Digital Exclusion

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered digital exclusion.

Prynhawn da, Mrs Harris; it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon. It is abundantly clear that we are living in an increasingly digital world where technology has become essential to the way we socialise, work, shop, learn, manage finances and gain access to vital services. Digital skills, connectivity and equipment are all now essential to enabling an individual to fully participate in modern society. For the majority of the population, that has made life easier.

Tasks that would have required someone to leave the comfort of their own house in the past are now performed at the tap of a screen or the click of a button. Information that might once have required significant research can be recovered instantaneously. For the most part, those trends do not pose problems for people, but for the minority who might lack the digital skills or confidence to gain access to those services, it can make the world more and more inaccessible.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Many of my constituents cannot work the system. They do not know how to or they give up, which means they miss out on vital NHS appointments and so on. Does the hon. Member agree with me that a back-up, offline system with a real voice at the end of a line would be a good idea?

[Justin Madders]

I agree. I will say no more about that because of the number of people who want to speak.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He has clearly touched a nerve, given the number of people here. I think digital exclusion is often about rationing. I came across that with the legal aid cuts, where a lot of services are online and not accessed by people. It is now happening with GP services. There are 2 million people in north-west London who, from April, might have to go through a GP hub to access where they go. Already we have practices deciding that people have to send an online form and photographs before they can even get access to a GP. It excludes so many people from basic services.

[Justin Madders]

I thank my hon Friend for his intervention. He is right. Age UK conducted a survey in 2022 on the trends in digital technology for those over 65. It found that in total there are about 2.7 million people over the age of 65 who do not use the internet, which is about one fifth of that population group. Similarly, it was found that over 40% of the over-75s were unable to turn on their device and successfully log in, and 47% were unable to find and open programs. Those are people who had internet access. That aspect is sometimes overlooked. For someone who has grown up in the world of computers, using them seems like second nature, but to some people it is something that they just cannot deal with.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)]

The hon. Gentleman has really touched on what a lot of people feel in their daily lives: digital exclusion. So much of life today talks about inclusion. Is it not time the Government and business looked for strategies to enable digital inclusion for the wider public? We know from our postbags and everything else that people have real difficulty with this. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman for taking this matter forward because it is something that touches so many.

[Justin Madders]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I will come on to some questions and challenges for the Government. The fact that we have so many Members here suggests that many things that we deal with as Members of Parliament are a result of digital exclusion.

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. I can give a live example of digital exclusion in my constituency. The local council is introducing a charge on emptying garden bins from 1 April. It has an early bird offer of £20 rather than £37, but that is available only to residents who pay online. That not only excludes people, but impacts them financially. Will he join me in condemning Erewash Borough Council and its blatant digital exclusion?

[Justin Madders]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I suggest she talks to the leadership of the council to see whether an accommodation can be reached. Services should be available at the same price to everyone, regardless of their digital access.

I will not take any more interventions because I realise others wish to speak, but I will talk briefly about the banking sector, which has seen many branches close across the country, including in my own constituency of Ellesmere Port and Neston. In Neston there are no banks any more and Ellesmere Port has lost some. The nearest offline options for customers of the banks are often a significant journey away. With public transport the way it is, it is not always easy. Banks now expect customers to switch to online provisions, but that is not possible for some people. Even if they can do that, there is increased hesitation because of concerns about online fraud. Being able to access banking facilities readily should be a basic tenet of our society. At the moment, it is too difficult for too many people.

Car parking payment is another area that has increasingly moved online. App-based payment systems are becoming commonplace, but those without smartphones can find that difficult. Even when they have a smartphone, they may not have the knowhow or mobile data to download the app, meaning they can sometimes struggle to pay for car parking. One of my constituents, Keith, said:

“My problem is with car parking. Everything is done through the phone, and if you have an old phone it is a problem downloading an app while standing in the rain, with an impatient queue behind you.”

He is, no doubt, not alone. This is mainly a problem with private parking outfits. To be fair, my local authority does offer the alternative of paying in cash for the machines, but they do not always work. In relation to local authorities, Age UK has highlighted the difficulties in making applications for blue badges, housing support and council tax reductions.

In London, Age UK used a combination of freedom of information requests and mystery shopping to see how offline services were provided. It found that 17% of those responding did not offer any of those services offline. One quarter did not offer online access to blue badge applicants, and almost one third did not offer council tax reduction services offline. It also found that half of those claiming to offer those services offline were unable to point the mystery shopper to the information that would enable them to access those services. There were problems with waiting times in phone queues, as well as call handlers not being aware of the offline offer for services.

