Making Highland Broadband Happen

I've responded to the UK Government’s Digital Britain Consultation with detailed proposals on how Super Fast Broadband can be delivered to 100% of highland communities.

The UK Government proposes to use a 50p per month level on every landline to create a £1bn fund which will be used to leverage telecoms industry investment in superfast “Next Generation Access” broadband technology into areas where the market, left to itself, will not deliver.

Many rural areas of the Highlands lack decent broadband services and suffer badly in terms of economic, community and social development as a result. Left to itself, the telecoms market will not deliver to these communities.

There has been a lot of negative nonsense talked recently - much of it coming from the LibDems who really don't seem to understand the issue at all - about how there are no solutions to this, problem. But I think the government’s Digital Britain Strategy is a real opportunity. It will make substantial funds available to support investment in broadband infrastructure for rural communities. The question is how best to use it.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working with Peter Peacock MSP to develop our response. We’ve now put forward detailed proposal on how reliable, superfast broadband can be delivered to 100% of rural communities in the Highlands. In our proposals, we make clear that we need a regional solution to a regional problem, not the “one size fits all” solutions beloved of the big telcos. We argue that rural communities should be able to work “outside in” developing community-owned solutions which can then be joined into the national fibre network.

This approach has already been used to deliver high-quality broadband services in rural communities in the UK, such as at Alston Moor in Cumbria. Across the UK and Europe, there are now many examples of social enterprises, cooperative and community-owned schemes exploiting fibre and wireless technology to deliver high quality broadband services to rural communities. We must start to look in detail at how those models could be applied in the Highlands.

UK and European funding streams will soon be available. We need the UK and Scottish Governments to work together and with local communities to make sure they are used effectively.

This kind of investment in the future economy is what the Labour Party stands for and I’m determined to play my part in making that happen.

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Rural Fuel Prices

There is a real issue with the price of fuel – petrol and diesel - in the Highlands. The combination of distance and lack of public transport alternatives means many people in rural areas have no choice but to travel by car. In principle, I support the raising of fuel duty as one way of discouraging unnecessary car journeys but many people in rural and remote areas have little alternative but to continue to use their cars. Combined with lower average incomes, this creates an issue similar to fuel poverty for domestic heating bills.

A government committed to fairness for all needs to tackle this issue. The question is how.

Fuel prices in rural areas vary widely, from around the national average to more than 10p per litre above. Despite what the oil industry says, this variation does not seem to be about extra transport costs; it seems to be about local market practice and trading volumes (Scottish Exec Report, 2001)

Small rural garages do not have the volume, so they need to charge a higher margin per litre to cover their fixed costs. Large retailers (mainly the supermarkets like Tescos and Morrisons) exploit this to charge as high a premium as their local market will bear, hence the variation between supermarket pump prices in different part of the highlands, despite their economies of scale and ability to share costs around their national networks.

The LibDems make much of their proposals to tackle these issues through a Rural Fuel Duty Reduction which would seek to reduce pump prices in defined areas by up to 3p per litre. It would require the UK government to seek a derogation under EU law. This has indeed been done by the governments of France, Greece and Portugal but ONLY for island communities (Corsica, the Peleponese and the Azores respectively).

In practice, however, for other than clearly defined island communities, the practicalities of working out what constitutes a “remote” community for the purpose of such changes in fuel duty seem impossibly complex in most parts of the UK.

The Scottish Government does use an 8-point “urban-rural” classification system that could form the basis for this. The problem is the when you map out the areas that would be defined as the most remote/rural there is little correlation with the most extreme differences in fuel prices. For example, the borders of one "very remote" region pass within 5 miles of Fort William, where current prices are only 1.1p a litre above the UK average, and within 5 miles of Oban, where current prices are only 2.1p a litre above the average.

A fuel duty reduction could lead to unpredicted market consequences (Tesco setting up over the “border” of a rural area but which is still close to a major centre like Fort William or Inverness). It could also give rise to perceived unfairness in UK tax regime between different parts of the country (should holiday home owners in rural Cornwall, for example, also benefit from such a regime?). Without very strict regulation, there may be little actual change in pump prices at rural filing stations as reduced costs are absorbed into margin or used to cover additional administration costs

So if a Rural Fuel Duty Reduction is not the answer, what is?

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SNP Climbdown on Web Notices

The SNP Government at Holyrood has climbed down over its plans allow local councils to put public notices online instead of in newspapers in response to a strong Labour campaign.

