Digital Infrastructure, Connectivity and Accessibility

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I thank and congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) on bringing this important debate to the House. I start by recognising what the Government have done in this space, where we have some very positive developments. I particularly honour them for the “outside-in” approach to extending broadband coverage, so that everywhere gets connected together, including the hardest-to-reach 20%. That is an important principle.

The Government are seeking not just the sugar rush of investment in the productivity sweet spots of our country, but long-term investment in the future of all our communities. I particularly congratulate the Government on issuing 40,000 vouchers under the rural gigabit broadband voucher scheme. Some 500,000 premises have been connected to gigabit broadband in the past year. That is a very positive development, but as we have heard, more is needed for rural areas.

The internet is the saviour of the countryside. If we want our towns and villages to prosper, which means more remote working, more start-ups and more young people staying in the countryside, nothing matters more than this, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton said. We know that 30% of rural firms experience unreliable broadband, which is twice the rate of firms in urban areas. Levelling up means equalising the quality of broadband in rural and urban areas. It is not only the deserts of Dorset we need to worry about but the wastelands of Wiltshire, which are just as bad, and I urge the Minister to help us.

This is not just about geographies; it is about the people within our geographies as coverage expands. Investment in digital infrastructure on its own is not enough. The fact is that, on its own, that investment would widen inequalities and reduce social mobility. It would just further advantage the people with the capabilities to use that technology. The question for us is, how to address the digital divide as we build up our digital infrastructure? The answer is more social infrastructure, and I am pleased that this concept is becoming more and more recognised.

My right hon. Friend the Chancellor talked in his spending review statement last week about the infrastructure of everyday life. These are the institutions and the services that bring people together and spread opportunity. He particularly mentioned libraries when he talked about the levelling up fund. I pay tribute to the Good Things Foundation, which has a vision for the role of libraries as the digital hubs of our communities, with a central focus on digital skills. We need a great digital catch-up and a great national mission to get as many of those 9 million people who want and need it online, working through trusted local organisations. The Good Things Foundation estimates that for £135 million, we could halve the digital divide and get 4.5 million people online over four years at a cost of around £30 per person, or the cost of a GP appointment—just think of the gains to wellbeing and prosperity that that £30 per person will produce.

There is an even bigger prize, which is to get big tech on the side of our local communities. I know that this is a stretch. Culturally, after all, big tech is the incarnation of the idea that we do not belong anywhere. I regret to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) celebrating the “anywheres”; that was very off-message. Big tech incarnates the idea of the Californian-themed cyber-universe, but it does not have to be that way. I know that many of the big tech firms are thinking differently now, seeing how they can support local economic growth and focus less on the abstract global community of their users and more on the real-life local communities that their users live in.

I hope we can open a conversation with some of the big tech firms to see what they can do to create what we might call digital social infrastructure and improve the wiring of the social economy. Crucially, we must not empower tech giants with access to community data for them to exploit commercially. Any new systems that are built must be non-proprietary, and value created from community data must be owned and used by communities themselves. There is a good conversation to be had here, and I hope the Government will do that.