Digital Skills (Select Committee Report)

Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, who is doing extremely valuable work. His participation in debates of this kind is extremely valuable to the House and his contribution will repay careful study.

I was one of the willing flock of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, in the committee. I enjoyed the experience; I cannot say that about everything I do here, but we who served at her feet, under her chairmanship, observed a master class in getting Members of the House of Lords in committees to agree to only five recommendations on a subject as wide digital skills. She deserves a parliamentary award of some kind and she did it without offering any physical violence that I could see. It was an extremely useful and interesting experience.

A couple of things occurred to me which follow on from what the noble Lord, Lord Knight, was saying. Digital matters move so fast, and are so disruptive and transformational that our policy-making in the political process struggles to keep up. That is a problem for everyone. Change moves at such a pace that we need to make an even bigger effort to stay on top of it and its consequences for our citizens.

Another couple of things struck me forcefully in the course of the committee’s work. I remind colleagues that this is a United Kingdom responsibility. Although there are devolved legislature responsibilities in some of these matters, we need to bear in mind that there is a United Kingdom dimension to this, so the co-ordination of what is going on in other parts of the United Kingdom is important. For example, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, referred to reporting requirements. There is an annual report in Scotland on exactly this subject and has been for a number of years, so there is best practice in other legislatures. Some of them are newer, so they have had a chance to start some of these things with a clean sheet. We can learn from what is happening in other parts of the United Kingdom.

The other thing which astonished me, because I did not know about it and I am ashamed to admit that now, is the imbalance in gender in the digital skills domain and the paucity of women students coming through and taking up careers. The imbalance is scandalous and something serious and urgent needs to be done about it.

My interest in being on the committee was really quite different. It was based on something that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, rightly mentioned in his concluding remarks. I could see from my interest in social protection and social policy that the exclusion issue was starting to have an impact, for example, in the rollout of universal credit, where the government service, rightly, is being mounted on a digital-by-default basis and therefore the 10%—or 12%, or whatever it is—of the client group applying for universal credit are at a signal disadvantage. I have come to the conclusion, working closely with the people who are rolling out the new universal credit system, that it is unrealistic to expect everyone to be able to cope with digital by default without personal assistance and support. The Government have put some work in hand to attend to that; indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is part of it—that is another important part of the work he does.

If that was the interest that stimulated my membership of the committee, my view was completely changed on the importance of soft skills and the digital agenda. It is not just about making sure that digital exclusion is eliminated, although there is absolutely no justification for the level of digital exclusion we have in this country at this time. We have to look at a future in which the children who are taking up their education at primary school now have been educated for jobs that simply do not exist: that is how dramatic the changes that we face are. I learned an enormous amount about that and have a new interest in the subject as a result.

This report is absolutely realistic and grounded in what is possible. Of its five recommendations, the fourth is addressed to the Liaison Committee of this House. I do not know whether anybody has written to the chairman of the Liaison Committee to warn him about this. To reiterate what I said earlier, we make the point that our processes in this House need to start appreciating the significance to everything that we do, politically, of changes in the digital world.

The report’s recommendations are entirely realistic and rightly accept that there is financial constraint. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said in her excellent speech, the report recognises that much has been done, that connectivity has been a priority and that the Government can claim to be doing lots of things. However, as regards advances that have been made since the publication of the committee’s report just before the last election, the Government’s manifesto was far too focused on connectivity and hard infrastructure. That was followed by the Budget in 2015, which was the first opportunity for the new Government to come forward and advertise the priority they were prepared to give to the digital agenda, particularly the digital skills agenda. The 2015 Budget allocated a little more money for ultra-fast broadband in Cornwall, some extra money to the Cabinet Office for the excellent work it has done in the Government Digital Service and some money to notable hubs. We are lucky to have such well-developed hubs in the United Kingdom.

There was not very much in the Budget, but what disappointed—if not astonished—me was the November comprehensive spending review. It was full of all sorts of stuff such as northern powerhouses and this and that but, despite planning the United Kingdom’s financial expenditure profile for the next three years, it made no reference at all to a co-ordinated digital strategy. It is astounding that the Government did not take the opportunity provided by the comprehensive spending review to put in place a co-ordinated, joined-up strategy, given that they had the committee’s report and had obtained information from the people who came to us as witnesses. That was followed by the 2016 Budget, which concentrates on government efficiency, although I am not against government efficiency through digitalisation.

My charge, therefore, is that we have wasted two years trying to get something that demonstrates the Government’s direction of travel and the priority that they are prepared to give to investing in this work. The Minister has the possibility to remedy some of these issues by going back to the department and arguing the case for the digital economy Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech to have a long enough Title to enable us to address some of these strategically important aspects. My spies in the department tell me that there is quite a restrictive approach to getting broadband out, although the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is absolutely right to say that connectivity is important.

However, we need the opportunity to hold proper discussions in this House. I am not suggesting that the Minister goes looking for a Christmas tree Bill to hang everything on. I promise her that we will approach it with the same discipline that we showed in achieving the five recommendations. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, will be sitting behind us to see that we do not get out of hand. There is a clear opportunity here to give the House more confidence that the Government know what they are doing, are committed to the agenda and are willing to take this issue forward with the urgency suggested in our report and that of the House of Commons. It is neat that the chairs of both reports were women; that gives me some encouragement and is the way it should be. I hope the Minister will take that ask seriously so that we can have a continuing discussion on this important subject in your Lordships’ House.