Baroness Morgan of Huyton
Main Page: Baroness Morgan of Huyton (Labour - Life peer)Digital Skills (Select Committee Report)
Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts
Baroness Morgan of Huyton
That this House takes note of the Report from the Digital Skills Committee (Session 2014–15, HL Paper 111).
Baroness Morgan of Huyton (Lab)
My Lords, I am delighted to introduce this debate today, and I look forward to the speeches from all those participating.
This was one of those Select Committees where it is fair to say that collectively we started with a reasonably limited, though variable, amount of knowledge. It was an intense deep dive. For my part, I found the eight months stimulating, illuminating, fascinating and, yes, even enjoyable. This was in no small part due to the indefatigable work of our great team: our clerk Aaron Speer, our policy analyst Emily Greenwood, our assistant Thomas Cheminais, and our specialist advisers, Dr Carl Frey and Professor Andy Westwood. It was also due to the enthusiasm of my fellow committee members.
On a personal basis, I particularly valued the visit to the Hartree Centre at Daresbury near Warrington, where I properly understood the sheer scale and power of big data for the first time, but the whole range of visits and the huge amount of evidence that we received gave us real insight into the opportunities and challenges presented by fast-changing digital technologies. Every day we heard about new reports and read articles and—in the case of my noble friend Lord Giddens, who sadly cannot be here today—new books on the subject. In fact, it was possibly the first Select Committee where we received a book list from one of our committee members.
Whenever the digital economy or digital impact are discussed, two things also follow as night follows day: huge numbers are quoted of potential jobs lost, jobs to be created and the impact on the economy, and the Government of the day, of whatever make-up, have a slight tendency to puff out their collective chest and spout lists of taskforces, initiatives and pots of money being spent. What is clear is that the world is being transformed by the digital revolution, and all aspects of our lives—work, home, society, services and politics—will be touched. Citizens, users of services, as well as the wider workforce, need to be digitally capable. This is both exciting and frightening—a time of great opportunity and great risk—and the role of government in realising the opportunities and managing the risks is fundamental.
In the UK we are rightly proud of our innovators and inventors, creative talents and scientists. We are less good at scaling up our breakthroughs and initial investments and properly harnessing their value for the UK economy. Recent Governments of all colours have taken digital seriously but have also had the tendency to become captivated by their own hype, obsessed by Hoxton and hard hats and running away from anything that could properly be called a strategy or a system. Initiatives—some great—are launched, but do not join up sufficiently or are too short term and key personnel move on quickly. Often by their nature these people are restless innovators and entrepreneurs; they find the experience of government unappealing and their contribution can get lost.
The world is being transformed by a series of profound technological changes: the second machine age. Economists vary in the magnitude of change they envisage. Some believe that as many as 35% of jobs may be automated over the next two decades, while others put it closer to 10%, but all acknowledge that many jobs will change fundamentally, and a huge number and range will have a significant digital element. For example, in health we know of a huge range of new technical jobs and data at every level within the health service, and our experience as patients is changing too and is more reliant on digital. We heard of projected huge numbers of new digital jobs in future decades. Every employer to whom we spoke talked of there already being skills shortages now and of the desire to find employees with digital competence on top of strong basics, and with the softer skills of thinking creatively, working in a team and questioning.
At its most basic, all the changes in work and daily life need superfast broadband—the hard infrastructure. Explanations based on a percentage of the country that is better than it used to be will not do. The internet needs to be viewed as a utility, which means that it must be readily accessible to all or we will neither maximise our economic potential nor avoid increasing inequality. A huge range of goods and services are already cheaper or only available online, and many jobs already expect digital capability. The proportion will only increase at an exponential rate. Throughout our work we received less than convincing promises of internet solutions.
I promised the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, who is a member of the committee but currently engaged on the HS2 Bill, that I would emphasise that she in particular was very unimpressed by progress; we heard not only of rural locations with difficulty but many challenges even in London—the so-called not-spots.
On soft infrastructure, in broad terms the committee agreed strongly that the Government have a responsibility to accelerate the level of digital literacy across the whole population. We found the UK Digital Skills Taskforce’s three-band definition of relevant skills very helpful; namely, digital citizens, digital workers and, at the top of the scale, digital makers. We need to upskill and expand the numbers in all those categories. We were acutely aware of the imbalance between girls and boys at school, and women and men in the workforce, who are interested and engaged in technology. I am pleased that women are well represented here today.
