14:51 Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat)

We heard about telegraph poles, which are a significant issue. B4RN is a community-run organisation and it can build a fully underground network. It can do that because it is a voluntary organisation and landowners allow it on to their land to dig the trenches. I have been there myself. In Old Hutton, I was digging the trenches—not laying the cable; they would not allow me to do that. Getting dirty and digging holes is just about within my field of competence. However, those landowners will not allow access to their land for free to a commercial, multibillion-pound organisation. Consequently, there is the Fibrus operation and Project Gigabit, whereby large parts of the procurement would use telegraph poles. As Storm Arwen proved, telegraph poles are vulnerable to extreme weather events, which happen often in Cumbria. We are used to weather in the wild, and sadly, with climate change, we expect it to get worse and more intense.

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15:09 Nia Griffith (Labour)

In August last year, the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee warned that people in Wales are being left behind, with sub-par, unreliable broadband that risks excluding people from modern life, and with rural areas being particularly affected. The UK Government’s Project Gigabit is supposed to address that, but Wales’s mountainous terrain is challenging. The worry is that UK funding does not reflect the real cost of roll-out in those areas.

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