrastructure has not found its way to rural Scotland. As many members will recognise, that is a consistent message from communities and businesses the length and breadth of rural Scotland.

Members will recall the speak up for rural Scotland consultation that the Scottish Government conducted just last year. The fact that respondents consistently identified connection to high-speed broadband as their highest priority has been acknowledged in the Government’s response to that consultation, which was outlined in our policy paper, “Our Rural Future”.

High-speed broadband is essential to keeping rural businesses viable and competitive in the future, but there are wider community benefits from greater connectivity in rural Scotland. If rural communities are left behind, that could lead to greater isolation, so the digital revolution can deliver social as well as economic benefits.

We have all seen the phenomenal rise of social media. I speak as a recent convert to tweeting and Facebook—I can give members who want to follow me my details later on. Of course, the issue is important not just to politicians and ministers. It is particularly important to today’s young people, including those who live in rural Scotland, because young people seem to organise their social lives through their PCs and their smartphones in a way that none of us would have predicted just a few years ago.

How far we have come from the days when, in a former life, my colleague Stewart Stevenson programmed computers that filled a room but had only 1kB of memory—I wanted to use that analogy before Mr Stevenson reminded us of his experiences in his wind-up speech. How far we have come in a short space of time can also be illustrated by looking back to the early days of this Parliament, in 1999, when the first mobile phones that could send e-mails had just come on to the scene. Twelve years later, we all know how important BlackBerrys, iPhones and so on are to the business community, to politicians and to people in many other walks of life, who think that they simply could not do without them.

Digital communications, mobile phones and broadband internet access are game-changing innovations. That is why connectivity will be the cornerstone of our activity on rural development throughout the session. A connected Scotland will be the ideal location for investment. Our digital strategy sets out to ensure that all of Scotland, regardless of how rural or remote it might be, will have access to next-generation broadband by 2020, and that significant progress will be made by 2015. We believe that a world-class broadband infrastructure will underpin the digital economy in Scotland, and we want to equip all our rural communities with what they need for future economic development in the 21st century. Our focus must be on ensuring that rural areas are not left behind as next-generation broadband is rolled out across the nation.

Early projects are already under way in the Highlands and Islands and in the south of Scotland. Highlands and Islands Enterprise is leading the first of those projects, which is receiving UK Government broadband funding, following a successful bid from the Scottish Government. It will deliver next-generation broadband to around 50 towns and communities spread over the region, which include key population centres, areas of low employment and towns with fragile areas. The procurement phase started earlier this month, and it will run for a year. We will begin to see improvements being delivered in the region within the six months after that.

At the other end of the country, a co-operative association between Dumfries and Galloway, the Scottish Borders and Scottish Enterprise is developing a strategic broadband plan for the south of Scotland. The project is being championed by the chief executives of two councils in particular; they are fully behind the project team.

The next-generation broadband pilot in Annan is exploring how the existing network that is available to public sector buildings can be opened up to the wider rural community. That has been made possible by a grant of almost £0.25 million from the Scottish Government.

Close working between the Scottish Government and both project teams is ensuring that they receive the support that they need from us. We want to replicate that right across the rest of Scotland and we are working with many local authorities and the enterprise agencies to take forward a more strategic national broadband plan. That will, in turn, be informed by the findings from John McClelland’s recent “Review of ICT Infrastructure in the Public Sector in Scotland”, which confirmed that we need to collaborate across the public sector to get maximum value from our resources. He also tells us that we need to ensure that our public sector investment has wider benefits for the citizens, which is exactly the kind of project that is being explored in Annan.

Progress is being made, but there is a lot more to be done. Thankfully, the Scottish Government already has an impressive track record of getting Scotland connected. As a direct result of our intervention, basic broadband availability is now at 99 per cent in Scotland. Our digital strategy and national broadband plan seek to address directly many of the concerns that were raised in the speak up for rural Scotland consultation that I mentioned earlier.

Earlier this year, I chaired a rural broadband summit to highlight our objective and promote solutions to ensure that rural Scotland joins the global connected economy. That was followed just last week by a rural broadband workshop, and we will continue to work in partnerships with all Scotland’s local authorities, enterprise agencies and other stakeholders to develop regional broadband strategies that will, in turn, contribute to the national broadband plan that I mentioned earlier.

We need to ensure that rural Scotland accesses as much of the available United Kingdom funding as possible to enable all that to happen. As members will be aware from last week’s debate, the UK Government has allocated £530 million to the roll-out of next-generation broadband for rural areas. We all agree that it is important to work very hard to obtain the best possible share of that fund for Scotland.

At the same time, we must be realistic and accept that, during the coming years, that will be only a fraction of the overall cost of getting next-generation broadband to all of Scotland’s rural communities. That is why it is important to look at how we can leverage in additional funding, including, of course, from the private sector. That will be critical if we are to maximise the return from our investments.

Connecting rural Scotland to a 21st century communications network will connect rural Scotland to the world. That is true of not just broadband, but mobile phone coverage, which is something that we should push higher up the agenda over the coming years. Scotland’s 3G coverage is only at around 66 per cent of the population and 41 per cent geographically. The roll-out obligation for the current 3G network required only coverage of an area in which at least 80 per cent of the population of the UK live. The figures show that a large proportion of the missing 20 per cent, who are not covered, happen to live in Scotland. Last year, the UK Government directed the Office of Communications to increase its obligation to 90 per cent. Although that is a welcome move, it will still leave many people across large parts of Scotland with inadequate coverage. We have to demand a specific coverage obligation for Scotland. We want 90 per cent of Scotland to be covered to match the UK’s 90 per cent, but we should at least have a specific target for coverage in Scotland. That would allow the Parliament to have an informed debate about the future, and to hold operators to account at the same time.

The Scottish Government is working with the industry and Ofcom to identify further barriers to increased mobile phone coverage in rural Scotland, and to make improvements as we implement our own strategy during 2011 and beyond.

Ofcom’s own recently published research quoted families who are living in rural Scotland talking about the challenges that they face. For example, one lady who lives on a Highland estate in the north of Scotland said,

“we get post three times a week ... I would expect telecommunications to be of a greater standard.”

She went on to say,

“it would be a great benefit to get better coverage.”

The situation even affects public safety. Gamekeepers cannot always be contacted when they are out in the glens. As part of the Ofcom research, someone said when interviewed,

“I have had to call the helicopter out twice when people haven’t returned, when a direct call to their mobile would have done it.”

Those are some of the challenges that people living in rural communities face day in, day out, due to a lack of connectivity, whether mobile phone coverage or broadband.

The current arrangements allow for incremental improvements, such as mast sharing and roaming agreements, which are helping to improve coverage in areas that are poorly served by the networks. However, I am absolutely clear that although we are doing all we can on this very important matter, we are restricted in what we can do. Telecoms policy, including mobile coverage, is reserved to the United Kingdom Government. That includes matters relating to the licensing of mobile telecoms operators and mobile coverage obligations. As a consequence, the Scottish Government has limited power to require mobile operators to extend their coverage beyond the current levels. The UK position on mobile coverage does not meet the needs of rural Scotland.

It is vital that the UK Government works with us to develop the specification for the next generation of mobile services—the 4G mobile network. Indeed, 4G has huge potential to overcome many of the current problems experienced by rural communities, whether families or businesses. We see that as crucial in getting next-generation broadband coverage to Scotland’s rural areas. We must not repeat the mistakes that we made with 3G roll-outs.

In the absence of any interventions, I shall touch on a couple more themes. The potential benefits to Scotland from the next round of digital innovation can be very substantial indeed. Digital advances are vital to the development of our world-leading creative industries, our life sciences, remote health care and distance learning. In my constituency of Moray we are piloting digital health care. If that is to work, it is vital that we have up-to-date infrastructure for broadband and mobile services. That is one example of how people’s health can benefit if we take advantage of 4G in the years ahead for rural Scotland.

I am very grateful to the cabinet secretary for taking an intervention at this stage. The example that he gave is a good one. Will he confirm that, although telecoms may be reserved in the main, there are many respects in which the roll-out of broadband can go together with elements of infrastructure for which the Scottish ministers are responsible and those opportunities should be taken?

I agree that those opportunities should be taken. That is one area where progress has been made. Many public sector buildings are now giving local communities access to their information and communication technology infrastructure. I agree that there is probably a lot more to do. The John McLelland review, which I mentioned earlier, referred specifically to the issue of how we use public sector resources to help citizens, not just the public sector.

Improving digital infrastructure, skills and participation will help us to build on all the successes and provide opportunities throughout Scotland for every community, whether remote, rural or whatever, to flourish. That has to be the aim of everyone in this Parliament.

A Scotland that is well connected digitally is a Scotland that is well connected economically and intellectually. It is also about attracting inward investment, allowing our businesses, particularly in rural areas, to become much more competitive by raising their productivity, and driving innovation and international trade.

A rural Scotland punching above its weight in contributing to our success brings better jobs and more vibrant communities that attract and retain young people and families. This debate goes right to the core of the issue of how we attract and retain young people and young families in jobs in rural Scotland. If we get the ICT infrastructure that we need in the coming years, that will be a huge step forward for Scotland and for the quality of life of people living here. I commend the motion to the Parliament.

