Labour have promised to grow the economy and make Britain more competitive. But one of the things that growth depends on – fast and reliable mobile signal – is being quietly undermined by a law most people have never heard of. Unless ministers act soon, the plan to bring 5G to every part of the country by 2030 will be in real trouble.
Strong mobile signal is no longer a luxury. Families need it for schoolwork and everyday life, farmers to sell their crops and manage livestock, small shops to take card payments – and hospitals need it to share test results and talk to patients. A good mobile network is as important to the country as roads, railways or electricity.
Yet Britain is slipping badly behind. London is now at the bottom of the European league for 5G quality and the UK as a whole ranks near the back for both speed and availability. For a country that calls itself a digital leader, that is a serious warning sign.
Part of the problem goes back to a decision made in 2017. The government of the day rewrote the rules on how much landowners are paid for allowing masts on their land. The idea was simple: cut those rents so that phone companies could build more masts more quickly.
It has not worked out that way. Rents have been cut by as much as 90%. Farmers, schools, hospitals and councils that had agreed in good faith to host masts suddenly saw their contracts changed and their income slashed. Trust collapsed and legal disputes exploded: more than 1,000 cases have gone to tribunal since 2017, compared with just a few dozen in the previous 30 years.
Instead of speeding things up, the law has slowed them down. Landowners have become wary of hosting masts, new sites are harder to secure and private investment is being spent on legal fights instead of new coverage.
Now Labour are preparing to extend the same rules to another 15,000 mast sites through a later law known as the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act. At the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Ian Murray recently signalled that the Government intends to press ahead, and that appears set to continue under the new telecoms minister, Liz Lloyd, now responsible for overseeing the policy rollout.
That would be a mistake. A national survey of more than 550 mast hosts – including farmers, local councils, schools, churches and NHS trusts – found that one in three are now thinking of pulling out altogether. If they do, masts will be lost and new ones will be even harder to build. Britain’s patchy coverage will get worse just when the economy needs it most.
This is not about protecting landowners for the sake of it. It is about keeping the country connected. When signal fails, shops lose sales, public services cannot modernise and rural communities are cut off. Growth depends on the digital backbone that keeps everything else moving.
Labour themselves warned in 2022, when they voted against these plans in opposition, that the reforms were likely to ‘slow down, rather than speed up’ the 5G rollout. Ministers should listen to their own words.
The Government should pause the next stage and carry out the review of the 2017 changes that was promised but never done. That review should look not just at how rents are set but at the surge in legal disputes, the growing power of the multi-national tower companies and the lack of evidence that savings are being used to improve the network.
Other countries are already showing a better way. The European Union’s Gigabit Infrastructure Act encourages co-operation and fair rents, helping nations such as Denmark, Spain and Germany to pull ahead in coverage and quality.
If Labour want to deliver the growth they have promised, they must fix the law that is holding back Britain’s mobile future. Without that reset, the country will face more blackspots, more legal battles and a 5G target that slips further out of reach.
