Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

No, 2 megabits is not too much to ask, which is why we will deliver 2 megabits to the last 10%.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) said, Policy Exchange produced an important report yesterday, which I thought the Minister had welcomed. It said that the Government should stop

“pursuing speed as a proxy for progress”

and focus

“explicitly on economic and social outcomes”.

The report pointed out that 16 million people lack basic IT skills and that that is one of the major reasons that people give for not getting online. What specific action will the Minister take to help those people?

[Mr Vaizey]

I hear what the hon. Lady says. It is good to hear her endorsing the work of Policy Exchange, a distinguished centre-right think-tank. I hope that she will continue to support its policy proposals. As I said at the launch of the Policy Exchange pamphlet, Go On UK is doing extraordinarily good work to encourage people to go online. Along with all the councils that are procuring superfast broadband, we have a strategy to encourage people to take up broadband.