It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela. I thank the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for securing this very important debate and for making what I thought was a compelling speech. We want to do the right thing for his constituents and for all residents and business owners in rural and hard-to-reach areas by ensuring they are not left high and dry in the nationwide gigabit upgrade. Access to high-speed broadband is crucial for schooling, businesses, and building communities in more rural areas, especially after the difficult past 18 months. Working with Ofcom, we have given the commercial market a long-term framework that supports investment in gigabit broadband, reduced barriers to roll-out, and introduced active incentives for financial investment. Since January 2019, the UK's gigabit-capable coverage has increased from 5.8% to nearly 50%, expected to rise to 60% by the end of December. Over £1 billion has been invested in rural 4G coverage. There is now more diversity in the broadband sector with multiple operators, including smaller providers such as Gigaclear and Airband, awarded contracts through local full fibre networks and rural gigabit connectivity programmes. Our gigabit broadband voucher scheme has subsidised the cost to connect over 88,000 homes and businesses so far. The market will not go everywhere, which is why we are backing Project Gigabit with £5 billion to ensure hard-to-reach communities are not left out. We aim to provide support for around 5 million premises that the market will not reach. Cumbria is scheduled to be the first area to go into the procurement process within the next few weeks, provided suppliers confirm viability. My officials have met B4RN several times and examined each project it has put forward in detail. The chief executive of B4RN is here today and my officials will meet him later. My predecessor visited Cumbria last month and met communities involved with broadband build, as well as B4RN to listen to their concerns. Residents involved in every one of B4RN's projects tirelessly work to drum up support and interest and to persuade landowners to grant permissions. The vouchers have been used to provide coverage to 3,500 premises in Cumbria, but our task is to help around 60,000 premises, so the procurement approach has to do the heavy lifting. The Department admires B4RN's unique community-minded approach and does not want to dampen enthusiasm or business model. We are looking at how to get more social value into the money the Government spend and diversifying supply chains, including encouraging SMEs to get involved. The procurement process is ready to pick up areas where planned voucher projects do not get off the ground, ensuring no one is left behind while supporting early coverage in areas with firm plans using vouchers.