I move,

That the Parliament welcomes the Scottish Government’s wish to see a rural Scotland that is outward looking and dynamic with a diverse economy and active communities and notes that key to that is the Scottish Government’s Digital Strategy, which wishes to see all businesses and people throughout Scotland, particularly in all rural areas, fully connected to the global economy through next generation broadband access and mobile phone coverage.

15:18

Due to the welcome delay to stages 2 and 3 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill, the first term of the Parliament is ending with an unexpected debate on rural connectivity.

Addressing digital exclusion is an increasingly important issue, so it is, in a way, a pity that the debate has been scheduled for an afternoon when many MSPs from the two largest parties perhaps have business elsewhere.

I decided to lodge an amendment to the motion not because I disagree with its aspirations, but because, quite frankly, I feel that it is very badly expressed—to the extent that it does not even mention the name of the Government’s digital strategy document. I was tempted to amend the part about welcoming the Government’s wish—which is a curious concept for a parliamentary motion—but who could disagree with a desire for a

“rural Scotland that is outward looking and dynamic with a diverse economy and active communities”?

So, I desisted from putting my red pen through that part of the motion.

However, I could not resist amending the rest of the motion because it is, frankly, waffle. The purpose of a strategy is to plan how to make things happen and not just to wish things to happen. I do not understand why ministers should be coy on the issue. The motion does not mention the name of the strategy document or its aspirations to deliver next-generation broadband to all by 2020. Even more strangely, the motion does not mention the £50 million commitment from the Scottish futures fund. I have not corrected that omission in my amendment, although I think that I have bigged up the Government enough in my amendment, as it is.

Most important, however, is that the motion and, to an extent, the strategy document do not seem to acknowledge adequately the pressing nature of the problem or the possible solutions. In that respect, the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s “Digital Scotland” report and Reform Scotland’s “Digital Power” report, both of which were published last year, make much stronger contributions. The strategy is high in aspiration and mentions many of the benefits that new technologies can bring, including efficiency savings for public services through simplified recruitment and e-procurement. Technology can also provide the public with better information from, access to and interaction with service providers. Telehealth care can help people remain for longer in their homes, for example, through health and fitness monitors that are connected to call centres to access medical assistance.

Technology can allow housebound people to maintain social contact. E-learning provides training opportunities for people who live in geographically remote communities and who would otherwise have difficulty attending colleges or universities. Telecommuting can enable people to work from home and to work flexible hours. That benefits workers in rural areas, reduces car travel to work and enables people who have caring responsibilities to re-enter or enter the workplace.

Businesses, too, can benefit from reductions in transaction costs, access to global markets, improved data collection and analysis, and better interaction with their customers. “Scotland’s Digital Future: A Strategy for Scotland” contains many examples of the benefits of digital access and several examples of good practice. For example, Innerleithen is to be congratulated on being one of the six winners, and the only one in Scotland, of BT’s race to infinity campaign, which will result in the town’s exchange being upgraded to 40 megabytes per second by early next year.

Highlands and Islands Enterprise is to be congratulated on its successful bid to broadband delivery UK to implement one of the four UK superfast broadband pilots. I issue those congratulations through slightly gritted teeth, as the south of Scotland alliance also bid for the project but was not successful. However, the Government is working with partners in the south of Scotland to deliver a local broadband plan, building on the pathfinder project. A wee problem with the pathfinder project is that, unfortunately although it has delivered for the public sector, small and medium-sized enterprises are unable to access it because of state-aid rules. The cabinet secretary mentioned the new initiative in Annan in my constituency.

The strategy is too vague. I welcome the ambition to make

“next generation broadband ... available to all by 2020”,

but even that is a bit unspecific. It does not indicate what speed is considered to be the next generation or what “available to all” means. BT and Virgin Media are rolling out upgrades that are capable of delivering between 40 megabytes per second and 100 megabytes per second to more than 50 per cent of the UK by next year and to 65 per cent by 2015. However, an estimated 40 per cent of the Scottish population will be excluded from the plans because their inclusion would not be commercially viable.

I apologise for making this intervention but, just so that people do not get too excited, those speeds are measured in megabits per second, which is one eighth of the speed to which the member referred.

I apologise, although I think that the proportions remain the same.

At present, the average connection speed in rural areas of the UK is 27 megabits per second. Rural communications could enjoy particular benefits through telehealth care, e-training and telecommuting. Members should just consider how disadvantaged those communities will be if their broadband delivery speeds are one fifteenth to one fortieth as fast as speeds in parts of the central belt and the rest of the UK. The issue is not just a rural one because some suburban communities outside cities have limited broadband access, and it is well known that access is low in areas of deprivation.

Page 34 of the strategy states:

“There could be a role for government in helping to raise demand for broadband services in areas that are not commercially viable”—

such as rural areas—

“to a level that will trigger industry investment.”

What about areas in which there are just too few people to provide that demand, or even where people might want it but cannot afford it? Of course, it is not only fibre optic cable broadband that is unavailable in much of Scotland. As the cabinet secretary said, 3G mobile coverage is also patchy.

The digital strategy recognises that rural areas will suffer if left to the market alone and that there is a need to develop a robust plan for the roll-out of next-generation broadband across Scotland. Its summary of actions indicates that a more detailed financial analysis of the cost of roll-out will be carried out by August this year and that, in October, working with industry, priority areas will be identified for future intervention. When he sums up, the minister might be able to advise us what will happen after that.

A lot of detailed work on cost and possible models of public sector involvement was published in 2010. One of the issues that were flagged up by Reform Scotland, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and BT as militating against investment in rural areas concerned business rates on optical fibre, which is currently rated by the kilometre. Clearly, that adds to the cost per consumer in more remote and less populated areas, so I wonder whether ministers have given any consideration to how that issue might be resolved.

There are many examples of good practice in other parts of the UK, such as in Wales, and in other parts of the world, including in New Zealand, Sweden and Finland. The Royal Society of Edinburgh’s document, “Digital Scotland”, estimates that an additional 2,500km of new cable is required to link all our communities. The cost for rural areas varies between £15 and £40 per kilometre, depending on whether existing trunking can be used or whether new trunking and cabling has to be laid alongside roads. Those costs are substantiated by the Welsh experience, and lead to an estimate of £100 million of initial capital—

Is the member aware that there are other ways of providing connectivity besides cabling, and that we need to consider methods involving wireless and satellite technology?

Indeed I am, and those aspects come into the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s calculations. At the moment, however, I am talking about the initial part, which is the rolling out of high-speed broadband.

About £10 million a year will be required for operations and maintenance. If connection charges are taken into consideration, the funding costs average about £25 million a year, over 15 years. That investment would bring a rural fibre optic connection to all communities that have populations of more than 2,000, and a copper or wireless connection to the smaller communities, which relates to Fiona McLeod’s point. The Royal Society of Edinburgh reckons that that could be implemented over five years, with investment reaching islands and remote communities in years 4 and 5. That means that, if we want it, we could have that in place by the end of this parliamentary term.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh suggests that the costs could be met by a number of methods. Businesses could be charged £25 a year, domestic users could be charged £125 a year or council tax or business rates could be increased by 1.25 per cent. Alternatively, it could be met through the efficiency savings that new-generation technologies could provide. The total budget of the health and wellbeing department is £11.8 billion this year, and the grant-aided expenditure of local government is £11.2 billion. An efficiency saving of slightly more than 0.2 per cent would fund the investment in new-generation technology across Scotland.

The Scottish Government has already committed £50 million to new-generation activity through the Scottish Futures Trust. That is halfway towards the initial capital cost. The idea that we are talking about is doable. If it is not done, Scotland will continue to fall behind. This matter must be addressed as a matter of priority.

Investment will provide better services for Scottish residents, efficiency savings for the public sector and global opportunities for rural businesses. The time for warm and woolly words is over. Let us get on with making this happen.

I move amendment S4M-00448.2, to leave out from “and notes” to end and insert:

“; welcomes the aspiration expressed in Scotland’s Digital Future: A Strategy for Scotland that next generation broadband will be available to all by 2020; notes however that market forces alone will not deliver next generation broadband and mobile phone access to much of rural and suburban Scotland and that without public sector involvement the digital gap will widen, and therefore urges the Scottish Government to develop its strategy for investment in the necessary infrastructure throughout Scotland as a matter of priority.”

15:28

As well as supporting my amendment, I intend to support the Labour amendment. In the spirit of end-of-term co-operation, we will also be voting for the Government’s motion, whether it is amended or not. It is important that we send out a strong signal that there is unity on the need to improve digital connectivity, in rural Scotland in particular.

I will begin by reminiscing about the period a few years ago when issues around mobile phones formed a significant part of an MSP’s mailbag. There were two main complaints: one was that someone was trying to build a mobile phone aerial near the person’s house and they wanted it stopped immediately; the other was that there were not nearly enough mobile phone aerials and connections were difficult.

The extension of the mobile phone system, especially into rural areas, and the opportunity to provide 3G in the near future and—ideally—4G in the longer term will go a long way towards solving many of the current problems with the limitations of wired systems. Experiments in Scotland have demonstrated that wireless systems can operate effectively in places where laying of cable is prohibitively expensive or geographically impossible.

