Harriett Baldwin MP today stepped up her campaign for a better rural broadband service by quizzing the Culture Secretary in the House of Commons. The West Worcestershire MP enquired about Ripple, Shrawley and Aston Somerville villages which all suffer from unreliable and very slow internet access. Harriett commented: “I have had a large number of enquiries about rural broadband services and it is clear that many homes and businesses feel like they have been ignored in the past by Government and telecoms companies. “I welcome the news that some areas are finding their own solutions but I am eager to keep up the pressure on providers to make sure that all people are able to access appropriate broadband services at effective speeds. “While our neighbours in Herefordshire can look forward to a high speed broadband pilot some villages in my constituency get pathetically slow speeds on the internet.” Harriett also welcomed an experimental broadband trial being carried out in Tenbury. St Michael’s College in Tenbury will be one of the first organisations to sign up for the Airband service which is being delivered over a wireless connection across selected areas of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire. She added: “More and more businesses need fast, efficient broadband to allow them to thrive and grow. In Ripple parish alone there are dozens of small businesses that use broadband. I will be keeping an eye on this issue in Parliament and hope that we will see speedy progress towards developing hi-tech capability in the county. FULL TEXT Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con): What plans he has to roll out next generation broadband to rural areas. [18952] The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt): We are making excellent progress in broadband roll-out. Last week, the Chancellor announced four superfast broadband pilots in rural locations in the Highlands and Islands, Cumbria, Yorkshire and Herefordshire. There will be further announcements before the end of the year on how we will roll this out to the whole country. Harriett Baldwin: The villages of Ripple, Shrawley and Aston Somerville have all been in touch with me recently about the problem of very slow broadband speeds. Is there anything I can say to my constituents now about what can be done to speed things up? Mr Hunt: What my hon. Friend can say is that this Government have committed to this country having the best superfast broadband network in Europe. Labour Members promised 2 megabit access for the whole country, so they wanted us to be in the economic slow lane, whereas we want to be in the superfast lane. | Hansard