Tim Breitmeyer: Rural broadband is vital to help us rise to challenges

The year ahead will no doubt be dominated by this fundamental issue, the outcome of which will determine the UK’s future place in the world.

Legislation before Parliament this year, including the Agriculture Bill, will make essential changes to how we manage trade, support farming and deliver land use policy.

But while Brexit stole the headlines, the year also ended with a crucially important statement of our future economic direction. The Government’s much-anticipated Industrial Strategy, a 240-page tome, set out the plan to boost productivity throughout the UK.

Politically we can see what Ministers are doing – a deliberate attempt to reassure us that not everything is about Brexit. It garnered some positive headlines, in a month of unrelenting bad news. But it was not all style, there was important substance too.

Through this document the May Government is rightly signalling the end of an era of economic policy dominated by the aftermath of the 2007-08 financial crisis. Even accepting that change is a constant, there is a sense that we are at a crossroads, with UK productivity in agriculture, and the economy in general, lagging behind its competitors.

The Industrial Strategy, with encouraging references to the importance of agriculture, talks of ‘grand challenges’ and they are worth reflecting on. The growing realities of climate change require us to rethink some of the basics of how we use resources, where we live and how we move around the country and the world.

Then, there are exponential advances in artificial intelligence and data use, which herald a new era of innovation as transformational as the invention of the computer or internal combustion engine.

Alongside this, societal change requires a rethink of how we meet the needs of an ageing population, not just in homes and care services, but also the nature of employment as people work longer and in different ways.

Our rural businesses are at the forefront of these challenges, whether in how we manage our land to produce sufficient food despite the pressures of climate change, harnessing the potential of data, and above all in how we meet the changing needs of communities, workers and those who have retired. The emphasis placed on the rural economy and a co-ordinated ‘farm to fork’ plan at the heart of the strategy was pleasing. Words are one thing, though. The challenge will be in the delivery.

There are enormous opportunities here for us as landowners. We have the means to create the homes and offices for people wanting to work differently, outside of the traditional urban centres, and provide homes for the elderly and young people living in rural places. As the strategy makes clear, success in these areas is heavily dependent on embracing completely the opportunities of digital connectivity.

So as the Government embarks on its Industrial Strategy it is clear where it must start. It is time to complete the job of rolling out digital infrastructure to rural areas. This means delivering on the legal commitment to universal service for all homes and buildings to fast fixed-line broadband. And above all, it means holding the mobile industry to account for its prevarication over delivery of universal geographic 4G data coverage.

The UK licence operated by the four major mobile operators charged them with delivering 90 per cent national coverage with 2G connectivity by December of last year. But coverage of 4G technology, which is what everyone really needs, is currently just 18 per cent in rural areas. It is simply not good enough.

We should not underestimate the strength of resistance from the industry to delivering universal coverage. Installing and managing expensive equipment in places that serve a small number of customers is anathema to hard-nosed global corporations. Their logic is rational, and they will persist in trying to get away with the bare minimum. We have had three years of mobile companies dictating terms. This includes securing major legislative concessions on access to land (at the expense of the property rights of rural landowners). They have had their way because of the political consensus that access to mobile connection is a utility, just like electricity, water and gas.

It’s a sound argument and one we agree with. Now Government must force them to deliver that utility. Connectivity will enable us to rise to the coming challenges. If we take the long view its potential dwarfs the risk of Brexit. It will help us to use resources efficiently, produce food with reduced environmental impact and make it possible to start, grow and locate businesses across the countryside. I welcome the Industrial Strategy. The job is now to translate it into action.

Tim Breitmeyer is president of the CLA.