I want to make it clear that mobile phones are an important element before I talk about the more significant element, which is the extension of broadband across a larger area of Scotland. No one underestimates the importance of a high-quality broadband service in the modern rural environment. Anyone who has moved to the country from a city only to find that the high-speed service that they previously enjoyed has been replaced with speeds that they have not experienced since the days of dial-up, and any farmer who is required to fill in forms and submit information online at speeds that mean that the exercise takes hours, will know exactly what I mean. For most people, high-speed broadband is as vital as mains electricity or indoor plumbing, so it is unfortunate that many parts of Scotland are operating in the previous century in that regard.

The United Kingdom Government has made it clear that the whole country should be able to share in the benefits of broadband and that it is determined to make that happen by the end of the parliamentary session. That is why it is investing more than £500 million to ensure that superfast broadband is available to everyone—“everyone” should be in inverted commas, because its meaning varies depending on the nature of the discussion, as members have said.

It is anticipated that the broadband industry will, on commercial grounds, provide the service to around two thirds of the country, but the Government thinks that it is essential that the whole country share in the benefits of high-speed access, so it has allocated £530 million to bring superfast broadband to the remaining third of UK homes and businesses, which would otherwise miss out. The Government’s ambition is to create the best broadband network in Europe by 2015, providing everyone in the UK with access to broadband speeds of at least 2 megabits—I found out the difference between bits and bytes today—with superfast broadband being available to 90 per cent of the population. However, I am the first to acknowledge that a 2 megabit service, although it is like gold dust for many rural customers, is well below the average that is achieved in our towns and cities.

In the UK Government, the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, Jeremy Hunt MP, is responsible for making that happen. He has said that the Government is committed to the implementation of superfast broadband across the UK and is in discussion with the Scottish Government on how it should go about that in Scotland. It is anticipated that the UK Government will announce specific provisions for Scotland this month or next month.

Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment, who opened the debate, gave the Scottish Government’s position at last week’s meeting of the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, when he said:

“to underpin economic development in the coming years we must rise to the challenge of connecting rural Scotland to the world through high-speed broadband”.—[Official Report, Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee, 22 June 2011; c 27.]

I agree that we must address the challenge.

In advance of the Scottish election this year, the Conservatives costed the objective at £135 million of investment over the parliamentary session to supplement the expected investment by the UK Government and the private sector. The aim was to focus expenditure in a way that would maximise economic and social return on investment in areas in which other investment was unlikely. The Scottish Government took a slightly different approach and said in its manifesto:

“We will ensure fair access to the digital revolution with a £50 million digital connectivity initiative, called the Next Generation Digital Fund, with the aim of accelerating the roll out of superfast broadband to rural Scotland”,

as part of the Government’s £250 million Scottish futures fund. Working with the enterprise agencies and local authorities, the Government intends to achieve that objective.

However, the programme’s objective is that next-generation broadband will be available to all by 2020—a significant challenge, which I freely acknowledge the market will find difficult to achieve. The difference in the level of funding between that which is proposed UK-wide and that which is necessary in Scotland is down to simple geographical spread and population sparsity. It is, therefore, inevitable that whatever we do and whatever we achieve, it will be more expensive to achieve that in Scotland than it is throughout the rest of the UK. That is why we must work together, rise to the challenge and ensure that, at the end of the process, we have a smooth movement to a situation in which rural broadband in Scotland is at least as good as—if not better than—it is in the rest of the UK.

I move amendment S4M-00448.1, to insert at end:

“; further welcomes the UK Government’s commitment to implement superfast broadband across the whole of the United Kingdom, and calls on Scottish and UK ministers to work together to achieve the best possible coverage for rural Scotland”.

15:35

It is interesting for me to take part in the debate, because my first speech in the Scottish Parliament, in 1999, was as a librarian talking about seamless access to information for all. Here we are, 12 years later, and the situation has not advanced greatly in that time.

Vicky Nash, the director of Ofcom Scotland, has said that, in terms of connectivity, Scotland is a country of contrasts. Only 37 per cent of Scots have cable access, whereas the figure is 48 per cent across the UK. That leads to problems with fixed broadband not-spots, as they are called, most of which are, as members know, in rural areas. Yet, the demand exists for access to broadband. Through the broadband reach project that the cabinet secretary has spoken about, we can look at the statistics and find that there is equal take-up in urban and rural areas when broadband is available. That goes against the UK trend.

There is still much to do. We have heard about the £50 million from the Scottish futures fund, but it is vital that Scotland get its requisite share of the £530 million in the UK Government’s Britain’s superfast broadband future strategy. I say “requisite share” because, as we have less connectivity, we should get more than our population share of that money. Other members have referred to the fact that figures for mobile coverage and connectivity are similarly problematic. I direct members to how Norway has managed to provide mobile connectivity through NetCom, which is a private company there.

For me, this is not a technical exercise; it is about a means and a method of delivering services. I will concentrate on telehealth, to which a few members have referred. Telehealth is telemedicine and telecare in their totality. Last year, the Health and Sport Committee produced a report entitled “Clinical portal and telehealth development in NHS Scotland”, in which the committee made it absolutely clear that telehealth is of great value to Scotland and especially to our remote communities. The changing demographics of Scotland, especially our growing elderly population and the growing populations in our rural and remote communities, mean that telehealth is one of the ways of providing health and care services to the many people who need them.

The Scottish centre for telehealth has reported on some groundbreaking projects—the cabinet secretary referred to one in Moray. I draw folks’ attention to the telestroke project that is centred in Orkney, the teledermatology project in the Western Isles and the telecardiology project in mid-Argyll. Those are all interesting projects that show the value of telehealth in looking after people where they live, but ensuring that they still have access to the highest level of consultants throughout the country. I have a friend in Skye who has a pacemaker in his heart that sends messages to Germany, which are sent back and analysed by his consultant in Aberdeen, who then tells his general practitioner in Portree how to treat him. That is the method and magic that we want to ensure everyone can access.

One of the most interesting ways that we can move on telehealth is towards the care of long-term conditions and the remote monitoring of conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension. That will enable folk to remain in their communities while still being monitored and referred, as appropriate, to their local general practitioner.

Paragraph 78 of the Health and Sport Committee’s report states:

“A key piece of infrastructural development necessary to support such telehealth services is the availability of high-speed broadband internet access. As with many other aspects of the public services, broadband access is especially important in remote and rural areas.”

It is timely that we are having this debate to ensure that we get connectivity throughout all our rural and remote communities, not only for the sake of it but to ensure that we can get high-quality public services to everyone in Scotland who needs them.

We have the vision for, and evidence of, what connectivity can deliver for our communities. Today I am speaking specifically about health, but we need that infrastructure generally. I hope that members on all sides of the chamber can work on that and agree to support the Scottish Government in its representations to the UK to ensure that we receive the necessary funding to get that connectivity.

15:41

I welcome this debate, which is of crucial significance to many of my constituents who would dearly love to have access to broadband. There are particular issues with regard to connectivity in rural areas.

Peter Peacock, in his speech to Parliament last year, welcomed the “Digital Britain” report’s recognition that private markets would not provide broadband to large parts of the UK. He spent a long time fighting for recognition of the need for broadband in our rural areas, and I am happy to continue that work. I am pleased that the issue appears to have won recognition among all the parties, and that members are aware of the significance of such infrastructure and the need for access.

In rural areas, connectivity will allow us to break down geographical barriers and save costs in service delivery. It can boost our economy by encouraging businesses in, and it can improve the competitiveness of our indigenous businesses. It can also allow access to jobs through teleworking, on which companies such as BT have led the charge, with many of their employees working from home.

Connectivity is important for the delivery of education. The University of the Highlands and Islands has been a leader in online education, but we are only scratching the surface in that regard. Due to numbers, rural schools do not have the same depth of curriculum choice as urban schools do. If we co-ordinated timetables across a number of schools, that would allow pupils more choice because they could access classes in other schools through information technology. They would have access to education without having to travel large distances.

Fiona McLeod talked about telehealth, which hardly needs an introduction. Connectivity can deliver health benefits close to home in rural areas at a fraction of the cost, and that is just a flavour of the benefits that it can provide. However, the Government’s targets for Scotland lack ambition. Private markets will not provide broadband to rural Scotland without Government intervention, so the Government’s offer to facilitate collaboration is not enough, and nor is the target that it sets out in the report “A Digital Ambition for Scotland” of getting superfast broadband to all by 2020. As Elaine Murray said in her opening remarks, the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s “Digital Scotland” report is far more ambitious and suggests that it would be possible to provide that access by 2015.

We must look at what other countries are doing. Finland has made access to broadband a legal right—95 per cent of its population already have access—but it is legislating to ensure that the hard-to-reach areas are not left behind. It has vowed to have everyone connected to at least 100 megabits by 2015.

Rhoda Grant seems to connect the Scottish Government’s digital strategy to the fact that other small countries in Europe are able to legislate on targets. Does she accept that we cannot, in our digital strategy for Scotland, commit to legislate, as unfortunately that power lies with Westminster and not yet with this Parliament?

I am aware that the power lies with Westminster, but I would like the ambition of this Parliament and this Government to be for us to have what other countries have promised and developed. France’s courts have declared that access is a human right, and the United Nations shares that view. We need to be more ambitious. We need to ensure that, within our powers, which are many, we have a target that is ambitious for Scotland.