We had good ideas about harnessing the potential of girls. We need better careers advice, role models, parental engagement and much more; the media have a huge contribution to play here, too, if we look at the recent rather good initiatives on girls and sport, which have had a real impact.
Government needs to scrutinise education and training from primary school right throughout adult life. It all has to be joined up. I will give one illustrative example. The introduction of coding in the curriculum is great, but it cannot be delivered without the necessary trained teachers—bluntly, the gap will not be filled by a bit of CSR, however good, in parts of a few of our cities. The committee was told by the National College for Teaching and Leadership that it had funded a total of 121 scholarships in computing in 2014-15, and the previous year 360 new computing teachers had entered the profession. By the way, there are 25,000 schools in England alone. I was with a group of excellent head teachers last week who cannot introduce the new computer studies courses in their secondary schools as they simply cannot recruit suitable teachers. This was in London—try recruiting in Hull. So what is the plan to sort this out nationally?
We suggested the introduction of a module into all teacher training going forward and potentially into all degree courses to enhance digital confidence. In parallel, we heard too of severe shortages in maths, physics and other subjects. At the same time, the Government are trying—correctly, in my view—to extend the amount of maths studied in schools and colleges, but this all needs to be sorted out properly as a whole.
We felt that post-school there needed to be a fundamental shake-up. We got the picture of a pretty slow-moving, underfunded and rather clunky skills infrastructure in many FE colleges and beyond. Of course there are notable exceptions—the new coding college, starting in the autumn, is great, but how can that approach be rolled out more quickly? The current area reviews of FE colleges are really just looking at the finances, not at quality and innovation in the FE sector. The vocational qualifications currently offered are not necessarily what business wants, nor are they fully understood by business.
New models of learning—online, short courses designed with employers—and new types of quality qualifications need to keep pace with evolving technology and technological change. Apprenticeships, high-level vocational courses and degrees need to deliver general digital capability across the piece and to develop specialists. All adults need ways to upskill throughout their lives. As in successful competitor countries in the EU, for example, there needs to be a sort of social contract between government, business and individual employees to share responsibility for this going forward.
We were also acutely aware of the need to ensure that the benefits of the new technological era were felt throughout the UK, and this will need government to be nimble in identifying potential, intervening when, for example, a particular local enterprise partnership is not working, connecting universities and business more effectively, and standing back when there is successful momentum.
Government has a huge responsibility to take a proper grip. It does not mean that government should do everything—far from it—but it needs to own the whole digital agenda. Sometimes the role of government means convening, pushing, investing, advocating and reallocating resources. At other times, it means knocking heads together across departmental and geographical boundaries. It means making hard choices and reforming long-established organisations. It means sticking at it, resisting the excitement of announcements and reviewing progress regularly.
We produced a far-reaching report back in February 2015 but we deliberately did not produce a long string of recommendations. Rather, we focused on the vital role of government and produced an illustrative blueprint of all that we believed needed to happen. We recommended that the Government use this as an aid in producing their own digital agenda, properly pulling together work across Whitehall and beyond. We stressed that this work could not be static: the pace of change is such that there needs to be a restless and relentless focus at the heart of government.
For that reason, we saw the need for a Cabinet Minister at the centre of government, wholly responsible for the work, rather than continuing with myriad Ministers, departmental briefs, teams, working parties and committees. We deliberately did not cast blame or dwell on what had happened in the past. Indeed, we were clear that the then Government, and previous ones, had done much that could be applauded, but it was rather piecemeal, often short term, tending to initiative-itis and not comprehensive. However, we were optimistic. Why not produce a report, we thought, aimed at the incoming Government of whatever make-up? The committee urged the new Government to seize this agenda, really get stuck in and not worry overmuch about defending the past. This was the chance to stop being either complacent or defensive—a tendency of all Governments.
We deliberately called out report Make or Break: The UK’s Digital Future, not to be melodramatic but to be clear that this is a moment of such colossal change and of such opportunity and risk that we saw it as a call to action. It is always easier for a new Government to be bold, and we wanted this one to be so.
