Digital Skills (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for calling this debate and for her lively and interesting speech. I share in the heartfelt thanks of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond to the Select Committee, its staff and advisers for a very perceptive and wide-ranging report on the digital future. I have very much enjoyed the comments today of so many of the committee’s members and other noble Lords. You all know how passionate I am about digital, so to spend an afternoon listening to experts on the subject is for me a delight.

Moreover, last week, the European Union published a paper on digital skills and this very morning—with exquisite timing, as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, said—the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published a report on related issues. All this attention shows the widespread realisation that this subject is of major importance, and the urgency of the issues before us all today. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, rightly mentioned digital progress in other parts of the country. I was very impressed by the work done in Glasgow on digital health when I was lucky enough to attend the Commonwealth Games.

The fact is that digital skills are of major and increasing relevance to everybody’s lives. As far as work is concerned, they underpin increases in productivity, but that is by no means all of it. Social life is increasingly dependent on digital, as we have heard and, as the report said, the impact of new digital technology is all-encompassing. Opting out is not possible. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, rightly said that the Government have a key role.

The truth is that almost everyone—all those below retirement age and many above it—need to improve and develop their digital skills. Necessarily, many institutions, organisations and businesses—in fact, probably most of them—must be involved. Of course, the Government are a key institution.

Digital is also a key driver of UK growth and innovation. As my noble friend Lady Harding of Winscombe said, we spend more per head online than any other nation and—which I had not heard before—we have the largest positive digital balance of payments in the world. Digital also accounts for more than 8% of exports and for 1.4 million jobs. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, gave a Tech City figure that was higher than that, but they are probably both underestimates, as an extraordinary process of convergence is taking place. Traditional industries such as consumer electronics, healthcare, domestic heating and banking are now adding as much value in their computing as in the original product.

Our work on the digital single market in Brussels recognises this revolution, in which the UK can achieve a lot, an experience which our revived car industry has already shown. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, that the UK should be at the helm of this digital revolution. Indeed, only a month ago I was in Rome, hosting a UK-Italy conference with 60 SMEs, ensuring that the UK is at the forefront of shaping this sort of industrial change. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, there is so much interest in UK experience overseas—and next week I am at an OECD meeting on the subject.

Since the Committee published its findings in February 2015, we have taken action which addresses key recommendations from the report. The committee called for greater government co-ordination. After the election, in May 2015, we created a digital skills epicentre—maybe it could be more proactive—in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, with my colleague in the other place, Ed Vaizey, leading the charge. My noble friend Lady Shields, who was here earlier, brings her huge experience to the piece, not only in changing the Government’s approach to internet safety but, as we were hearing, reaching parts that others do not reach with her blog. We have support from the Secretary of State, who is more experienced on culture, media and sport matters than many others before him. Of course, I have my own experience of business—some of you may have heard of Tesco clubcard—and international experience of digital.

This set-up was further strengthened in November by transferring responsibility for digital inclusion, now known as digital engagement, to my colleague, Ed Vaizey, in his role as Digital Minister. Because the Government have recognised the critical importance of digital skills and infrastructure, we have established a cross-government digital inclusion and infrastructure taskforce. Chaired by Ed Vaizey, it is tasked with making sure that we deliver on our digital policy commitments, such as rolling out universal broadband and better mobile phone connections, and actively tackling digital exclusion.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, asked amusingly and graciously when we would be publishing our long-awaited digital strategy. We will be publishing it shortly—and I mean shortly, not at the end of the year. The Government have been working with numerous stakeholders to build this strategy. We have been working extensively with other government departments, as noble Lords would expect, including BIS, DfE and the Treasury—actually, right across Whitehall, in all its nooks and crannies. We will set out a clear digital agenda for government over the course of this Parliament, which will include soft infrastructure with skills and education as key strands. So we will present a joined-up strategy and provide more information on how we intend to report progress, since, as several noble Lords have said, regular evaluation is important. We will set out the Government’s ambitions for this Parliament on the whole digital agenda, including on skills and infrastructure, which we have debated today.

We are clear on the scale of the task we face; it is large. This debate, to my mind, could not come at a better time. Finalising our strategy, we can take account of the expertise of noble Lords and, of course, of the Commons Science and Technology Committee report, published today and chaired by another talented woman, Nicola Blackwood, as has been said. I shall personally make sure that my friend Ed Vaizey reads the “pearls of wisdom”, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath.

Most importantly, the report called for the Government to share their digital agenda. We will do just that through the publication of our digital strategy, which will set out Government’s ambitions for this Parliament for the whole digital agenda, including on skills and infrastructure. We believe this will help to secure our position as a digitally innovative nation.

I move on to infrastructure. To make the most of the internet, people must be able to access it. I have often spoken myself about the importance of this fourth or fifth utility. We are on track to reach our aim of 95% broadband coverage by the end of 2017.

