The Queen’s speech covered the Government’s priorities to ‘build back better’ and ‘level up’ communities across the country. Tech was an area which featured prominently, with the Online Safety Bill and Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill taking centre stage. The Government also emphasised their commitment to broadband roll-out and highlighted their ambitions to reach 85% gigabit-capable coverage by 2025.
Please find the response from our Chair Andrew Glover below:
“Today’s Queen Speech shows just how important ISPs are to helping Government deliver its vision to boost infrastructure, help level up the country to reduce regional inequalities, and power our economic recovery from the pandemic.
Our members are busy delivering gigabit broadband across the UK, we are therefore pleased to see that the Government has listened to industry and will introduce legislation to simplify the wayleaves process and make it easier to deploy broadband networks. Wayleaves remain the biggest barrier to broadband rollout, and it is now of crucial importance that the Government does not waste this opportunity and decisively rebalances the Electronic Communications code to turbocharge rollout in urban and rural areas.
Delivering secure communications is another priority our members are helping to deliver. As expected, the Telecoms Security Bill will continue its passage through Parliament. While there is still work to do to ensure that the measures are proportionate, clear and do not undermine existing business models, its return to Parliament provides a valuable opportunity to continue to scrutinise the legislation. While a new Bill to take forward measures to strengthen consumer products security will continue to build trust in digital services.
ISPA also welcomes the introduction of an Online Harms Bill, the Bill will now rightly be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny to allow policymakers time to fully discuss and analyse a massive change to how the internet is regulated in the UK.”