The Government’s response has been somewhat patchy. On the plus side, responsibility for the Digital Economy Unit has been transferred from joint ownership of two departments to sole ownership of the DCMS. Whether this is quite the high-profile, centre-of-government location that we urged may be open to question. I do not need to tell many Members of this House that location in government really does matter, and clearly the Government’s own digital delivery is still owned by the Cabinet Office.
I was surprised by omissions in the Government’s response, which made me concerned that the necessary co-ordination is not yet there. For example, we were concerned that without sufficient attention to cybersecurity and internet safety, citizens and businesses may be too worried to exploit the benefits of digital technology. I happen to know that good work is happening on both. For example, I am aware of the good work being undertaken by the noble Baroness, Lady Shields, and others on internet safety, and yet this was not referred to in the response from the Government, so presumably is not understood as part of the overall government approach.
There have been some announcements relating to the hard infrastructure and internet access. These are welcome, but the details will definitely need careful scrutiny in this House to make sure that the reality meets the headlines, and Ofcom will need to demonstrate that it has been sufficiently radical in its approach.
The other day, I received a briefing from the DCMS, for which I was very grateful. However, I confess that my heart sank somewhat when the first sentence read, as usual:
“The UK is a well-connected nation”.
So we should be and so we must be, especially when our competitors are investing so heavily. But what is meant by “well-connected”? The briefing then stated that:
“9 out of 10 homes and businesses can access superfast broadband and this will reach 95% by the end of next year”.
The report urges that superfast internet provision should be viewed as a fourth utility. I believe that the Government share this view, but that means a very fast progression to 100% coverage.
As to our proposal for a comprehensive government digital agenda, I was very pleased to hear that the Government were proposing to produce such a strategy. Indeed, I was happy for this debate to be delayed to be able to see the Government’s proposals, and, as I said, bits have already been announced. Our committee recommended the production of a new digital agenda as a top priority for the incoming Government—that was last summer—and a report to Parliament this summer on progress on that agenda. But we cannot have a progress report as we still have no strategy.
On 29 December 2015, the DCMS said that a new agenda would be set out “early next year”. Then, at a Select Committee session in the other place on 8 March this year, the honourable Ed Vaizey MP said:
“We have written the digital skills strategy. When you can expect it to appear is anybody’s guess. I thought we would publish it in February. It was in the famous Downing Street grid. It fell out of the Downing Street grid for reasons that I cannot fathom. If you were a theologian, you would have better ways of understanding how the Downing Street grid works. There is a rumour that it may appear in the Budget and there is a rumour that it may not appear in the Budget”.
It did not appear, and it has not yet.
Can the Minister tell us when the digital strategy will be published? Does she share the committee’s sense of urgency? Does she believe that there is proper co-ordination across government, including the Treasury? Has every relevant department fed into the production of the strategy? Specifically, will it include full details of soft infrastructure—education and skills—as well as hard infrastructure? Will that input come from the DfE as well as BIS? Does she support the idea of updates to Parliament rather than, as Mr Vaizey said, “updates to the PM”, so that the digital strategy, when produced, does not become fossilised on a shelf alongside previous similar publications?
I urge the Minister to reply to this debate in as open a way as possible. I know that the upskilling of young people and the wider workforce, for example, is of real interest to her, but unconnected initiatives will not deliver what we all know is needed. There is commitment on all Benches to this agenda, but to move forward successfully there needs to be openness and honesty about what is and what is not yet working. There is no room for complacency. That point was underlined by the report from the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee on digital skills, which came out today. It reiterates the urgency of this agenda.
I am sure that the Minister’s brief will have a mass of detail of current government action. However, our committee is urging a step change—as we said, a call to action. I look forward to the Minister’s reply and ask the House to note our report.
Baroness Morgan of Huyton
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in an excellent debate. I thank the Minister for her reply and for the spirit in which she replied. These speeches have shown, as ever, the wealth of expertise and experience in this House and the strong consensus that exists across all Benches. I hope that this debate gives power to her elbow to get a comprehensive, practical, agile agenda published and moving. It is crucial to the UK’s future success. Finally, it is important that as a House we return in future to this subject to assess progress.