Digital Technology: Skilled Workforce

Lord Broers Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

As many Ministers have said before in this House, we are very concerned that people who have the requisite skills continue to be able to come to work in this country during the negotiation process and after it. We are doing our best to make sure that those skills are analysed and that we come to a satisfactory negotiated settlement with the EU.

[Lord Broers (CB)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister is aware that there is a very simple way to solve this problem, which is to correct the gender balance. Only 1% or 2% of people in this sector are women. What special programmes do the Government have to correct this problem?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Lord is right. Actually 17% of people who work in the tech sector and 9.5% of students taking computer science A-levels are female, yet women make up almost half the workforce. We are taking forward plans. There are a number of programmes already in place to do that: CyberFirst Girls Competition, the TechFuture Girls programme, Code First: Girls, techmums, Mums in Technology, Microsoft’s DigiGirlz events and a number of others. It is absolutely on the radar screen.