There are challenges, in that the technology moves on quickly. The Government has invested in solutions—connected communities and Avanti are two—but they are not a panacea because the technology keeps moving on. I am delighted that HIE has received funding from broadband delivery UK to pilot delivery of superfast broadband in rural areas. That is now out to tender.

It is clear to me that, in order to bring connectivity to rural areas, we require a mix of technologies. Communities have often taken matters into their own hands—examples include the Tegola project in Skye and the Rutland project in Leicestershire—but Government sometimes hampers those efforts. The Tegola trial in Knoydart, which was capable of delivering speeds of 100 megabits, was hampered and halted by bureaucracy. Highland Council refused to allow access to its pathfinder network until its security and contractual concerns could be satisfied. That is bureaucracy standing in the way of progress.

Last week, I received an e-mail from a constituent saying that he was reconsidering a business move to the Western Isles due to the lack of broadband service. The Tolsta community council in Lewis secured some LEADER funding back in December to provide two broadband relay sites to enable an extension of connected communities. Fortunately, my constituent is now going ahead with the move after we advised him of that. That example highlights the fact that communities have the will to find solutions. The LEADER funding is welcome, but we need more of it.

Improvements to the mobile networks are also essential. Mobile telephone company 3 has four 3G masts in the Western Isles and it has told us that it is keen to expand services in the area. It believes that there is a demand for that, and so do I. However, such expansion depends wholly on its ability to acquire low-frequency spectrum in next year’s mobile spectrum auction. I sincerely hope that Ofcom follows through on the proposal to stimulate competition in the mobile markets. The recent consultation on opening up mobile spectrum is most welcome.

I welcome the Scottish Government’s commitment to broadband, but it needs to do more. It needs to use all the resources that are available to it. This is probably the most important infrastructure development that we will have in the current decade. I will meet Scottish and Southern Energy in the next few days to discuss how spare capacity in the fibre optic cable that will run on the Beauly to Denny line can be used to improve connectivity. The SNP stated in its manifesto that it would provide £50 million from the Scottish futures fund. That is a start, but more will be needed.

Private industry alone will not sort it out. If sufficient public funding is in place, the industry will invest. BT has given us a briefing on its investments, but we also need the Government to become involved. It needs to lever in more investment than it proposes at present. That should be a priority for the new borrowing powers, given that the investment can create savings to the public purse. Failure to act will leave our rural communities at a great disadvantage both socially and economically.

I call Paul Wheelhouse, to be followed by George Adam. We have a little time in hand, so there is time for interventions.

15:48

I said in my maiden speech that one of the strengths of the Scottish Government’s economic strategy is that it seeks to deliver economic growth while enshrining the principle of cohesion between regions and not leaving regions behind. That was reflected in the Government’s publication of “Our Rural Future”, and indeed the SNP election manifesto made clear the desire to close the gap between rural and urban Scotland.

Before the SNP came into office in 2007, the south of Scotland alliance was formed between key partners in Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders. The introduction to its “South of Scotland Competitiveness Strategy 2007-13” states:

“We have become accustomed to referring to ourselves in the South of Scotland as the ‘forgotten’ or ‘hidden’ part of Scotland.”

It is true that the region had largely been ignored. Although I am delighted that much progress has been made since 2007, there is still much to do. The cabinet secretary recognised that in his speech.

In the introduction to the competitiveness strategy, the alliance identified a number of key points in its approach to regional competitiveness. The document states on page 6 that the rural agenda is about

“Diversifying and growing the rural economy in its own right through focusing on growth as opposed to lifestyle businesses, and adding value to the primary assets, services and goods produced in our rural areas by: increasing focus and support on growth and economically significant companies in rural areas ... developing a complementary rural proposition to attract mobile investment”.

It will be key for us to develop a truly attractive proposition and address the deficiencies in rural broadband.

As the competitiveness strategy indicated, Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders sit in an area between five key cities: Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Carlisle. That is an economic opportunity, but we are at a competitive disadvantage because we do not have a 21st century infrastructure.

Priority 6 of the strategy, which refers to building

“a ... high quality sustainable place to live, work and visit,”

recognises that there must be a focus on infrastructure such as broadband and the role that it can play in making market towns in the region more vibrant and dynamic, and that there must be support for the development of quality business locations that can compete on a level playing field with urban Scotland. It is important for areas such as the south of Scotland to deliver that kind of strategy and to focus on developing our key market towns. That should be regarded as complementing investment in the physical transport structure, which we have already debated in the current parliamentary session, and the two aspects should work together.

The Government report “Scotland’s Digital Future: A Strategy for Scotland” was published in March. On rural economic growth, it stated:

“We recognise that good broadband connectivity is an enabler of economic growth in rural areas. However, we are aware that parts of rural Scotland are not able to exploit or benefit fully from digital opportunities.”

I welcome the cabinet secretary’s comments about recognising the importance of that issue. It is worth reminding people that there has been investment in the pathfinder project to the tune of £90 million, which has provided connectivity to more than 1,200 public sector sites—including schools, council offices and libraries—in seven local authority areas, including the Scottish Borders and Dumfries and Galloway.

The primary objective of the pathfinder project was to deliver high-quality, scalable broadband in order to improve significantly connectivity for Scotland’s most rural regions. As Elaine Murray acknowledged, the project has delivered high-quality bandwidth for public sector sites. However, I share her concern and perhaps criticism that to date it has not benefited the private sector, in particular the business community.

In that regard, there is the example of a business in Eyemouth; I will not name it, because I have not sought permission to do so. The business has a number of clients across Scotland and provides back-office call centre data storage for growing businesses. However, its growth is constrained because it can get only limited broadband speeds in Eyemouth. It has expressed its frustration that it has not been possible so far to make greater use of the pathfinder investment to allow the private sector access to the spare capacity that is not currently used.

I appreciate that procurement, contractual and state-aid issues intervene here and that it is not possible at this time to exploit that opportunity. However, the Scottish Government has announced that it will explore how the pathfinder south network may be utilised for the wider benefit of the community, which will certainly be of considerable value. I welcome the investment in Annan, which is in Elaine Murray’s constituency, of £0.25 million to assess what can be done there. Of course, the Scottish digital futures fund will supplement money from the United Kingdom Government to develop the potential of rural broadband in the south of Scotland.

The issue is rebalancing rural and urban economic growth in Scotland and ensuring that some of our market towns, such as Hawick, Dumfries and Kelso, can compete on a level playing field with urban Scotland. I hope that there will be better utilisation of business parks in such areas in the future, so that we will hear not just a succession of good news stories about investments in Glasgow and the central belt, but about one or two major investments in areas in the south of Scotland.

15:54

As many members know, I am the member for Paisley, so it may seem unusual that I am in speaking in the debate, given that Paisley does not have many rural areas. I have found out to my cost this week that our connectivity in Renfrewshire is very good—I might wish that it had gone down at one point last week, but in the end that is not what happened.

A large part of Renfrewshire is rural and it has problems similar to those in the constituencies that other members have discussed. My colleague Derek Mackay represents that part of Renfrewshire. There are a few not-spots, as Fiona McLeod described them, in Renfrewshire, in 3G or within the broadband network. When going cross country from west to east in the train, it is noticeable that the 3G signal is patchy all the way; I have experienced that difficulty. In my case that might be a good thing, but it is a problem if we cannot even have such connectivity in the central belt of Scotland on the main rail connection between our two major cities.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke about Scottish broadcasting and the Scottish digital network. I spoke of a woman called Sandra Webster, who has two autistic sons and is a carer. To me, she is a hero, because she spends all her time with her children, trying to ensure that they have a quality of life. She is lucky in that, because she lives somewhere such as Paisley, through social networking she can contact many of her friends and fellow carers, talk about things and have company when she goes home at night, the door gets locked and the boys get put to bed. It is not only in urban Scotland that such situations exist. The cabinet secretary is correct to say that it is important that we have social integration when it comes to broadband.

As I have said, I am quite lucky now. Back in the days when we had dial-up, I remember trying to download the Scotland Act 1998 when it was published. I left it overnight but eventually gave up and went to the library to read the act, because downloading it was next to impossible. Access to broadband is vital for business, because we must ensure that the whole of Scotland is competitive and that we can showcase our goods and wares to the rest of the world. If we get left behind on connectivity, in rural Scotland or in urban Scotland, we will get left behind. We cannot afford to let that happen.

I am pleased with the Scottish Government’s national broadband plan. The Scottish Government is working with Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and local authorities to develop a strategic national broadband plan to ensure the roll-out of the next generation of broadband in all parts of Scotland. That is vital when we are dealing with issues for businesses.

Earlier today, I went to an STV breakfast at which representatives from STV talked about the multiplatform way in which they deliver news and everything throughout Scotland. They highlighted that it is important for us to ensure that everyone in our communities will be able to access such services in the future. It might be an idea for us to look at that, so that the whole of Scotland can have such provision.

It is important that we continue actively to seek further powers. We in this Parliament are the individuals who must ensure that broadband connectivity can be supplied for the people in our communities, because companies throughout the world will not be interested in various parts of rural Scotland. We must ensure that they want to talk about it and that we have the power to deliver, so more powers on the issue would be welcome.

I agree with the Scottish Government’s realistic commitment to provide broadband for all our rural communities. In order for Scotland to compete on the international stage, we must ensure that the whole of our nation has access to broadband and that our nation can engage with the rest of the world and be competitive.

