Digital Exclusion (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Lipsey Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for the frightful coughs coming out of me; I can assure those sitting near me that the house doctor has said that I am not infectious, so they have a few more years to go.

Let me introduce the House to Joe Soap. He is a perfectly ordinary bloke, but he has no computer. He does not even have an iPhone. He has no kids who can do things for him and is not in a job that would allow him access to digital resources. It is really hard for us as Peers, with our computers provided and the excellent back-up from digital services, to imagine what his life must be like—but let us have a go. He wakes up in the morning feeling poorly, but his doctor’s phone is constantly engaged. He would love to get a job, but applications now have to be made online so there is no chance. He has heard that the tyre he needs for his motorbike can be bought cheaply online, but not by him. According to the Good Things Foundation charity, he will spend an extra £228 a year on things he needs through lack of access to digital markets. He has often wondered about doing a course to equip him with practical skills, but none is local to him and all the rest are online. That is no good, because being online is precisely the problem. In other words, Joe Soap is stuffed.

Being offline, however, in some ways has even more profound effects. It is a morale drainer. Even if he could find the cash to get online, he lacks the confidence to do so. What if his few pennies are snatched by fraudsters? He hears about that every day on the local news and reads about in the local paper. What if he makes a mess of his tax form or benefits claim? In trying to deal with all this, he is particularly handicapped because the help is mostly online, which is precisely where he is not. The world of digital is alien territory to Joe. A high fence excludes him.

Our Communications and Digital Committee report—I was delighted to serve under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—identifies a whole series of reasons why digital exclusion happens: lack of devices; nervousness about using digital; fear of fraud; and physical or mental disability, as digital is not so easy for people who have lost their sight or are autistic.

Older people like me are pre-digital; 25% of over-75s do not have it officially, and I should think at least a third of the rest of them do not have it either but do not like to tell that to people who are interviewing them.

Finally, of course, there is cost. Most people who lack digital will be financially unable to run to the price of it—it can easily be 5% of the wages of somebody at the lower end of the scale.

If we did not have an NHS, and everybody had to pay in full to get medical treatment, this would be a poorer country. If we did not have state education, whereby education is free, this would be a poorer country. If we did not give any benefits to anyone, this would be a poorer country. Yet here is something which is fast becoming at least as essential to living a normal life as those services that we take for granted, and it can be ignored no longer.

What are we doing? Not enough. There is something called the social tariff, for which 4.2 million people are eligible, but of these only 380,000 are signed up. Many of the excluded—one in 10, it is estimated—are so ill off that they cannot afford even the subsidised social tariffs.

The structure of social tariffs is pretty bizarre. They are paid for by the telecoms firms, which means that they have to impose higher charges on other users or decrease investment in further improving the networks. There is a second major flaw: although they claim to be something for the less well off, if you actually look at the detail you find that they extend quite a way up the scale, with quite a lot of money going to people—for example, a couple with a son at home who is earning well will get their social tariff. That seems to me as close as you can get to a waste of public money.

I would scrap social tariffs and put some of the money that the big telecoms companies saved in that way into providing cheap, or even free, internet services, devices and broadband. Perhaps access could be automatic to those on certain benefits. As it is the state’s duty to provide for the poor, there could be a state contribution to such costs, though I do not underestimate the present pressures on the public purse. Enders Analysis, a consultancy group, recently published a report for BT on digital exclusion, which sets out some of the ways forward.

Above all, I would like to see the Government set out a new strategy on digital exclusion. I would like to see them set up a body of stakeholders, including government, telecoms firms, charities working in the field and academics—Enders Analysis and the Social Market Foundation, which have just produced reports on this subject, have a huge amount of knowledge. That body, in my blissful world, would produce a holistic plan on digital exclusion, coming into being in the next Parliament. I could get quite excited by this vision, except that I cannot help but remember that, since 2014, the Government have failed to do any such thing.