I do. I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concern about the metaverse; we are constantly considerably behind the curve on legislating for the regulation of some of these issues, and of course that will not even be covered by the forthcoming Online Safety Bill either. The pandemic has demonstrated more than ever the importance of broadband to our prosperity, but the Government’s failure to deliver the roll-out is hampering creative industries, businesses and those attempting to work from home.
The Government have consistently rolled back on their commitments. The Secretary of State mentioned that the Prime Minister originally promised full-fibre broadband to every household by 2025. He then downgraded that pledge to universal gigabit-capable broadband to every home. The commitment is now that at least 85% of UK premises will have access to gigabit broadband by 2025. That is downgrade after downgrade, which sells our capacity short.
The National Audit Office expressed serious reservations that even the watered-down target would be met. The main barrier is the Government-funded roll-out to harder-to-reach areas. The unequal roll-out of next generation gigabit broadband will mean that the same households that do not have superfast or, in many cases, as we have already heard, any functioning broadband at all, will continue to fall behind—for years, if not decades, to come. As the Public Accounts Committee said last week, the Government have no detailed plan in place for reaching communities where it is not commercially viable to do so, and there is little in the Bill to address that key issue.
The Bill does make further changes to the electronic communications code, which governs the agreements between telecoms companies and the landowners who host their masts. The code was last updated as recently as 2017, but those changes have not had the desired effect of speeding up roll-out.
Despite promises that rent would not reduce by more than 40%, many community sports grounds, churches and local authorities that host phone masts have had their rents cut by up to 90% or even 95% in some of the cases that we have already heard about today. That will be further exacerbated by the Bill, which hands more power to the telecoms companies in court and disincentivises people from coming forward to have phone masts put on their land in the first place. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) looks like he is itching to come in on that point.