Digital Technology (Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee Report)

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not Lord Puttnam either, but I join my noble friend Lord Lipsey and the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, in paying tribute to him. I do not think he designed the report as being his last one in this House, but he could not have had a more perfect one for him, since it embraces all the years that he has spent in communications, his commitment to democracy and his understanding of the power of education. We have benefited from his ability to be optimistic about the possibilities while warning about the risks, and to always try to come out on the right side of that balance. I am pleased to say that I too think that this report reflects a lot of his skills, and I was grateful to have the opportunity to serve on the committee with my very good friend.

About a quarter of a century ago I was very optimistic about the effect of digital technology on democracy. Although the report looks at the risks, it is important to say that that technology has offered many things that are good, and we ought to treasure those and make the most of them. But we have been too slow to see the risks. Think about what has happened since the committee was set up: events at the Capitol, the coronavirus, Ukraine and overseas interference in elections. And what have we done in those two years? Precious little, except set up even more committees. That is our challenge: our inability to work as speedily as we need to in taking the action we need to take in order to protect democracy.

There are two themes running throughout the report. The first is the idea that democracy requires that those who hold power must be accountable for that power, and that includes technology and the platforms. The second is that we have to empower citizens to be informed, critical users of information—and it is that which I shall concentrate my remarks on.

Quite simply, what has happened with technology in the past two decades is that we have developed a new way of doing politics and a different way of communicating and campaigning. But we have not given our population the skills and the means to navigate their way through it. Too many citizens do not have the skills to really get on top of this process and be the active citizens that we would want them to be. Even more worryingly, our education system is not preparing the next generation so that they will have the skills.

David said in his foreword to the report:

“In the digital world, our belief in what we see, hear and read is being distorted to the point at which we no longer know who or what to trust.”


I do not think anybody here would say that that is not the case; in preparing our children to be active, confident and digitally literate citizens, our education system has got to take account of that world. It is not like it was when I was a child, or a teacher; it is not old-fashioned civics, or learning about the electoral system or where to put the “X”. Quite simply, there was not one witness in this report who thought that what we were doing in our schools was fit for purpose and would do the job of preparing our children to be active citizens in the digital arena.

More worrying than that is the evidence that was given by Ministers and civil servants. I have never been as frustrated about how far from reality they seem to be as I was on this issue. They told us that what they had done to prepare our children was bring in computing classes—one element of PSHE and citizenship that in any case is only one lesson a week if you are lucky. That is simply not enough. The worrying thing is that we do not have a department that understands the nature of the challenge, let alone has the ambition to meet that challenge.

I know that, since then, we have had the online media strategy published by DCMS, and that has in it some more promising work; it recognises the work that many of the charities and indeed the digital platforms are doing. But in the end, all it has done is transport the inadequacies of the DfE into its own report. If cross-departmental working is going to bring value added, you cannot just transport a pretty miserable set of activities from one department into what could have been a half-decent report in another department. I would ask the Minister to look at that again.

There is hope, however. From what I know of the department, when DfE takes seriously something such as literacy or numeracy, and works hard at it, it scours the world for best practice. We have all heard about how the Chinese teach maths and how the Australians teach literacy. Where has the energy gone into finding who does digital skills well? It is there. We received evidence from Estonia and Finland. We heard about Latvia, Denmark and Sweden. We are not world-beating in preparing our children to be confident citizens in the digital world. We are not even on the first rung. This is serious—as serious as if we were bringing up a generation of children who could not read or write. I would like to see a bit more ambition in government to make that right. I do see that ambition in our report, and I very much hope that its impact will be felt in the years to come.