15:59

The Liberal Democrats will support the Government’s motion, but we also approve of Elaine Murray’s amendment, which strengthens the motion. Of course, we will also support Alex Johnstone’s amendment.

In the 21st century, digital connectivity will prove to be as vital to businesses and communities as transport connectivity was in the previous century. Like many, I live in a rural area, so I understand as well as anyone how vital it is that we improve connectivity throughout Scotland.

One of the Government’s biggest challenges throughout the parliamentary session will be to improve rural Scotland’s digital infrastructure by expanding opportunities for people in rural communities to enjoy the benefits of superfast broadband and by working with Ofcom and mobile network operators to improve mobile phone coverage dramatically and tackle what are called not-spots. I welcome the consideration that the Government appears to be giving the issue.

According to the Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland, one in 10 of its members still does not use the internet for work purposes—the equivalent figure in London is just one in 20. Broadband uptake by Scottish households stood at just 61 per cent last year, which—unfortunately—led Ofcom to describe Scotland as the least-connected nation in the UK. That is why the coalition Government in Westminster must be congratulated on including the Highlands and Islands as one of the four pilot areas that will experience superfast broadband. I hope that the Scottish Government will follow suit.

Businesses in Scotland are at a clear disadvantage internationally to our competitors in Germany, Sweden and the United States of America, and our rural businesses are also at a disadvantage to their urban competitors nationally. The Scottish Chambers of Commerce said earlier this year that

“For rural areas, the immediate priority is to extend the reach of broadband.”

The reasons for doing so are obvious. More and more business is conducted online, and rural businesses are increasingly unable to tap into what could be a lucrative revenue stream for them. We recognised that in our manifesto, in which we made a commitment to £250 million of investment to deliver superfast broadband to all parts of Scotland.

The availability of high-speed broadband is key to developing telehealth services, which Fiona McLeod mentioned. Expanding broadband coverage into rural areas will be instrumental to widening the scope of telemedicine and e-health services. For people who live in remote and rural communities—particularly those who are chronically ill—a trip to a health practice can be a considerable undertaking. The advent of telehealth solutions has allowed patients to be cared for locally. Telehealth services can empower those with long-term conditions and provide confidence to patients who are enabled to self-manage their condition. We want Scotland to be the first country to establish a national-scale telehealth service. The Government should look to mainstream the use of telehealth in delivering patient care.

It is worth highlighting how improved mobile phone coverage in rural areas can benefit public safety. I know from discussions with the Tweed Valley Mountain Rescue Team that, because of poor mobile coverage, pagers have to be used to call out members of that team to an emergency. Through the team’s experience, it believes that network coverage in Iceland’s hills is superior to what can be expected in elevated positions in Scotland. Mobile phones can prove instrumental in a rescue because of the ability to locate someone who is stranded by using so-called cell triangulation. That reduces the risk to searchers and saves countless precious hours.

The Government’s manifesto speaks of identifying

“barriers to increased mobile coverage”,

but the reason for the barriers is fairly clear—it is cost. I have argued that we should encourage widening the scope of operator partnerships, to spread the cost of building and maintaining new masts in remote and rural locations that have inadequate coverage. It is a sad fact that building a mast in the Highlands or in some parts of the south of Scotland costs substantially more than building one in Edinburgh does. Given that, why not encourage all operators to share the burden of building and maintaining rural masts?

The economic case for improving broadband and mobile coverage is clear. The social reasons for improving rural Scotland’s digital infrastructure are no less compelling. To the average 16 to 24-year-old, the internet has become an essential part of daily life. To those with broadband and favourable 3G mobile coverage, accessing websites presents no problems, but those in rural communities often encounter major difficulty with that.

Scottish Government social research that was published last year revealed that, although rural areas have experienced net migration in every age demographic in the past three years, accessible and remote rural areas have—unfortunately—experienced a net loss in 16 to 24-year-olds. From 2005-06 right up to 2008, the loss in the percentage of the 16 to 24-year-old population in remote rural areas was slightly greater than 5 per cent. The research also revealed that one of the push factors often highlighted by young migrants was social detachment. Young people are hampered in their attempts to access the internet, such as Facebook—as George Adam knows—and to utilise their mobile phones like their friends and relatives in more urban areas do. The Scottish Government’s research suggested that policy interventions were required to minimise the associated risks of rural migration and improve the digital infrastructure. That is one way to tackle that feeling of detachment and end that drain of young people from our rural communities.

16:05

I am pleased to take part in the debate as I have been a long-time campaigner in the Highlands and Islands for a proper broadband service to enable the needs of many communities to be met. We need to discuss how to deliver and what to deliver, and what partners to seek to enable us to do that.

When I was a Highlands and Islands member, I took a survey in the south of Orkney, around Invergordon and up in the north-west of Sutherland. I had a phenomenal response to the consultation in the north-west of Sutherland area—postcode IV27. Nearly a third of households responded, nearly half of which had used broadband for the purpose of both business and pleasure. They were among the most disadvantaged in the whole of the United Kingdom.

I am pleased that HIE won the competition to start to roll out next-generation broadband. In the Highlands and Islands project, next- generation broadband and points of presence should be made available to at least two towns in each local authority area by 2013. By 2014, there should be next generation broadband and points of presence in 50 towns and villages. By 2015, those 50 towns and exchange activate communities should be covered to within a 20km radius with about 2 megabits per second. By 2020, there should hopefully be next- generation broadband for all.

The £10 million that HIE won will not cover that. In fact, the partnerships may have to release £190 million more to be able to achieve some of those targets. What is the problem? We know that BT has 1,070 telephone exchanges in the country, which, with the exception of 21 exchanges in the Western Isles, offer wireless broadband services. However, 83 of the very small exchanges—many of them in the constituency that I represent—offer only a half a megabit service at present.

Since other exchanges can offer up to 8 megabits a second, we really need to ask whether the way in which the services for broadband are funded by consumers is fair. I have tackled BT about that matter. The situation is unfair on people who are getting half a megabit, because they have to pay the same as people who can get up to 8 megabits. BT needs to be held to account for taking people’s money under false pretences. British Telecom? It is only a bit of Britain, because a large part of the north has a very poor service indeed. Members should realise the urgency of what I have said. That urgency is recognised by our development agency, which realises that it has a huge job to do.

One woman told me, about her receipt of any kind of service, “I live at the end of a very thin copper wire.” That is a poignant little statement, but it is the experience of many people at the moment. We have to consider the partnerships that were formed in places such as Finland, which was mentioned earlier, in which local communities used their assets to roll out their own fibre in the areas beyond the points of presence that I mentioned earlier.

On the island of Eigg, it is possible to run electricity cables on the surface between the 30 or so houses because it is a small island with very little transport. We must find ways for people to lay their own cable if at all possible. The cable cannot be put underground that easily because, in many of the communities that I am talking about, there are no waste water or sewerage systems as there are in Dundee.

Why do we need to do that? The village in which I live is relatively near an exchange, and we can just about pick up the BBC iPlayer. That is the situation with the current broadband. We are saying that that ought to be not a gold standard, but a basic standard. It has to be delivered by landline because the satellite versions are too intermittent. We must know whether the money to deliver that kind of broadband will be made available in the schemes that have been mentioned, so we have to interrogate those schemes carefully to find out exactly what they will deliver. I suggest to members of all parties that we must find a way of asking the bodies that are bidding for the contracts that are being let in the period leading up to 2012 whether they will deliver that kind of service, or whether, as with the pathfinder, some of the services will be delivered by satellite because some places do not have proper telephone services.

We have to look to BT to find more money for the process because, for a long time, it has been taking money from people who are not getting the service that BT advertises. We also have to find other partners to do that.

As we look at the Government’s proposed community empowerment and renewal bill, I suggest that we also look at communities that have assets such as benefits from wind farms to see whether they might act as partners with others to create the access to broadband that we know they deserve and require. Many people want to expand businesses in my area, so it seems to me that if we could get partnerships in place, it would be possible to turn the £10 million in the competition into the £200 million that we actually need.

16:12

I was intrigued by the minister’s choice of verb in the motion. Packed with enthusiasm, drive and commitment to this important issue, the minister merely wishes rural Scotland to have good broadband connections. It reminds me of Michael Russell’s assertion at the Education and Culture Committee this week:

“it would be useful to apply in the colleges the policy of no compulsory redundancies.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 28 June 2011; c 24.]

Today, at First Minister’s question time, the First Minister said that his Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning gives colleges “advice”. That is very good of him, but it is not good enough to match his manifesto commitments to college staff.

The Government was not elected to wish, to advise or to think things useful; it was elected to make things happen. At what point will the minister stop wishing for better connectivity? There is no genie here to make those wishes come true. Only policy with commitment to pass legislation and make suitable investment and a sound framework will deliver the Government’s commitments on connecting rural Scotland to broadband.

Wishes are not good enough because connection to the internet can no longer be a luxury for the rich. Such are its advantages today that people who do not have good connection become more financially excluded. PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimated that getting 4 million socially deprived people across the UK on to broadband would contribute £22 billion to the UK economy through increased education and employment.

We can see it in the college sector as well. Many of the recent cuts in colleges have seen a move towards delivering courses through ICT and distance learning. However, the change in capital spending rules that means that ICT can no longer be purchased from the capital budget but must come from the revenue budget, which has been cut by 10.4 per cent by this Government, means that reliance on ICT is more of a challenge. Poor connectivity exacerbates that challenge, and distance learning is a vital education service. Of course, in rural areas with a lack of access, it is much more important.

