Inclusive Society

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Whitty (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, my apologies. I thank my noble friend Lady Lister for introducing this debate in such a comprehensive way and for pointing out that the multiple and self-reinforcing cumulative inequalities in our society have increased during this period of the pandemic. I would argue, contrary to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that they have been increasing over a longer period.

Those inequalities have been spelt out by many of my colleagues. The noble Lord, Lord Best, spelled out the housing inequalities. There are inequalities of employment and income, inequalities of geographical space, and inequalities in educational attainment and access. As others—particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler—have emphasised, there is much more evidence now of both physical and mental health inequalities.

My noble friend Lady Drake has stolen the point I was going to make most forcibly—that, on top of this, the pandemic has revealed a serious digital and technological inequality. During this pandemic, many of us have come to rely increasingly on having access to the internet for conducting our shopping, dealing with our health problems and social relationships. Those who have no, or very limited, computer skills or access have lost out. But they lost out before the pandemic and, if we are not careful, they will lose out after the pandemic as well. As my noble friend Lady Drake said, it is a significant proportion of the population.

Some two years ago I conducted a consumer assessment of the customers of energy companies, which, by and large, insist on you going to their website to get complaints dealt with, and other satisfactions. Those who were unable to do that were unable to get satisfaction as consumers. Some 25% of over-60s do not have any access to the internet and another 25%, approximately, have only limited understanding of it. Often, they cannot find other means of communication because of deafness or other reasons, and so they are excluded from major aspects of our modern society and our modern economy.

During the pandemic, this exclusion has related not only to the elderly tranches of our society but to the very youngest. Access to education for our children has largely been through the internet during this period. Even in households where there may be some equipment, it is not necessarily available to all the children; for example, if there are two or three siblings and only one computer. If one or both parents are working from home on the computer, the children will not have access to it. The legacy of that for many of them is missing out on education during the pandemic. Therefore, at both ends of the age spectrum, particularly for the poorer sections of society, one of the legacies of the pandemic will be another form of division: the digital or technological divide. Put crudely, to minimise the divide, we must provide every child with a laptop and every non-computer-literate oldster also needs help and alternatives. We will not become a more inclusive society unless we do that.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that while it may or may not be true that society in one sense has become more tolerant, tolerance does not deliver equality of esteem and equality of outcome, and frankly, in our society, tolerance of inequality is not a virtue.