I want to be clear that this should not be misconstrued as an attack on local authorities. I know the level of cuts they have had to face since 2010. I am delighted that my local authority, Cheshire West and Chester, has introduced a call-back service, which is available for those unable to complete online forms. It directs people to a number to secure assistance. That is an example of best practice that should be spread across the whole country.

Before I wind up, I want to touch on the impact that the issue can have on people. Age UK has noted that this trend has a profound impact on older people. It causes many more people to feel lonely, frustrated and overlooked. Those feelings are completely understandable. It is about time that society realised that not everyone walks around with a smartphone, nor has the confidence to use one. It is all well and good saying people can use their rights under equality laws to ensure they are not denied access, but even that is dominated by online processes.

I suggest that most services do have an offline option, but it can be extremely difficult to access. We have heard that many of the organisations offering those services do not tell people they exist. In reality, that could be taking someone to a computer and taking them through that system. That is not really offering an offline service; it is just pointing people to a computer. Will the Minister advise whether any consideration has been given to providing local authorities with some support, practically and financially, to promote best practice, to ensure that people are able to access services offline?

Charities, businesses and interest groups have long been calling for an updated digital inclusion strategy. The previous one is rapidly approaching its 10th birthday, and was due for an update in 2020. These calls were also heard resoundingly by the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, which said last year:

“The Government has taken its eye off the ball.”

It had no confidence that it remained a priority.

In defence, the Government claimed there was no need for a new strategy and that the principles remained relevant. I disagree: it is clear that the digital landscape has altered massively in the past decade, since the strategy was first written. Putting to one side the rapid changes in technology, the strategy has no mention of affordability, which is still a huge issue. It cannot have considered the rapid shift we are seeing to online services. Do the Government now accept that a new strategy needs to be created? Can the Minister update the House on whether they are considering doing so?

Will the Government also reconsider their approach to providing training? They do offer the essential digital skills qualification to provide some training free of charge. Organisations, such as the Good Things Foundation, believe those courses are too big a step, and are not meeting the needs of the digitally excluded. Many people are not interested in gaining formal qualifications. They just want to be able to undertake basic functions and access services in a community setting.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Justin Madders]

I give way one more time.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

It is not just those who are digitally excluded. There are various levels of digital exclusion. The other week I was in touch with my mobile phone company and I felt digitally excluded from EE, trying to get through the gates. The issue is not just about those who we assume are digitally excluded in all areas; some of us are digitally excluded in some areas, given the levels of sophistication that are coming in. As the hon. Gentleman says, things have changed so much over the past number of years.

[Justin Madders]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his intervention. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) said, sometimes organisations will use that as a way of rationing access. Many hon. Members who have tried to cancel a contract will know that it is very difficult and they have to go through a series of gateways.

I will conclude because I know many other hon. Members want to speak. I do not want to stand in the way of progress, but we must be careful not to leave people behind. We need cast-iron, enforceable commitments that all services, whether public or private, can be accessed in person. There will always be people who, for whatever reason, will not be able to access services online, and there will always be situations where individual circumstances need to be explained in person. That right needs not just to exist on a piece of paper but to be exercisable in reality. Signposting to in-person options should be clear and easy to use and not something that should be squirreled away just to fulfil a duty that is not actually accessible in practice. We would not tolerate people being denied access to services on any other basis so we should not tolerate it on this basis either.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

I thank all the Members who have spoken today. As the Opposition spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), indicated, there is clearly a lot of interest in this area. A much longer debate would probably be in order, because we did not get enough time to fit in all the points that we wanted to.

It is worth referring to the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee report last year, which said:

“Digital exclusion arises from a complex interplay of factors including age, socio-economic status, disability, geography, educational attainment, literacy and language, and housing circumstances.”

I think that covers most of the points that Members have raised today. In response, the Minister talked a lot about what the Government are doing in terms of access, skills and affordability, but the central point that I and a lot of other Members made was missed: some people, no matter how much the Government invest in these areas, will not be able to access services online, and there needs to be an offline, in-person option.

There is a significant group of people—whom we have all been talking about—who are in that category at the moment. They feel excluded from fully participating in society. It affects their independence and finances, and it can actually affect their health. What I ask for is a clear statement of principle from the Government, which we can all get behind, that all services—public or private—should be provided in-person where there is the opportunity to do so. Whatever we do here, there will always be those people who, for whatever reason, need to have that in-person dialogue.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered digital exclusion.

Online Filter Bubbles: Misinformation and Disinformation

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Sir Mark. I am very sorry to hear about the abuse that the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) has received. It is something that many of us unfortunately have experienced from time to time.

