Digital Technology: Skilled Workforce

Lord Flight Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Lord is right. Actually 17% of people who work in the tech sector and 9.5% of students taking computer science A-levels are female, yet women make up almost half the workforce. We are taking forward plans. There are a number of programmes already in place to do that: CyberFirst Girls Competition, the TechFuture Girls programme, Code First: Girls, techmums, Mums in Technology, Microsoft’s DigiGirlz events and a number of others. It is absolutely on the radar screen.

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the importance of the enterprise investment scheme in stimulating equity investment in a lot of these new digital companies? It is one of the reasons why so many have got off the ground.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am aware of the enterprise investment scheme. It is one of the ways that we can promote start-up companies. It is more risky, but there are advantages to it, so I take my noble friend’s point.