Labour Sets Out UK Broadband and Mobile Plans in 2024 Manifesto
The UK Labour Party has today published their Manifesto for the forthcoming 2024 General Election, which is due to be held on 4th July 2024. As usual, ISPreview has taken a quick dive into the document to see what the party may be planning in terms of their broadband, mobile and internet related policies.
Since the last election, the party appears to have moved away from their heavily nationalisation focused “free full-fibre broadband to all by 2030” pledge of 2019 (here), which raised more than a few questioning glances and a fair bit of scepticism from within the industry, as well as more widely. But today our focus is firmly on 2024 and not 2019.
Until today, we haven’t really been able to gleam much detail about what position the party would take for the election. But Labour has previously signalled that they might continue to support the current Government’s existing £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out programme (i.e. aiming for 85% gigabit coverage by 2025 and “nationwide” [c.99%] by 2030).
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The party has also previously spoken of working with Ofcom to try and encourage greater infrastructure sharing or co-operative build between network operators, which would have to be carefully balanced to avoid any unintended damage to competition.
In addition, Labour indicated in 2023 that it would aim to foster an “industry wide social tariff for low-income families” and do more to tackle mid-contract price hikes and loyalty penalties etc.
Labour’s 2024 General Election Manifesto
The good news today is that Labour’s 2024 UK General Election Manifesto (PDF) has now been published. But given all the previous talk above, we were a little bit surprised to find how light it is on matters of broadband and mobile policy. Across the whole document, we could only find one single paragraph on the subject, which makes for quite a stark contrast with the last election:
“In an ever more connected world, Britain’s communication network is also vital. Under the Conservatives, investment in 5G is falling behind other countries and the rollout of gigabit broadband has been slow. Labour will make a renewed push to fulfil the ambition of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030,” said page 31 of the document.
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On the one hand, that talk of making a “renewed push” sounds positive, but on the other hand they don’t define what this actually means and how it will differ. The approach does at least appear to support the aforementioned idea that they might not be intending to make any major changes to Project Gigabit itself, which is probably a good thing in this case, as that tends to require new reviews and thus delays (i.e. the risk of making that 2030 target even harder to hit).
So far, none of the manifestos we’ve seen being released have included any big surprises or solid new commitments, which is a bit disappointing.
UPDATE:
One of our readers spotted that the manifesto also includes some vague talk about reforming the current planning system: “We will also update national planning policy to ensure the planning system meets the needs of a modern economy, making it easier to build laboratories, digital infrastructure, and gigafactories. Labour will ensure economic regulation supports growth and investment, promotes competition, works for consumers, and enables innovation.”
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Increasing taxes, won’t go in the broadband pot. Unfortunately both parties manifesto’s are terrible.
Not only increasing taxes, they literally state they want to crack down on tax avoidance. The term avoidance implies it is legal. An example of avoidance: I need to sell assets that are double the amount in the personal allowance, I can avoid the tax penalty by selling it in 2 different years. No idea how they will crackdown on what is legal and incentivised by the system to steal money from people
Interestingly someone pointed out a contradiction: one of their lines is “more mental health for youth”, another is “ban of conversion therapies” paired with “more hate crime policing”
The man had this to say:
“Sorry but these two cannot coexist. If a therapist cannot ask why a girl feels like a boy that is not open access mental health services. Affirmative therapy is the thing that needs to get banned.”
avoidance = legal
evasion = illegal
the TV debates were right, labour are just going to tax the ‘rich’ (rich being anyone who actually works) and none of this will ever go back into broadband. The government don’t have the competency to be deciding on this stuff, they’ve never handled it well (and yes, that includes tony blair/gordon brown era).
I think Labour shouldn’t have said Under the Conservatives, […] the rollout of gigabit broadband has been slow.
In my opinion, the rollout has been incredibly fast, I mean if you talk to Adtran for example an equipment manufacturer of Fibre equipment they’re saying we’re the European leaders in fibre right now as a result of public infrastructure access.
Whether the conservatives had anything to do with it I don’t know enough to say. But I think the fibre goldrush we’re currently witnessing has been great for consumers. We’ve got relatively low prices, and rapidly growing competition. I think we’re at over 130 alt nets now, many of which are laying their own lines.
I very much am behind Labour in their other claims (NHS, energy, cost of living etc) but I think in this point they did a slight misstep by just “lets blame the tories and make it sound bad” so to speak where they should have said they would just increase investment in this area, further remove hurdles to rollouts, perhaps offer tax rebates for each home that is hooked up to fast 1Gb capable broadband etc
In 1990, a single decision by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had a devastating effect on the UK’s broadband infrastructure for the next 20 years and for the foreseeable future.
34 years of rolling out gigabit broadband is slow under the Conservatives
I’m sceptical that the FTTP rollout had anything to do with government, other than if you want to give them credit for not actively preventing it from happening. It seems to have been kicked off by CityFibre and very cheap money, and I agree it’s a misstep to say that progress has been slow as we are now at 70% FTTP and the remaining 30% is the difficult stuff.
Thatcher refused to allow BT to roll out fibre in the 1980s as they wanted to promote new cable TV monopoly franchises. It’s ironically one of the reasons we’re so far behind other countries today. Add in brexit making staff and equipment harder to get and all the other nonsense of the last 14 years and there’s nothing untrue in the statement.
That was the 1980’s!
What stopped Blair and every PM after doing something different?
Other claims that they are largely responsible for causing those problems in the first place?
Do people really have such short attention sans, forget about the Blair era already?
To be fair this just reads to me as ‘we’ve no strong plans, don’t see it as a vote winner and therefore won’t make a big deal about it but lets use the opportunity to say how bad the tories are’. Lets face this is a manifesto – I’m not sure why they would put anything else? They’re not likely to say we’ll carry on the good job the tories are doing are they?
