The issue of high-speed broadband has become a really contentious at Westminster in the last few weeks.

The new Conservative MPs from Scotland, egged on by Digital Minister Matt Hancock, believe they have found a stick to beat the Scottish Government with and have set about spreading misinformation about broadband delivery in Scotland. So I thought it time to set the record straight

The scale of broadband rollout in Scotland has dwarfed any other project in the UK with 800,000 premises reached so far. Despite the immense logistics, Scotland has made the fastest progress of any of the UK nations in extending superfast access.

The latest figures from Ofcom show that in many urban areas, there is nearly 100 per cent coverage, and the 95 per cent target the Scottish Government set itself is on track to be met by the end of this year.

Of course much of that remaining 5 per cent will be in more remote areas such as Argyll and the Highlands and I and delighted that the Scottish Government’s R100 project will connect every home and business in the country with a universal service obligation of 30 megabits per second. Of course there are problems and of course people get frustrated. And that is why the Scottish Government intervened.

Had the Scottish Government not stepped in to fix the UK government’s mess, only 28.1 per cent of premises would have access to superfast broadband – that figure is now three times that with a commitment to connecting the remaining hard to reach premises by 2021.

Digital communication was and remains a ‘reserved’ issue, one for which responsibility lies at Westminster, yet it has required direct intervention of the Scottish Government to ensure that our communities get the high-speed broadband they need.

The UK Government had the power to invest directly in high-speed infrastructure across the UK. They chose not to. Thankfully the Scottish Government was there to clean up their mess.