However, I want to start on a positive note and congratulate the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) on securing the debate and coming up with a sensible suggestion, which has to be the basis of further consideration. He was right. The matter is very dangerous for democracy and is an urgent issue that needs to be addressed. He used the term “radicalised”, which is a good way of looking at how that affects people.

People can hold views that they might not have countenanced a few months ago. The effect of filter bubbles can be that, in effect, they become a totally different person and they are completely unaware of the process that they have been through. There should be greater openness with individuals about the type of content that is being pushed on to their timeline. If an individual user could see, for example—or better still, be directed to—the tags that they have amassed, that knowledge would be of great assistance. It would hopefully prevent people from passively entering the echo chamber that we have heard so much about, and, crucially, would alert people to the possibility that the process is happening at all.

Anyone who has talked to someone whose worldview has been altered by what they have seen online will know that they will not be persuaded that their view might not be accurate. They can make no distinction between information they have picked up online as opposed to from traditional media sources, and they truly believe what they are being told. I have seen the terror in a person’s eyes as they recounted to me a particular conspiracy theory. That fear was absolutely real, and there was no dissuading them.

How widespread is the problem? Some academic research says that about 2% of the population are in an alt-left echo chamber, and 5% in an alt-right one. Another survey found that about 10% of those in the UK claim to see only social media that agrees with their particular views. That seems quite low, but it is actually still millions of people. I believe it is far easier to fall into these traps than to get out of them, so the potential for the number to grow is there. Even on these relatively low numbers, their potential to influence society is corrosive.

Groups of people operating in a sphere with a different factual basis from wider society have implications for how our democracy works, not only in terms of their own participation but in how they can shape debate outside their echo chamber. Voices airing conspiracy theories about 15-minute cities have, as we learned last week, impacted Government policy. It was reported in The Guardian that Ministers began considering curbs on cycling and walking schemes last year in response to concerns about 15-minute cities. Conspiracy theorists believe that 15-minute cities are designed to be part of the “great reset”, under which people will be forcibly locked down within their own local neighbourhood and not allowed to travel outside of it. After gaining traction online among right-wing fringe groups, mainly in echo chambers, it found its way into a Government policy. One of the biggest shifts in transport policy in decades had its origins in online conspiracy theories. From that, we can see the potential it has to really impact on Government policy.

That is one reason why foreign powers have used prominent social media platforms to seek to influence elections and disrupt civic debate. We know from extensive investigations by the US and UK security organisations that Russian state security services conduct operations via social media in order to influence the results of elections. The potency of infiltrating echo chambers and manipulating those inside can have national consequences. We have elections across the world this year, including in this country and the United States, so tackling the issue now is incredibly important.

When I have constituents who seem to believe that I and the majority of people in this place are lizards, who believe that I want to deliberately stop them from moving about freely, or who recite to me with unwavering certainty any number of other examples of absurd but dangerous conspiracy theories, we have to take seriously the threat to the democratic process that this represents. It is no coincidence that many of those online conspiracy theories have very negative things to say about UK politicians and the political process; the people peddling this stuff have no interest in seeing western liberal democracies flourish. They want to see them fail. It is fair to ask whether democracy can function properly when people are so trapped in their own warped realities that they cannot see any other viewpoint than their own, they immediately distrust anything that comes from an official source, and they cannot agree with others on basic, previously uncontested, facts.

We know trust in politics and politicians is at an all-time low. Those who end up in online bubbles tend to have zero confidence in politicians and the political process. Some people might say, “Well, so what? There have always been people who do not trust authority. There have always been people who have a propensity to believe conspiracies and operate outside the mainstream of society.” It is clear that those numbers are on the rise, their influence is growing, and there is a concerted effort by people hostile to this country to increase their ranks.

We cannot afford to be blasé. Our liberal democracy is fragile enough as it is, and it cannot be taken for granted. It has to be protected, defended and supported by us in this place as the guardians of democracy. It is not enough for us to be simply participants in the political process; we need to be its guardians. In this place, we debate and argue over interpretation of facts, but we do so within a framework where we are at least debating within the same reality. We also share a common understanding that if our arguments do not succeed on this occasion, the democratic process ensures that we will have another chance sometime. However, having so many and growing numbers of people who do not share the same reality as us and do not think that democracy works represents a real threat to democracy as a whole. We should not write those people off: we should try to engage with them as much as possible. However, we must also take on the source of their discomfort, challenge their beliefs and really lift the lid on who is pushing the disinformation and why. If we ignore that, it will grow, and before we know it there will be enough people sufficiently motivated to take matters into their own hands that this will not be just a dark corner of the internet: it will be on every street corner, and by then it will be too late.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

When we are the only economy in the G7 that is still smaller than it was pre-pandemic, it is not unreasonable to expect greater urgency from the Government when dealing with turning that around, but I came away from last week’s Budget thinking, “Is that it?”