In everyday life, the best deals for insurance, travel, clothes, household items and books are most regularly now found online. The average family, which includes rural families throughout the country, misses out on savings of £560 a year if it does not use the internet. It was only last week that I discovered that I could save £200 on my car insurance online—the insurers have clearly not seen me drive. Such savings should be available to all, especially at a time when families are feeling the pressure of increased utility bills, the price of fuel—which is more of a problem for people in rural communities—and the increased price of food.

I understand why the focus of the Government’s policy is to rely on private sector investment in financially constrained times—there is clearly a financial incentive for the private companies to deliver broadband services—but there must be back-up. Patchy service delivery is not limited to rural communities. In my home city of Dundee, the fibrecity project has collapsed. More than one Dundee household in three was said to have signed up for the network and work was initially expected to start in summer 2009 and be completed within two years. However, work started only last summer and, within weeks, Fibrecity Holdings temporarily halted it, 52 staff lost their jobs and nothing has happened since to put the cables in for the network.

The UK Government has committed only £830 million of public funding to superfast broadband until 2017. We can compare that with much greater sums in other advanced nations. For example, the French Government has already spent £1.7 billion and has committed another £570 million per year until 2025. With the cost estimate for deploying fibre networks to every UK household ranging from £5 billion to £28 billion, the UK Government’s commitment looks woefully inadequate.

The Scottish National Party announced a £50 million investment for the Scottish futures fund that aims to deliver superfast broadband in rural areas. However, we have only to look at Cornwall—which has a population 10 times smaller and a geographical area 20 times smaller than Scotland and where £132 million has been invested in high-speed broadband—to see that the £50 million investment by the Scottish Government falls far short of what is needed.

The Government needs to stop wishing and bring all the players together to make things happen.

16:18

I am pleased to participate in this debate, although other members have already covered much of what I might have wanted to say.

That said, it is appropriate to bring to the Parliament the perspective of one of my constituents, Gerry Frew from Lendalfoot. Gerry wrote to me shortly after the election as follows:

“Please let me advise you of my current problem with broadband connections. I have recently been in consultation with my provider Talk Talk at a very high level about the huge bill that I am paying annually to them for broadband and phone—approximately £500. This is very difficult for an old age pensioner like me and is mainly due to the fact that BT have not upgraded the Lendalfoot exchange which holds approximately 120 lines (only those with about 1000 lines appear to have been upgraded).

My information from Talk Talk is that it will likely never be upgraded although locals making enquiries over several years were led to believe if they waited it would be done by April 2011.

I am asking please that you do all you can to put pressure on BT to do something for us. Particularly after all the hype that we have heard about bringing rural customers into line with people in towns and cities of our nation.

We are not only being discriminated against by receiving an inferior service but are having to pay inflated prices to our providers compared to that which is available to the lucky man. Just take a look at the many adverts on TV for phone and broadband packages. My package would be reduced by 50 per cent! Just another case of how those living in a rural area like ours have to pay so much more than town dwellers.”

Naturally enough, I followed up Mr Frew’s case with BT. The gist of its reply was that although BT is investing £2.5 billion in the roll-out of superfast broadband, it will only be economically viable for it to reach two thirds of the UK population by 2015. The remaining third—among whom Scottish customers will be disproportionately represented, given our greater rurality and sparsity of population—will benefit from high broadband speeds only through partnership working between the public and private sectors.

I recognise that the UK and Scottish Governments appreciate the need for intervention support. I would be interested to hear from the minister whether the Scottish Government has discussed the possibility of a bid for a whole-Scotland project to Broadband Delivery UK, which, I understand, has up to £830 million to distribute by 2017. The Highland pathfinder is welcome, but many of us represent rural constituencies outwith the Highlands or, indeed, the south of Scotland alliance area, so might it not be a good idea for the Scottish Government to use the £50 million from the futures fund to help to put together a joint financial package to fund a big-bang project?

I understand that the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment is to meet his UK counterpart in the near future to discuss the development of digital infrastructure, and I know from experience that Mr Neil can be extremely plausible and persuasive in promoting the Scottish case—he defines a fair share for Scotland as being what he asks for. I understand that BT would regard a pan-Scotland project as an ideal scenario. Such a project would bring economies of scale and would ensure future proofing and consistency of technologies.

There is also the prospect of tapping into European funding. Ms Marra mentioned the Cornwall experience, but I think that she was being a little disingenuous when she suggested that Cornwall was putting £130 million into high-speed broadband because, of that £130 million, £53.5 million came from the European regional development fund. That was combined with a further investment of £78.5 million from BT, which was won on a competitive tender basis. That investment will result in 10,000 businesses in Cornwall being connected to superfast broadband; indeed, 80 to 90 per cent of businesses and homes in Cornwall will be connected by 2014.

I would be grateful if the minister could give an indication of whether the Scottish Government would be prepared to consider a more radical approach, along the lines that I have outlined, to address the issue of rural connectivity.

16:23

The debate is about connectivity, not just broadband. For many people, their connection comes from the telephone. It seems incredible that it was only in 1985 that the first mobile telephone call was made, by Vodafone, on a device that was probably the same size as the average lady’s handbag—we know how big they can be these days. Since then, mass ownership has made much smaller handsets more commercially available, and the mobile phone is now ubiquitous. In fact, the take-up of mobiles is now greater than that of fixed-line phones. That is especially the case in Scotland, which has the largest proportion of mobile-only households in the UK. Ofcom’s research shows that mobile-only households are more likely to be poor—26 per cent of DE households are entirely dependent on mobiles, compared with only 9 per cent of ABC1 homes.

I want to consider the old-fashioned technology that we now call 2G, which provides a basic voice and text service and has been around since the days when mobiles looked like bricks. It is also the technology that many poor families depend on. However, our coverage is still antediluvian. In Scotland, there is 2G coverage in 64 per cent of our geographical area, whereas that figure is 91 per cent in the rest of the UK. We are living in an age of digital and geographic inequality.

Alex Johnstone earlier compared broadband to vital services such as electricity and plumbing. If someone does not have access to a phone, it is like not having access to healthcare and education. As was mentioned earlier, we are finding that a great number of rural areas suffer from the digital black holes called not-spots, where people cannot access mobile services. Another Ofcom report, from last November, blamed commercial factors for the existence of those not-spots in rural areas and said that they seem likely to persist, to some degree. The impact of not-spots ranges from inconvenience, such as a postponed or missed call, to personal or business cost implications. Ofcom’s report included case studies, one of which struck me as indicating the potentially life-threatening implications of not-spots. It involved the case of a farmer who died in the hills during snowy weather, whose body lay for two days without being located. That happened in an area where there was no mobile phone coverage. Another lady in Scotland who drove a rural school bus pointed out that she had no way of dealing with any problems that might arise during her long journey, which involved dropping off lots of children in various locations.

For a lot of operators, 2G coverage is not a priority, as they are moving into more lucrative areas. However, 3G coverage is even worse than 2G coverage. In Scotland, we have 41 per cent 3G coverage, compared with 76 per cent across the UK. It is surely no coincidence that the figure for the rest of the UK is lowered by poor coverage in devolved areas, a point that was repeatedly made in the Ofcom report on UK connectivity that was published last November. There might just be a connection between our lack of connection and our lack of political control. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have the poorest service. We are entirely in London’s hands on this matter. We depend on politicians there to license telecom operators properly, to regulate them and to place obligations on mobile operators to deliver specified levels of coverage.

As the poor 2G and 3G coverage demonstrates, the record of London in meeting the needs of Scottish rural areas is extremely poor. For example, in 2000, when 3G licences were distributed, the UK Government determined that operators were required to achieve 80 per cent coverage of the UK as a whole, increasing to 90 per cent by 2013. At the time of that licence consultation, the Scottish Government—a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition—quite rightly pressed the UK Labour Government to specify coverage on a regional basis, and said that there should be 90 per cent coverage per region. However, the Scottish Government was rebuffed by the London Government and it continues to be rebuffed.

Richard Lochhead said that 4G, which will be auctioned in the near future, will help to solve some of the problems of the past with 2G and 3G connection. Again, however, we can only make representations that no one—not the Government nor Ofcom—is obliged to heed.

It seems to me that this is all a matter of where power lies. One of the problems is that the UK Government has decided to focus on competition for the next 4G spectrum auction. However, the case that the Scottish Government has made is that, for much of rural Scotland, unbridled competition is not the way forward. There could be three companies competing in one area while another area gets nothing. Members have commented on the inadequacy of the private sector in providing broadband and mobile phone service coverage in Scotland. In many ways the situation is similar to the situation in the Victorian period, when utilities such as gas and water were being put in and the work was entirely in the hands of private enterprise. Competing companies were digging up roads and there was no strategic overview, so in places such as Glasgow and Birmingham the city councils stepped in to ensure that provision would be closer to being universal.

If we want a universal system, we need control of telecoms in Scotland. If that does not happen, we will not be a hot spot and we will continue to have far too many not-spots.

We move to closing speeches. Alex Fergusson has around seven minutes.

16:30

I will see what I can do for you, Presiding Officer.

