Digital Understanding

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, I live in rural Norfolk so if my remarks sound rather like those of the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, I am sure that noble Lords will understand.

It would be so nice to follow the call of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for digital understanding, but for those of us who do not have access to the digital world through an effective broadband internet, that understanding is a bit of a chimera. The Government have a totally inadequate strategy to achieve universal coverage of the internet broadband service in rural areas. Where I live in the parish of Brockdish and Thorpe Abbotts in the Waveney valley along the border between Norfolk and Suffolk, it took from 1926 to 1955 to get electrification and it looks as if it is going to take as long to get broadband. I discovered two months ago that there is a cable laid by a Dutch company that runs all the way down from Lowestoft to London and is laid 300 yards from my door. However, the Government processes of putting in rural broadband around Norfolk are constrained by not only all the money being given away to BT, which has wasted it in ways I will outline in a minute, but also by the fact that nobody can get access to this cable except through voluntary organisations that have now bought into it. It looks as if I will have to dig the cable myself.

Is that satisfactory? I do not think so. I am supporting a group of very angry local residents who feel we have been totally abandoned. It has been a scandal. Hundreds of millions of pounds have poured into BT and Openreach and their vans are all over place. They are putting in cabinets that connect to copper wire, through which we can get an effective signal about 30 yards from the cabinet. So those of us who live in the outlying villages will never get broadband. There are little red dots on the BT maps that say “you’re never gonna get it”.

It is making a huge difference to educational and economic prospects: our farmers tear their hair out, I cannot even buy things online from my favourite shops and as for downloading things, it is not enough. What I want to know is: how are we going to get an adequate strategy that enables us to get a realistic deliverable timetable? To me this is as important as electricity and a clean water supply. Can the Minister, say something to cheer up us unconnected village folk of Brockdish and Thorpe Abbotts, and the thousands round our county and all the other rural counties who have exactly the same problem? We are never going to catch up unless you give some real government support for local communities to get it in.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness and everyone who has contributed to the debate. I have 10 minutes and about 50 minutes’ worth of material, so I will speak fast and hope I will be able to answer some questions.

This is obviously an extremely important subject, as demonstrated by the contributions around the House. I have certainly enjoyed the debate. As everyone has said, there are good things and bad things about our digital world, but the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. The noble Lord, Lord Sugar, expressed it more succinctly: “Get over it”, he said. We will have to cope and I will try to explain how we will.

We have three overarching goals for digital technology. First, we want the country to continue to be what it is today—a world-leading digital economy and the best place in the world to innovate with technology and to start and grow a digital business. Secondly, we want all the benefits of digital to be enjoyed by everyone, rather than be the exclusive preserve of tech professionals. Thirdly, we are committed to making the UK the safest place in the world for users to be online. I will come to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, is right to highlight the importance of awareness and understanding in accomplishing these goals, but we need the skills to be in that position. I do not have time to outline them, but we are making enormous efforts to develop and enhance these digital skills. If I have time, I will come to some of the educational areas that we are looking at. If not, I will certainly write to everyone who has asked a question which I have not managed to get to.

Thanks to these efforts, we are in a position of relative strength on digital skills internationally. However, that is just one part of the story. Increasingly, people need digital skills in every aspect of their lives: shopping, doing their taxes and getting the best healthcare. So we are taking action on every category of digital skills: basic skills, the general skills needed in most jobs, and advanced skills for specialist roles such as cybersecurity. I will not go through those now, because it is important to focus on what the noble Baroness outlined in her very good opening speech.

The technology promises bountiful opportunities and rewards, but it comes with challenges and threats. These threats are to our security, privacy, emotional well-being, mental health and safety—especially the safety of children. Society’s norms, rules and institutions must all evolve so that technological progress delivers a better world for everyone. That is the underlying thinking behind the digital charter that the UK Government will introduce. It will set out a framework for how businesses—including the huge digital corporations mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens—individuals and wider society should act in the digital world. This is absolutely not just a task for the Government. Over the coming months we will work with businesses, academics, charities and the wider public to build consensus around what this framework should be.

An important part of that work will be the publication of the internet safety strategy Green Paper. This will ask for views on a range of options to counter internet harms. We talked a lot about that in the progress of the Digital Economy Bill last year. Through the strategy, we want to agree the balance of responsibilities shared by technology companies, teachers, parents and the Government in keeping people safe online.

I turn to the difficult issue of social media. The Digital Economy Act requires the establishment of a code of practice, to be issued and reviewed if necessary by the Secretary of State. This will offer guidance to providers of social media platforms on action it may be appropriate to take against users of the platform who engage in intimidating or insulting behaviour. We expect online industries to ensure that they have relevant safeguards and robust processes in place and to act promptly when abuse is reported. The data protection Bill will give individuals more control over their data. We are working also towards an international consensus, which is so important in this area.

I return to the concept of digital understanding. The Government have put forward the idea of establishing a data use and ethics body, which will I believe address some of the examples given by the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin. This will establish a sound ethical framework for understanding how data can and should be used. It will address both the needs of the present and the challenges emerging on the horizon as data use becomes ever more sophisticated. Importantly, it will ensure that the public have confidence that their data are being handled properly, that businesses have the assurance that they are handling data with integrity, and that regulators and Parliament are equipped to identify and guard against abuse. We will be very interested in people’s views, and the body will consult widely. Since we mentioned it in a debate in this House in July, we have been working with stakeholders such as the Nuffield Foundation, the Royal Society and the British Academy to identify the roles and functions. So the Government are working with the public, tech companies, education and training providers, and charities such as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, Doteveryone, on this vital agenda.

I will quickly come to as many of the questions as I can. The noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, asked if digital was a priority of this Government. I confirm that it is a priority—which is reflected in the fact that my department has now been renamed the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The noble Baronesses, Lady Lane-Fox, Lady O’Neill and Lady Kidron, asked whether we would make a clear articulation of values online. We absolutely agree with the importance of articulating those, which of course is why we are going to introduce a new digital charter and set out a framework, as I mentioned. Our starting point is that the delicate and careful limits that we have honed over generations for life offline should apply online, too.

It is true that I went to inspect my noble friend Lord Cathcart’s broadband, which I would describe as slow but sure. However, being serious, this is difficult. We are on track to reach 95% superfast broadband. For the 5%, there are problems, but I assure my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, that, in her words, there has been real government support for this. More than £24 million of central government funding has been allocated to better broadband for Norfolk. That has been matched by local council funding, which means that more than 173,000 additional homes and businesses are able to access superfast broadband in Norfolk. I accept that, for people who do not have it, this is a real problem—I have experienced it myself. But I also commend what the right reverend Prelate said about WiSpire fixed wireless providers. They would be particularly appropriate in Norfolk—which, as we know, is very flat.

[Baroness Murphy]

Could I just ask the Minister whether he has seen trees in Norfolk?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I did not quite hear that.

[Baroness Murphy]

Trees.