The Opposition recognise that this is not a moment for tweaking the current, failed approach to the economy. When the major tax change announced is a tax cut for the richest 1% that is badged as a plan to help the NHS, we have embarrassing levels of spin that would make even the hardiest spin doctor blush, as well as making real doctors cringe at the thought of being used as a cover for a tax giveaway for the richest. It is a telling sign of how low expectations have got that last week we had the absurd spectacle of the Chancellor standing up at the start of his speech and telling us we would not be going into a recession this year, as if that were some kind of triumph. It does not get much better beyond this year, either: over the entire Parliament, growth is forecast to be just 0.5% a year on average, which is way below historical standards.

What makes all this worse is that we have sky-high inflation right now. As we have heard, real wage growth has been non-existent since 2010, and real wages are projected to be 5% less at the beginning of 2025 than at the start of 2019. Before Conservative Members use the pandemic as an excuse, we must not forget that that is part of an 18-year pay squeeze. The OBR has forecast that real wages will not return to their 2008 level until 2026. That really is a dramatic statistic that shows how badly we have all done under this Government.

If wages had continued to increase at their pre-2008 rate, every single one of us would have been £233 a week better off today, and that gap would grow to £304 a week by 2027. As we have heard, the Resolution Foundation has put a figure of £11,000 a year on what 15 years of wage stagnation has cost every family in this country. That should really give us a warning about the direction we are travelling in. By the end of this decade, average incomes will lag behind those in Poland if we carry on as we are.

We are paying more for worsening public services and earning less in the process. This is hitting the majority of people really hard. There should be an OBR forecast of how many more people are expected to use food banks, but in its absence I will quote our local citizens advice bureau:

“The scale and size of the crisis is unlike anything we’ve seen and it’s affecting people we haven’t helped with crisis support before with this being nearly 50% higher than 2021 and more than double the numbers we helped in 2020.”

The number of people it has helped who are in employment has also doubled since 2020, which tells us everything we need to know about how wages have not kept up with costs and how our economy is stagnating.

Last year, we in Cheshire did think briefly that it would be recognised that areas outside the city regions might need some special attention when it was announced during the September “fiscal event” that Ellesmere Port’s industrial area would be one of 40 investment zones, but last week we mysteriously disappeared from the list of investment zones, with no explanation, no apology, and no refund for the time and money that had been wasted in preparation for something that will not now happen. For us, as for so many areas, last week’s announcement came as a crushing blow. In fact, it has been estimated that local authorities spent some £12.5 million on preparing bids that are now completely redundant. What a waste of resources, when local authorities are already stretched. So far, no official rationale has been offered for the removal of support from us, and there has certainly been no offer of an alternative scheme or support. We are being treated with contempt. It is particularly galling that, when we look at the areas that have been chosen, it looks as if we are being punished because we do not have and do not want an elected Mayor.

Only two weeks ago, during a Westminster Hall debate, three Cheshire Members asked for a meeting with the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), so that we could try to make progress with our devolution plans. Needless to say, we have not received a response, and now we learn that we are to be consigned to the devolution dustbin because we will not dance to the Government’s tune and give them an elected Mayor. That is not what devolution is about. It is a diktat from the top, and the Government ought to be ashamed of themselves for attempting to bully areas into accepting a Mayor when there is no public appetite for one.

I want to say a few words about access to cash, as I was unable to attend a Westminster Hall debate on the subject earlier today because I was in the Chamber. As we know, millions of adults rely on cash to a great extent in their daily lives, and many of them are vulnerable or disabled. I know from talking to constituents that it is getting harder and harder to put cash into bank accounts. That means that lots of businesses cannot accept cash because the branches in which they used to put the cash have gone. We need to get the banking hubs up and running in every town and city in the country, and to ensure that businesses are required to accept cash.

Let me end by quoting the words of a disabled constituent who, because she is on legacy benefits, has missed out on thousands of pounds of extra help already, but whose situation is becoming steadily worse. She told me:

“I am out of pocket now by well over £400 a month—due to mortgage payments, energy costs, food costs and petrol. I’ve had to sell furniture to cover this cost! Does this government think this is acceptable?... And what happens next month?...How am I supposed to live?”

I do not know what will happen to my constituent next month, or the month after that, or what will happen to the many other constituents in the same position. That uncertainty and anxiety should weigh very heavily on the shoulders of Conservative Members.