Technology and People: Deloitte Report

Baroness Rock Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Rock (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to the Register of Lords’ Interests, as I am a non-executive director of the technology company Imagination Technologies. I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Borwick on securing this important debate, and I commend the authors of the Deloitte report for showing thought leadership on so pivotal an issue.

The report rightly concludes that technology raises our standard of living, increases productivity and creates jobs in new sectors. Indeed, politicians and economists the world over have long extolled the societal benefits of technological progress, globalisation and innovation. The report offers us numerous examples of the obvious benefits of technological progress. It is surely good that we rely less on raw physical labour, that there are more women in the workplace and that people can work until later in life. We spend less on food and less on clothes thanks to technology, innovation and their collective impact on lowering prices.

As many noble Lords will have read in the report, it is certainly true that technology threatens some jobs and industries but, overall, it can add to employment across the economy. As has already been mentioned, while some sectors, such as agriculture and manufacturing, have declined, others have grown. The number of technology managers has increased by a factor of 6.5 in the last 35 years and the number of programmers has increased threefold to just under 300,000.

Some will ask how the Government can predict, control or indeed lead innovation in our economy so that they can manage their employment policy accordingly. Given that inventors and innovators rarely know the end use of their work, as it combines with the work of dozens others to drive change, what chance government? What then should the role of government be? According to a recent World Economic Forum publication, 65% of today’s primary school children will end up working in a job type that currently does not exist. Despite the sense of enormity that this statistic creates, education is the right place to start, as many noble Lords have already mentioned. This is precisely what the Government should be focusing on: giving our children the strongest possible foundation so that they can succeed.

I am proud of this Government’s record in helping to build this foundation. We have seen investment in science continue and we will see a further £6.9 billion invested in our research infrastructure up to 2021.

More particularly, children are now learning to code as soon as they start school and maths is one of the most popular A-level subjects. I know that noble Lords from all sides of the House will welcome the new National College for Digital Skills, which is opening its doors to students this autumn. It offers both sixth-form and further education opportunities in digital skills—future-proofing our children, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, mentioned, for whatever is to come. Education has for ever been cited as the best return on investment that a Government can get. Even as the pace of technological change seems inevitably to increase, investing in education will help us all keep up.