A petition calling for more action in closing the rural digital divide across the Highlands and Islands has picked up support from politicians at Holyrood.
Campaigner John Erskine’s plea for better connectivity in some of Scotland’s remotest regions has been backed by leading political figures during a committee hearing at parliament.
His petition – PE2127 – was raised at a recent meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, which pledged to write to the Scottish Government to ask about plans to improve rural connectivity.
The petition called on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to develop a new digital connectivity plan for the Highlands and Islands that aims to address digital infrastructure gaps, improve mobile internet coverage, establish public-private partnerships and support economic growth, education and healthcare.
According to Ofcom’s Connected Nations Scotland Report, published last year, as of July 2024, 62 per cent of residential properties in Scotland had access to full-fibre networks—an increase of 9 percentage points from September 2023. However, the briefing notes that, although 89 per cent of Midlothian and Glasgow city residences have full-fibre connection, only 14 per cent of residences in Orkney and 11 per cent of residences in Shetland do.
Fergus Ewing, SNP MSP for Inverness and Nairn, told the committee: “This is an excellent petition that raises very important questions. There is no doubt that there are serious problems in the Highlands and Islands—not just in Orkney and Shetland but in many other parts, including in my constituency—throughout rural Scotland and, as you mentioned, in our cities, where there are some gaps. Broadband connection is regarded as a sine qua non. Twenty years ago, it was a luxury, but it has now become, frankly, a necessity.
“Broadband connection in rural properties can allow people to work remotely and carry out work anywhere in the world. That might be one of the key ways to stem the depopulation problem that remote parts of the Highlands, particularly the islands, face.”
Mr Ewing proposed that the Scottish Government ask for a ‘procurement timeline’ for the UK Government’s Project Gigabit – the UK Government’s £5 billion programme to subsidise the roll-out of gigabit-broadband to the ‘hardest to reach’ premises in the country. That programme is delivered by Building Digital UK (BDUK), an executive agency within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).
In its submission to the committee, the Scottish Government highlighted Scotland’s national digital strategy commitments to ensure no one is left behind ‘in the digital world’ and that geography was no barrier to access.
It also referenced the Scottish Government’s own Reaching 100% (R100) contract with Openreach, which has enabled 19,000 premises to access faster broadband speeds in the north of the country.
However, Mr Erskine, a Labour Party adviser, Mr Erskine also highlighted that the Highlands and Islands have “the highest rate of 4G ‘not spots’ in the UK” and the “lowest rural residential superfast broadband coverage in the UK.”