I am delighted to wind up the debate on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives, but I must begin by agreeing, to a large extent, with Elaine Murray and Jenny Marra on the wording of the motion. I do so with considerable relief. A little over 12 years ago, as a new and somewhat naive politician I lodged the first non-Executive motion in the Scottish Parliament, which eventually resulted in the establishment of time for reflection. It was described at the time by no less a figure than the late Donald Dewar, our first First Minister, as quite possibly the worst-worded motion that it had ever been his misfortune to encounter—or words to that effect.

Ever since then, I have proudly held on to the title of lodger of the worst-worded motion of all time. However, I think I know when I am beat, and in the spirit of pre-recess generosity that Alex Johnstone mentioned I am prepared to concede my title to the cabinet secretary whose name is attached to the motion that is before us today. In the motion we are asked to welcome a wish and to note that key to that wish is a strategy that wishes something else, particularly in terms of rural wishes. There are so many wishes in the motion that I am afraid that I must describe it as somewhat wishy-washy. To be frank, I wish that it had been better worded.

Despite the quality of the motion, the subject of debate is important for all members, and particularly for members who represent rural constituencies, as so many members pointed out in excellent speeches. We are happily talking about providing next-generation technology and superfast broadband across the nation, but—like, I am sure, many members—I have constituents who are still marvelling at the wonders of dial-up technology. Indeed, I had an e-mail only last week from a constituent who runs a bed and breakfast in a remote part of Galloway, whose provider had contacted him to inform him that his dial-up service, which is the only service that is available to him, is about to be discontinued because there is no longer a demand for it. He will be left with nothing, while we comfortably talk about the massive improvements that are to come.

It is to be hoped—dare I say “wished”?—that massive improvements are to come, and soon, because I do not think that it is overstating the case to say that the regeneration of the rural economy largely depends on such improvements. I was impressed by what Elaine Murray said about how we can go about securing them and by Rob Gibson’s more cautionary approach in pointing to some of the challenges in that regard.

I am sure that we all agree that there is a wealth of entrepreneurial talent and spirit abroad in rural Scotland and that constituencies such as mine, Galloway and West Dumfries, offer the finest workplaces for small and micro-sized enterprises. However, without a level of connectivity that at least challenges if not equals connectivity in our urban areas, rural entrepreneurs and wealth creators have to start out at a huge competitive disadvantage. If we want to walk the talk of releasing people’s full potential, we simply have to give them the connectivity that will allow that to happen.

On mobile phone coverage, the admirable community of the Isle of Whithorn in Wigtownshire in my constituency established one of the earliest first responder units in the south of Scotland. The unit’s wonderful volunteers turn out whenever they are called on to do so by the Scottish Ambulance Service, and it is no exaggeration to say that each time that they are called out they could be saving a life. The call-out on which they depend comes by way of a Vodafone pager, for which the signal in the area is, as with all other networks, desperately patchy. At a nearby caravan site, which is hugely popular in summer, there is no signal at all. Lives are potentially put at risk because of that. Vodafone is deaf to appeals to put up a mast, simply on the grounds of cost.

Despite my considerable sympathy with George Adam’s occasional desire to be out of range of any signal whatever, I can think of no better example of why we need mobile coverage for the whole of this country, not just the 90 per cent of it to which the cabinet secretary referred. I am sure that that will come, but it simply cannot come fast enough for the Isle of Whithorn’s first responder unit.

This has quite rightly been a largely consensual debate—that is understandable—and I am delighted that the south of Scotland has been mentioned as often as it has. As a south of Scotland member, I often feel that debates such as this are very effectively hijacked by the Highlands and Islands members, but that is not the case this time. Others have mentioned other parts of Scotland, too: this a national issue—there is no doubt about it.

Although the debate has quite rightly been consensual, I want to address one point that the cabinet secretary made in his opening speech. He stated—I think I have got this right—that it is important for the UK Government to work with us. I gently suggest that the Scottish Government must also ensure that it works with the UK Government, as our amendment suggests. I hope that the process will become a two-way process—a process of partnership, which surely has to be the right way forward, rather than a process that carries the danger of the Scottish Government sitting back, waiting to be included and then complaining bitterly if it is not. I have no doubt that the UK will not allow that to happen. I hope that the Scottish Government will be proactive in the process and not just reactive. I believe that that is the way forward. I hope that it is the way forward for a better Scotland.

16:36

I think that there is some agreement that the motion does not go far enough, although, as ministers will have picked up, there is no hostility to the proposals on the table; the concern is more about seeing them implemented. The Government’s strategy is important, but so are the funding, action and partnership working to deliver it.

As many members have said, the public investment is crucial. There is in fact complete unanimity in the chamber about that, which is pretty rare. I heard the Conservatives argue for public sector investment because the private sector cannot deliver on its own. Let us capture that moment, celebrate it and turn it to our advantage.

We need sufficient investment and Government action to make it happen. The RSE report was absolutely clear about that. It said that it will cost proportionately more to connect rural Scotland than to connect the rest of the UK. That is why we need our fair share. If we are part of the UK, one of the benefits has to be that we get our fair share. That needs collaborative work. It is not just about collaboration between Governments—for which reason we will support the Conservative amendment—but about private and public expertise working together to get the best value for everybody.

The cabinet secretary made a very powerful case for rural businesses to be able to sell their products and services, but an interesting comment was made about how things have changed. Before I was elected to the Parliament I used to teach town planners. At that time, this whole issue was not even our agenda, in the same way that renewables were not on our agenda. Many of our leaders in the public sector were not trained to deal with such issues—they are totally new. That means that a level of expertise, continual learning and investment in skills are needed not just to build things but to negotiate deals. People’s capacity to negotiate good deals is fundamental. If we are relying on the private sector to help us deliver, we need to ensure that the public sector capacity is there to make things happen. Sometimes, the public sector is too cautious. Some of our procurement processes are so lengthy that they militate against our getting a good deal. There is a real challenge there.

Elaine Murray quite rightly mentioned the need to act and said that the RSE’s report stated that work was doable by 2015. So, why is the target for 2020? This is something that matters to us now. There are so many Government policies that connectivity would help us deliver, which makes the case for faster action. Alex Johnstone made that point well.

Fiona McLeod’s speech about the impact on health services and the potential in relation to health services was very good. The example that she gave of one of her constituents was striking.

Rhoda Grant continued on the same theme and added the education sector element. I am thinking about the models to which we aspire. There are countries across Europe and across the world that are making this happen. What distinguishes them is not the powers that they have but how they use them and how they work together. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s analysis of which nations are doing well and which are doing less well shows that it is not about size—that is one of the striking things—but about the work that is done within nation states and regions. It is all about setting the right political priority.

It has to be a question of focus. In our manifesto, we suggested that we should have a digital champion—that we should task someone with the job of making it happen and give them the resources to do so. Will ministers do that? This is the second or third time that we have debated the issue with ministers, and they have a lot on their plate. It is crucial that we find a way to make connectivity a priority alongside renegotiating reform of the common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policy and delivering on our climate change targets. On that basis, I am delighted that we are debating the issue on the last day of term. I hope that that will give a bit of a push to ministers and their support system to make it happen.

One of the most telling statistics that we heard today came from Jim Hume, who said that one in 10 businesses in rural communities does not use the internet at all. That is a stark statistic and we should reflect on it. Those businesses cannot be successful without the internet and without decent connectivity to the internet.

Rob Gibson’s speech was bang on in focusing on how, what and with whom we deliver, and it had a sense of urgency. He talked about thinking about what we can do to deliver to communities from the top down, and to empower them to deliver what is needed faster themselves. That is about partnership, focus and priorities, and there are real challenges there.

Jenny Marra mentioned the Cornwall connection: even without an organisation like the Scottish Parliament to lobby and argue, and to organise and deliver funds, Cornwall has managed to winkle money out of the European Union and get support from the UK Government. That has to be an achievement, given the number of people who live in Cornwall and the area’s rurality. We need to look at other models and at how others overcome obstacles, because they can be overcome if there is a will.

Adam Ingram’s points about a pan-Scotland approach were very persuasive. We need to come up with an approach that is about more than just saying, “If only we could do this.” We need to decide that we need it to happen, say who we need to work with, decide on whom to task with the job, and use our collective energy and political interest to make it happen. It is partly a question of leadership from the Scottish Government pulling people together to get action taken. We need some fresh thinking. Our contribution to the mix is whether we should have a digital champion. Fresh thinking is also needed on the relationship between the private and public sectors, and on cutting through some of the difficult procurement issues that are meant to be fair and to deliver access for everyone but which sometimes involve slower processes and deliver a poorer outcome—while the private sector, which needs such projects, does not get its share from the public sector.

We need to get our fair share of the cake, which means ministers banging the drum. You have been given the opportunity today to bang the drum constructively. The Parliament is clearly minded to be consensual today, from the SNP back benchers through to the Conservative and Labour members, and I hope that, in the spirit of the debate, you might be tempted to support our amendments. There is no requirement on you to do that, but they are constructive amendments—they are not all about deleting and inserting. From the tone of the speeches that I have heard today, there is a desire to work constructively with the Government.