On the question asked by my noble friend Lord Holmes about the last 5%, we have given more funding to areas with coverage below 90% to increase their coverage levels to at least 90%. In very hard to reach areas, we are running pilots with suppliers to identify the best way to reach those, and which will inform future government investment. Through the digital economy Bill we will be introducing measures to implement a broadband universal service obligation by 2020. This will oblige providers to provide households and businesses with a broadband connection of a minimum speed, regardless of location. I am sure there will be many opportunities to debate the detail.

To respond to my noble friend Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope and my noble friend Lord Holmes, the Bill we have in mind will be wide-ranging. In addition to measures to increase connectivity, including the USO, there will be changes to the electronic communications code to make it cheaper for operators to acquire land, which will help with internet rollout, and there will be measures to enable us to use government data to deliver public services.

The UK needs digital skills at every level. There are the basic digital skills needed by all individuals, which my noble friend Lady Harding described so convincingly, making the business case in her inimitable way, for more investment. Then, there are the higher-level skills already required by many jobs—I would say most—and, thirdly, specialist and advanced skills required by experts. There about 1 million of them needed by 2023.

My noble friend Lord Holmes asked me a lot of questions. We certainly recognise the importance of ensuring that the internet is accessible to all, which is why all new digital services from the Government must meet the digital-by-default service standards. There are also many vital business initiatives in this important area.

It is widely recognised that basic digital skills may soon become as important as maths and English. Accordingly, many people have upgraded their skills in recent years and the Government have provided funding to help. Since 2010, we have provided £36 million to partners to support 1.5 million people to gain basic digital skills. That includes the Tinder Foundation, which the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, chairs, and which we should not compare or confuse with the dating website of the same name!

Of course, we have more to do. Data from Ipsos Mori and Go ON UK suggest that 23% of adults lack basic digital skills. To meet this challenge, the Government are working with a network of private and voluntary organisations to develop initiatives that will reach as many people as possible. For example, Lloyds Banking Group is training 20,000 digital champions to support the digital skills of customers and the wider community. That is a good example of corporate philanthropy.

As acknowledged by the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, we have reformed the school computing curriculum, so that it provides young people with computational thinking skills needed for the future of work. The number of students taking the computer science GCSE has risen markedly, and we should not forget the totemic and substantive importance of every new primary school child, including my own granddaughter, now learning coding.

I shall reflect on the wider points made by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, about the balance in the curriculum. Certainly, digital is extremely important to the curriculum, which is acknowledged in all the countries that I travel in and in our own work in the Education Department.

Reforms to technical education will be announced in our post-16 skills plan, to be published later this year, and feature in the Higher Education and Research Bill, already introduced in the other place. Reformed apprenticeships, which several have mentioned, will enable employers to collaborate to create standards that are relevant to the digital revolution and meet their needs. As a former employer, I believe that that will be a priority in the new employer-led apprenticeship environment. So I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Clement-Jones. Ten standards have already been created for digital, with more in the pipeline, and of course we have set up the Institute for Apprenticeships to safeguard quality.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about the cost of debt to students. The innovative digital degree apprenticeship is two-thirds funded by government, with one-third and a wage paid by the employer, so this route is providing high-level digital skills at no cost to the apprentice and enables young people from all backgrounds to gain digital skills. I hope this will be a new avenue to the digitalisation of our workforce. We have already established the Ada National College for Digital Skills, which opens in Tottenham Hale in September 2016, and aim to reach 5,000 students within five years, 40% of them women.

In higher education, Professor Shadbolt’s review has provided some important recommendations on improving the employability of computer science graduates. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, will be interested to know that we are working with stakeholders to take these employability success factors forward. I fully agree with the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, about the importance of equipping people with the digital skills they need throughout their lives. We are holding a summit on lifelong learning in July, which will explore this important area further.

Several noble Lords mentioned diversity. It is vital that girls and boys recognise the opportunities digital skills offer. I will not repeat all that has been said, but I should add that my honourable friend Ed Vaizey chaired a summit recently with industry better to understand the issues which might be limiting the numbers of women in digital roles. We will be taking that further. We recently announced our ambition to see a 20% increase in the proportion of girls’ A-level entries in maths, science and computer science by 2020.

The Government are also taking action to ensure we are developing the specialist digital skills that are so essential to the economy, which includes the work the Government are doing on data and artificial intelligence. On cyber, there is a £1.9 billion programme over the next five years with a lot of opportunities being proposed.

In the interests of time, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Foster, on the BBC. It is something that we discuss often in this House, and I would like to answer the questions he raised.

In closing, I repeat my thanks to the committee and to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, for their excellent contributions on a vital topic. As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, I think it was, implied, the report has matured, rather like good wine, and it feels even more relevant today than it was in February last year. What about that for an excuse for taking time to provide time for a debate?

Since the report’s publication, we have further improved government co-ordination on digital skills and have continued to make our education and training systems more relevant to the needs of employers. While on most measures we compare well with other EU countries of a similar size, there is a vast amount still to do, and that is why we will shortly be setting out our ambitions in our digital strategy and explaining how we can seize the current and future opportunities that the digital revolution offers.