The long wait for broadband

Effectively, this is the conclusion of the latest report by the Public Accounts Committee, which lambasts the Government’s failure to manage the roll-out of broadband – shortcomings which have allowed the main provider, BT, to prevent local authorities having access to information with the result that consumers are denied the benefits of open competition for contracts.

Of course, the fine details of this latest public sector fiasco will be of little interest to most rural consumers, whose prime concerns are their lack of mobile phone coverage and the slow working of their laptops, factors which are holding back business development and limiting the rural economy’s capacity to recover from the recession.

The MPs’ report, however, should be required reading for Ministers, not only in their attempts to rectify the mistakes that have already been made, but also in their planning for future deals between public and private sectors.

Tempting as it is for politicians to heap the lion’s share of the blame on BT, however, it is those who devise and oversee the regulations who need to heed the lessons of this unhappy episode.

In any commercial situation, it is in the nature of companies to attempt to drive away competition and to maximise their own revenues. When they are working for the public sector, therefore, it is the task of regulators to ensure that contracts are constructed to inhibit these tendencies and to ensure that the taxpayer reaps the advantages of healthy competition.

The signal failure of Ministers to do this in relation to broadband coverage has been good news for BT.

But it has been bad news for consumers, taxpayers and all those who hope that, in its dealings with business, the public sector will one day learn to operate with much greater commercial acumen.

Labour’s pains

PRIOR to this week’s Labour’s conference, the challenge facing Ed Miliband was to make it clear to the electorate exactly what his party stood for.

Now, with the clearing-up operation at the Brighton Centre well under way, it can safely be said that the Labour leader has met that challenge and the answer is a deeply depressing one.

Gone are the days, it seems, when Labour spoke up for voters’ aspirations. Indeed, it appears that the party has nothing whatsoever to say on many of the most important questions facing Britain.

On deficit reduction, the future of Britain in Europe, the ingrained failings of the health service, or the need to raise the nation’s education standards, Mr Miliband and his Shadow Cabinet colleagues said virtually nothing of any significance.

Instead, what was all too clear was the commitment that, wherever problems arose, an all-powerful state would step in to sort them out, whether through the confiscation of land that is not being developed or the imposition of price controls on energy suppliers.

It is hard to know what is more depressing about this emerging manifesto – its economic illiteracy or its wilful ignorance of history. The lesson that price controls cannot work was one learned to painful effect in the 1970s. And if it failed in the days of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, how could it succeed in the era of globalisation when energy companies, for all their manifest faults, are dependent on wholesale gas prices entirely beyond their control?

Is this really the best that Labour can offer voters in 2015, a set of tried and failed ideas which surrender the search for long-term solutions in the chase for cheap votes? Britain, Mr Miliband repeatedly insists, can do better. But surely, on this evidence, so too can the Labour Party.

Bound for Beijing

THEY may be great grandmothers in their sixties, but Edwina Sorkin and Kate Sleath have grasped the essence of charity fundraising in the 21st century.

As Ms Sorkin says, to make people take notice and actually part with their hard-earned money, “you have got to have the wow factor”.

And this intrepid pair have certainly achieved that with their plan to drive from Wetherby to Beijing, taking in Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia en route, without any kind of back-up whatsoever, to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support and Cancer Research UK, causes close to both their hearts.

Inspired by the devastating effect of cancer on close family members, the self-styled Beijing Biddies have taken on a formidable and perilous task, one which would deter many far younger people and which some would undoubtedly describe as foolhardy.

The Biddies, however, seem to have been scrupulous in their preparations and they make it clear that they are well aware of the potential dangers ahead,

They therefore deserve nothing but admiration for their spirit of adventure and best wishes for a successful trip. As well, of course, as some help in reaching their £150,000 target.