We should think about who lives in our rural communities and social exclusion, not just between urban and rural communities but within rural communities. Some people cannot afford a computer, never mind a broadband system, whether decent or poor. As the Royal Society of Edinburgh report indicates, some older people, some people on lower incomes, and some people with disabilities are not even at the starting point of getting access to any form of IT or digital connection. Projects across the country that work with such groups are partly about social justice and partly about the public sector wanting to include such people. For many people, libraries are the bedrock of access to the internet.

Financial changes are being made—I refer to the Christie commission report. When such changes are being made to public sector service delivery, we should not forget those who are less well-off.

In education and health, digital connection presents an opportunity, but we need to have it on the agenda. The issue is not just about the kit, although that is vital and it is right that the debate has focused on it; the issue is also about the people who access that kit and their ability to do so. The Government can take a lead on that and help to deliver, not just at the national level, but by working with local authorities and the voluntary or third sector.

There are big opportunities. The ministers are being offered consensus, which I suspect will not last for the entire parliamentary session. Let us use the consensus to drive a sense of urgency and priority and ensure that we deliver together.

I remind members that they should speak through the chair and should not address one another directly across the chamber. Thank you.

16:45

It is a delight to speak on a subject that kept me in gainful employment for many years and finally deposited me here. Despite a powerful and impressive speech from Alex Fergusson, I intend to support the motion in the cabinet secretary’s name. I assure colleagues that, having looked carefully at the amendments, we are prepared to support them. We have slight reservations about some of the wording in the Labour one, but let us not get diverted into a discussion about bits of the debate. Incidentally, in my intervention on Elaine Murray, I made the distinction between bytes and bits, so, before I move to more substantive matters, I will expand members’ knowledge by saying that, in the trade, half a byte—which is four bits clustered together—is referred to as a nibble. There we are.

The debate has been useful. The cabinet secretary and I and our colleagues will be tramping many distant corners of Scotland, hoping for good weather and for adequate mobile phone signals and the ability to communicate with our officials using broadband, whether wireless or fixed. I am sure that members of other parties and members of our party who are not in the Government will be doing something similar.

Like the cabinet secretary, I welcome John McClelland’s review of public sector ICT. The debate is about delivering a wide range of benefits to rural Scotland by having the right communications in place. It is clear from the debate that those benefits are not simply economic. We need to equip our communities and the people and businesses in them with the appropriate technologies, if only to level the playing field. That will create an opportunity to avoid further disadvantage, and it will create advantage. Improving rural communications is very much central to our purpose.

I want to say a few words about history generally and the role of communications in it. Eight thousand years ago, the human race was in essence a herdsman culture. At that time, in Sumeria—there are debates about where and when it happened, but I adhere to the view that it was in Sumeria—the settled culture that is the basis of our culture today first appeared. From that point, communication became important because, as people did not travel around, they needed to send messages to other communities to communicate with them.

The world started to change. We had the invention of money, which involved the tying of knots on string when people put grain into grain stores. Many things that we have today started then. In the city of Jerash in the middle east, one can find the cart tracks that are still there in the main street from 2,000 years ago. Transport, which was one of the first instruments of connectivity, became important. As I mentioned last week, the Romans created an empire that endured for between 400 and 500 years, partly because they created a system of hilltop signalling that enabled messages to go from a corner of the European empire back to headquarters in Rome in about six hours. Communication was important, too, for Scotland. The reformation and the introduction of the Bible printed in English drove communication and education in Scotland.

An awful lot has happened in a relatively short space of time. When I was involved, at 11 am on 25 January 1985, in the launch of the first universal access home banking system to allow people to look at their bank accounts, the speed at which that system worked, delivering huge value to people, was 1,200 bits per second down to the customer and 75 bits per second from the customer up to the bank.

The minister has raised a subject that I believe continues to be a problem with broadband provision to this day. The upload speeds that are generally provided are as little as 5 per cent of the available download speeds—can he tell me why? He obviously has greater knowledge of that. Is it simply a historical anomaly, or is there a technical reason? We are finding that there are many more reasons why higher upload speeds would be of value as we develop the broadband system.

The member is absolutely correct, although I will try not to be overly tempted by the question. A range of technologies could have been chosen when we developed broadband, but the technology that is used is called asymmetric digital subscriber line—ADSL. It was felt that the pressing need was to get data out to people. However, the reality is that, in rural areas in particular, we need good speeds back to the centre because businesses are serving other customers through that relatively slow connection. As we move to fibre, there will be opportunities to work with different technologies—essentially, symmetric technologies—that will provide an answer to the problem for those who use ADSL on copper. I do not know whether anybody else in the chamber understands that, but I hope that Alex Johnstone does.

Even with regard to telephones, the world has changed enormously. In 1958, when my father made the first transatlantic call from our house—it was on business: one of his patients was very ill and he had to communicate with her husband, who was in the United States—it had to be booked a day in advance. It was to last precisely three minutes—he could not get any longer—and it cost three guineas, which was approximately one third of the average weekly wage. Now, people can use a mobile phone and for 6p can call the States on demand. A lot has happened in a short space of time and a lot more will happen.

Many interesting technologies have been developed in local situations. In the Swiss Alps, yodelling was a way of communicating using the human voice. Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone in 1876. The Bank of Scotland installed its first telephone only five years later, in 1881, when there were already 300 subscribers in the Edinburgh telephone directory. Mind you, when the bank installed its telephone, the board required that the telephone not be used to conduct business.

Minister, I must stop you for a moment. I ask that members who are coming into the chamber do so quietly, please. If you want to have conversations, I would be grateful if you would have them outside the chamber. Thank you.

The first electronic digital communication between Edinburgh and London was installed in 1868. It was a telegraph, and the telegraph is what opened up the west of the United States and made it the prosperous area that it now is. Those are just some of the many historical examples of how communications have helped.

Elaine Murray said that 3G coverage in Scotland is patchy, especially in rural areas. Where I live, I pray for 2G coverage—3G coverage is a distant hope. The map of my constituency has two tiny blue dots on it, which indicate where 3G touches. Frankly, for most of Scotland we could hold up a blank sheet of paper with a few wee blue bits on it representing 3G coverage. That is why it is important that, when we go to 4G coverage, we take a different approach. Whatever Government does it, we will be creating huge commercial opportunities for the operators of 4G networks, just as we did for the operators of 2G and 3G networks. In exchange for giving access to those huge commercial opportunities, we should place different conditions on the operators. One that might suit Scotland well is the condition that 4G phones should, at no additional cost, roam between different companies’ masts. Why should they not? It would not cost the companies much to ensure that and it would reduce the number of masts that there would need to be—reducing the costs to the companies responsible for the 4G networks—as well as delivering a better solution for Scotland. That would probably not be of great interest in densely populated areas, though. Those are some examples of what we can do.

We have moved on from the election that I fought in 1987, when I had to carry tuppences in my pocket and know where every telephone box in the constituency was. In 1992, we had the first generation of analogue mobile phones, and in 1997, we had the first digital phones. Every time there is an election, things have moved on, and things move on very fast.

Where does the minister think we will get to by 2015?

The answer depends partly on how our relationship with the UK Government develops. We will work with it closely and proactively—we will not be passive—and consider the achievements of countries such as Finland, which Rhoda Grant mentioned. We have ambition, but we will work with other people to ensure that things happen.

Rhoda Grant noted that Highland Council had put in a fibre network but that it was difficult to access it for other purposes. We need to ensure that standards are in place for the exploitation of private networks—even when they are licensed—to create the technological solutions to allow other people to access the available services.

Paul Wheelhouse discussed the difficulties in the Borders, which a number of members have described. The Government’s major investment in the development of the Borders railway will help one aspect of communication in that rural area, but electronic communications make a real difference.

For small businesses that deliver goods to market via carriers, we must look at getting the carriers to pick up in rural areas, as we have had significant difficulty in getting them to drop down. Paul Wheelhouse referred to business parks as a potential source of connectivity for many businesses and for people who work in rural areas, and I am sure that that is the case.

George Adam spoke about Sandra Webster’s two autistic sons and about social integration, and there is something very important in that. It is a fact that people in rural areas are more isolated but, increasingly, the existence of communication technologies can shrink that distance. As families have moved all over the world, communication has become an important part of keeping them together, and it is the same as families move throughout Scotland, so George Adam is right to highlight that.

Jim Hume and other members talked about telehealth. It is difficult on a snowy night to get a doctor, a nurse or a midwife to a particular location, but if a video camera can be used via Skype or other services to help or provide advice to someone, that is a real life saver. It is important that we focus on that as one of the many benefits that we can deliver.

Rob Gibson mentioned that, although there are more than 1,000 BT exchanges in Scotland, some people are paying for 8 megabits per second and getting only half a megabit per second.

I ask the minister to begin to wind up now.

Rob Gibson is correct to say that there is huge variability in speed, and that we need transparency in what is paid for and what is delivered. That is very important indeed.

Joan McAlpine reminded us that it was only in 1985 that Vodafone permitted the first mobile call. Things are going to move fast, and we must ensure that we support the potential of the outward-looking and dynamic communities that exist in rural Scotland. Our farmers, our fishermen and all the people who live in the country contribute to world-famous industries such as our food and drink industry, and the potential of our wave and wind power is vast.

However, there is more potential in rural Scotland that can be realised through the delivery of effective digital communications. It is this Government’s ambition and determination that we will do that, by working with the UK Government and private companies, but most of all by working with those who live and work in our rural areas.