I’ll be honest I would have preferred a bit more concrete action on infrastructure sharing (I have nexfibre and giganet microducts already, with openreach likely to lay a 3rd set at some point – my neighbors where already complaining heavily enough about the 2nd set.).
> In my opinion, the rollout has been incredibly fast
For some.
> But I think the fibre goldrush we’re currently witnessing has been great for consumers.
Some consumers. Others simply got left out.
> We’ve got relatively low prices, and rapidly growing competition.
In some areas. There is no competition where we live, not even a single provider. Or a working 4G network, let alone 5G.
A better managed rollout would have ensured a fairer distribution and initially focused on pure coverage ahead of competition. All very trivial to achieve with the right set of incentives and funding injection where appropriate. But no.
The 5G rollout has been an utter farce. Again, the government could have intervened to make a great deal better.
The reason Adtran are loving it is they are seeing the overbuild. Nothing like selling to everyone, in whole or part, and their competitors.
The parties should, if anything, be more specific about the those that will be left out and those possibly left with a local monopoly. commercial areas will be fine.
Doesn’t feel like it for those us still in the ~30% of homes with no coverage (while other areas are double or triple covered), but I take your point. Things are accelerating now, finally, but it’s taken way too long to get to this point.
“In 1990, a single decision by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher”
I think you will find the prime minister in 1990 was John Major. Obviously you are right though your broadband is not fast enough to had googled that first.
“What stopped Blair and every PM after doing something different?”
Selective history and rewriting of it i assume by those that often pop up on here with the same diatribe.
I guess faster internet or 5G aren’t high on the average voters list. I’m sure a party could get votes(not from me I hasten to add) by banning new telegraph poles and 5G.
I did wonder if there would be anything re the three Vodafone merger, as I know the unions aren’t keen
It is on my list 5G coverage and broadband as a voter.
For me NHS are more important than broadband 1Gig, mobile 5G. I agree both parties Tory and Labour are awful in manifestos
The NHS has added more than 200,000 full time staff in the last 4 years. (Source: ONS) Yet the activity level (healthcare delivery) is below the 2019 level. So it has added more than the combined British forces and has done less than it managed before.
The public need politicians brave enough to call the NHS for what it is – a poor healthcare system that now has amongst the highest level of funding (share of GDP) in the Western World yet year on year fails to deliver – abysmal wait times and treatment outcomes.
Throwing more money at it won’t solve the problem – because the root cause isn’t lack of money or lack of staff.
We spend less per head on healthcare than all our neighbours. % of GDP is a meaningless number. Our neighbours spend, in some cases, thousands more per person each year than we do.
If % of GDP is a meaningless and GDP per capita is very important, why were all the candidates except for one, refusing to talk about the very important point that GDP per capita is down for the past 6 consecutive quarters
It seems Labour’s manifesto really could be written on the back of a fag packet.
It’s a 136 page pdf. So No, it couldn’t.
how many of the 136 pages are pictures of keir starmer looking stern?
“It’s a 136 page pdf. So No, it couldn’t.”
Less than that unless we are counting the 4 blank pages the front cover, back cover and spine. LOL
“how many of the 136 pages are pictures of keir starmer looking stern?”
Apparently there are 33 pictures of him within it and several more of his deputy.
Thankfully though the conservative one has not a single picture of Rishi Sunak so at least we do not have to look at his gloating face as well.
Its ok though Left wing love an ego. Starmers memoirs in a few years on everything even further screwed will be a sell out for the loyal following.
It also says:
“We will also update national planning policy to ensure the planning system meets the needs of a modern economy, making it easier to build laboratories, digital infrastructure, and gigafactories.”
I take that to mean they will reform planning to make building sensible size cellular sites – of the sort you see on the continent – easier. They could start by getting rid of Prior Approval, as abused by some local authorities.
It has been mostly Labour MP’s fighting 5G mast & broadband poles.
If anything I’m pretty sure planning around masts will become much more strict.
Almost all 5G masts near homes are being refused, it’s not just the councils, the planning inspectors are supporting the councils.
It’s just word salad for lazy voters who can’t in the main be botherer to think if the policy pledges actually address a clearly defined problem.
Labour’s likely change to capital gains tax will have a dramatic impact on inward investment – retail investors just won’t bother when the will get taxed at up to 45% on any returns irrespective of the inflation / lack of indexing in the gain calculation.
Labour Will destroy the country over the next 5 years so completing the FTTP roll out will be of no concern. In 5 years time the country will be on its knees.
And it’s not at the moment? The Tories have done more to destroy the UK than any other party with their Donald Trumpism policies.
As to FTTP Rollout, that’s got nothing to do with any governments but rather the operators themselves and it’s the operators themselves who decide which areas have the best business case for FTTP.
Instead of just blaming the opposition, why not ask what good the Tories have done since 2016.
Of course the last 5 years have been perfect, couldn’t have been better. We are truly blessed.
The last 5 years have been horrendous. The Tories are just as bad and have just laid the foundation for what is to come. Labour in blue colours.But the next 5 will not be forgotten. We are still suffering from the Tony Blair era. If labour do well, I will eat my words.
Would be nice to finally get something better than ADSL 9mbps thought but even that is not looking likely where I am. I am just glad to be able to get decent 4/5G mobile but that is not a cheap option when being stuck to 1 provider.
In the debate, each candidate had an option to ask another candidate a question. Penny asked Rayner if she would rule out capital gains tax hikes.
Rayner gave some wishy-washy answer and avoided answering the question
Capital gains taxes kill investments
Therefore labour will stifle broadband rollout