25th Anniversary of the World Wide Web

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, the great thing about anniversaries is that they happen every year. I suggest to the noble Baroness that she puts in her diary now the date 16 January 2015 and that we do this all again. I am making a sensible point there: we should be having annual debates about the effect of the digital revolution we face. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, as the internet is certainly the most transformative thing that has happened in my lifetime and is something that we cannot ignore.

As chairman of the Information Committee in your Lordships’ House I was absolutely delighted—that is the only word I can use—when I heard that the noble Baroness was joining us, because I was sure that she would have an effect on the way we work. We have been engaged in parliamentary business for 700 years. We are now facing a change in circumstances that will require revolutionary methods of responding if we are not to fall far behind. The process of legislation that is the important duty of this House will become more difficult to deliver if we do not respond to the degree of challenge we now face.

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness about the three or four values she set out as absolute necessities for the future: inclusion, transparency and openness, in that order. As somebody who is involved and interested in social security, inclusion for me is first: the last thing we need in this country is a digital divide that is exacerbated by leaving a huge proportion of our population behind. That is something to which we must attend.

In the next two minutes, I want to persuade your Lordships that we have a serious problem in the way we do business here if we are to keep up with the change that is coming. The nexus of mobile working together with cloud computing, social media and big data information that is about to happen to us, if it is not happening already, is extraordinary. If we continue to ignore it, we will be leaving the process of engagement and disengagement with Parliament in a much more difficult position over the next few years. Somebody said to me the other day that, by 2017, 75% of all government data will be in the public domain, so we cannot continue to go on the way we are going.

There is good news. Now that we have a completely wi-fied parliamentary precinct, which was a welcome decision by the administration, we will—although this will be troublesome for some Members, and I am sorry we cannot avoid that—be rolling out Windows 365 during the rest of this year. It is hoped that by the summer we will all be capable of moving and working at the same time. I exhort Members to take advantage of the possibilities now being offered.

However, in the future we need to get a plan for a digital political system of operating in Parliament. Otherwise, the public will leave us behind completely, which will not be good for Parliament or for the rest of the country.