Digital Economy Bill

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for introducing the Bill. I am happy to declare a number of interests, which can be found in the register. Among them is the fact that for the past five years I have enjoyed the role of Digital Champion for Ireland, working in that country and in Europe to wrestle to the ground some of the problems created by the digital world, as well as taking advantage of the many benefits it brings.

I have also, for 10 years and more, taught in Singapore and watched the anticipatory way that country plans for and addresses technological and social change. Your Lordships will be delighted to know that in Singapore and elsewhere, Ofcom is regarded as very much the poster child for responsible regulation. That delights me, as I had the privilege of chairing the Joint Scrutiny Committee of both Houses for the 2003 Communications Bill, which set up Ofcom and in which all things digital were firmly placed in the “too difficult” box, to the frustration of all of us at the time. With what result? The result was that we have been engaged in a dozen years or more of effectively playing catch-up.

There is much that is good and timely about this Bill, so I will focus my remarks on what is not in it in the hope that we might avoid at least some of the lost opportunities of 2003, so many of which were entirely predictable, including the role of the ISPs in respect of many things from pornography to piracy.

That the world of work is changing is little more than a dull truism, but the issue that seems, for the present, to have been sailing under the legislative radar is the nature and sheer pace of some of these changes and the impact they are having and will increasingly have on the people most likely to be affected by them. I will not rehearse the history of industrial change in the second half of the 20th century, but it is pretty safe to say that it was a time of turbulence and job insecurity right across what used to be called our “blue-collar workforce”. Jobs vanished from the production line as automation bit, and indeed in some industries, continues to bite hard.

However, I believe that we are now faced with a somewhat different crisis as new forms of intelligence-driven processes threaten—and in some cases will obviate—what until now have been considered “safe” jobs in many of the professions. I give by way of example the law, accountancy, architecture and indeed even some areas of education—areas in which a decent degree seemed to assure a job, if not for life then at least for the foreseeable future.

By my reading, this Bill takes little account of the threat to individuals and to the economy as a whole of what is likely to be a wave of digitally created redundancies. I bow to no man in my belief that, over time, the digital world may be capable of generating more jobs than it lays waste to. However, the important words there are “over time”. As the Minister will no doubt tell us, the development of digital skills does receive attention in this Bill, and will receive further attention by amendments to the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act. But I would argue that there is a significant mismatch between the issues of training and reskilling currently identified in this legislation and the actual crisis that sits just around the corner, just a few years from now, when possibly hundreds of thousands of livelihoods could be lost to the incoming wave of intelligence-driven digital innovation.

Given sufficient thought and legislative support, it may be possible to retrain and reskill accountants to become data analysts, conveyancing lawyers to become digital copyright specialists or architects to become cybersecurity designers. However, that will not be achieved overnight and without a great deal of thought and, if I dare suggest it, preplanning. I understand that the Governments of the Netherlands and Germany, along with those of some of the Scandinavian countries, are already very well seized of this issue and have governmental task forces in place to address the myriad possibilities of a world of work that is, at least for the present, veiled in a great degree of uncertainty. When he comes to reply, will the Minister reassure the House that Her Majesty’s Government are similarly preparing themselves for these eventualities—actually, they are not eventualities, they are inevitabilities? I will not delay the House by reciting the evidence for my assertions, but I suggest that the department take a long, hard look at recent reports on the subject by Deloitte, McKinsey’s and the Bank of England, as well as numerous articles in the Financial Times and elsewhere. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, indicated, this problem is not science-fiction: it is real, it is now and it is not going to go away.

In conclusion, I will quote a short extract from a book entitled, “The Future of Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts”, by the British academics Richard and Daniel Susskind. In their book they say:

“We anticipate an ‘incremental transformation’ in the way that we produce and distribute expertise in society. This will eventually lead to a dismantling of the professions”.

If they are even half right, the impact on the taxpaying, mortgage-owning middle class of this country could be immense. I believe that any responsible Government should prepare themselves for such an eventuality, and have the legislation in place that enables this particular workforce to avoid falling victim to the combined impacts of advanced technology and globalisation.

In her introduction to the Bill, the Secretary of State said:

“We will make sure all adults who need it can receive free training in digital skills to equip them for the modern world”.

That is an entirely laudable ambition, but, try as I might, I can find nothing on the face of the Bill that might turn it into the type of complex and potentially expensive policy tool that, if I am right, the situation five years from now will unquestionably demand. I hope to gain support from the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and others during the Committee stage of the Bill to achieve agreement to amendments that might have the effect of transforming the Secretary of State’s ambition into a working reality. However, to do so, the means will have to match the aims.