Led by Pauline McNeil MSP and strongly supported by Highland MSP David Stewart, the move was overwhelmingly supported by MSPs, who backed a motion calling "on the Scottish Government to withdraw the Local Authority Public Information Notices (Electronic Publication) (Scotland) Order 2010.

Ease of access to statutory notices, job adverts etc. is a vital aspect of local democracy and ensuring public notices are carried in local newspapers are one of the most important ways of ensuring that. This is especially the case in the Highlands, with the well documented issues about poor internet services.

The internet is a great resource and we need to press the case for access to high-speed broadband for all across the highlands. But not everyone can or will use the web and you’d think the SNP would be aware of the issues with web access in the North. Just like the broken promises over the by-pass, the SNP Government don’t seem to care much about how their policies impact in the Highlands.

This also is great news for local newspapers like the Courier, Strathy and Nairnshire which are already facing significant challenges because of the recession and who stood to lose vital revenue under the SNP plans.

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Voodoonomics!

Fed up with yet another LibDem party political broadcast masquerading as Danny Alexander's regular "Our Man in Westminster" column in the Courier, I've sent in this letter to the editor. We'll see tomorrow if they print it!

Dear Sir

Having allowed Danny Alexander MP to use his “Our Man in Westminster” column in last Tuesday’s Courier (9 March) to put his case for Liberal Democrat tax policy, I hope you will give me the opportunity to respond through your letters column.

As always, the LibDems come up with ideas which sound great but fall apart when you look at the details. They are the ideas of a party which does not have to worry about the serious business of government and how it impacts on the lives of ordinary people.

Mr Alexander describes the LibDem’s “fair” tax proposals. The highlight of this is raising the income tax threshold to £10,000. Whilst this does indeed give back £700 a year to many people on low incomes, he makes no mention of Labour’s Working Tax Credits (WTC), which already does more than this for low income families. The LibDem’s have said they want to limit WTC because it helps families earning as much as £50,000. Shame that their new income tax threshold will benefit families earning up to £100,000!

The LibDems estimate that raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 will cost £16.5bn. They claim this can be paid for – at the same time as making “savage cuts” to public spending – through higher taxes on the well off. When you read their proposals in detail, however, it’s clear that this is made up of a ragbag mix of tax avoidance savings, new taxes on air travel and cutting various capital gains tax reliefs. Putting to one side the impact of the capital gains tax changes on our pension funds, this seems to depend an awful lot on closing the same tax loopholes which every government has struggled with. These feel like SNP promises in the making to me.

In the detail of LibDem policy, £400m is to be raised from a new “green” tax on UK domestic flights.

Now I am all for encouraging people to use trains and other forms of public transport but perhaps Mr Alexander would like to explain how this new tax will affect the price of flights from hard-pressed Inverness airport to the Islands, Edinburgh and the south-east?

Labour will continue to develop a tax regime which is fair to individuals and businesses and which uses tax credits and other reliefs to support those that really need it most.

In closing, I see that pillar of the Thatcher establishment, Norman Tebbit, has praised the LibDem tax proposals (www.libdemvoice.org on 13 Jan 2010). That says everything about which side of the political divide the LibDems now stand on, and who they may be likely to support in a hung parliament.

Yours etc.

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Hilltrack Campaign

Signed up for Sarah Boyack and Peter Peacock's campaign to bring the construction of hill tracks under better control. New intrusive mountain tracks on the Scottish uplands are damaging our landscapes. Hill walkers, ramblers and members of the public are up in arms about the problem. While farmers and crofters need to construct some tracks for their purposes mostly on lower lying land, action is urgently needed.

See http://hilltrackscampaign.org.uk/

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Merkinch Campaigning

Great morning's campaigning in Merkinch today. Our team was full of enthusiasm and we got round a load of doors. The decent weather helped as well.

Door knocking can be difficult sometimes, if people are not in the mood to talk or just want to take their latest frustrations with politicians out on the poor party member on their doorstep. But this was one of those days when the people we met and talked to reminded us all why we're Labour; the woman in dispute with her employer being backed up by her Union, the family needing some decent window insulation let down by council cuts, the pensioner who grew up in service and whose dad made sure she will always vote Labour, because we are the only party that really stands up for ordinary working people. And the 86-year old who is looking forward to going out and voting Labour again because she still thinks voting is a right to be cherished!

Days like today fire up the energy levels and make us even more determined to win the seat.

More pictures on Facebook at Mike Robb for Inverness Nairn Badenoch & Strathspey

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