Information Committee: Annual Report 2010-11

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, first, if anybody thinks that I am being high-tech using my iPad for my speech, that is partially true. However, I also have a confession to make. When I tried to print it out on paper, the paper stuck in the printer. I was leaving it a little bit late to get here and so, inevitably, I had to do it this way. In fact, I am very largely going to ignore it because of what has already been said.

I thank “my noble friend”—as my noble friend Lord Foulkes called him quite wrongly—Lord Kirkwood. I would still call him “my noble friend” at a personal level even if parliamentary convention does not really follow that route. He is also, of course, a fellow member of the gym.

However, I want to follow the speeches that both he and the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, have made from almost—not from the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, but certainly from the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon—the opposite point of view. He quite rightly has sung the praises of the Library. It is a magnificent place. I do not know many books there are in the Library but they could all be put on about three Kindles, to be read whenever anyone wanted to draw them up.

When I want information, as I showed in the House the other day, I go on Google and request that information. I do not go to the Library; I do not look at a book; I go on Google and find the information that I want. I used it for a very short history lesson. During a debate about the Scotland Bill and the United Kingdom there was an argument as to whether the United Kingdom had been formed with the union of the Crowns or the union of Parliaments. I looked it up and said that it was actually formed in 1800 when Ireland came into it. That was a matter of finding information quickly and easily on Google rather than having to go to the Library and look for a book to find that information.

That is the future. At the moment it is iPads but, before very long, there may well be a chip in the back of your hand through which you can get that same information. That is the way we are going and that is why the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, is absolutely right to say that we have to keep up to date. The same media that will attack us if we spend money on computers or whatever will equally attack us if we appear to be behind the ball game, out of date and no longer keeping up with what the younger people—and not only younger people but even old people like me—are doing in terms of technology.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that 12 months until wi-fi is simply not good enough. O₂ has done a deal with Westminster Council at the present time under which, by putting its routers on what I believe it calls street furniture—lamp posts, fences and so on—it will provide wi-fi access to anybody who has a computer, laptop or mobile phone, whatever it might be, within Westminster Council. It is starting now. Some of it will be available in June and the whole of the council will have access by the beginning of July in time for the Olympic Games. If it can do that, why are we not approaching a company and asking whether we can do the same thing? Why are we not having the same access to wi-fi?

Presumably, as we are in the Westminster Council area, we will be getting access to that wi-fi. It would be slightly peculiar if, for some reason, we were not able to get it. Just like smokers—but not me; I am not a smoker and have not been for 30-odd years—we will have to go out on to the Terrace, carrying our laptop or our tablet, in order to get the access that we require. That would be nonsense. We ought to have wi-fi access throughout the whole system and I will urge at a later date on the committee that we should look at this issue much more quickly. We should have wi-fi access across the whole of the parliamentary estate—preferably within the next three months and before the introduction of the O₂ system—and at speeds that are faster than the O₂ system. Otherwise there is a danger that people like me will access the O₂ system and say, “Oh, it is better than the parliamentary one anyway”. I do not have to sign in for it as there is automatic signing in. Every time I turn my computer on to access it, it will be instantly available. If our system is not as good, that will create security problems because people will be using computers, tablets or whatever which are not in any way related to the security systems within the parliamentary estate. That could have dangers.

I will finish by making a second point about the tablet experiment. Quite rightly, there has been a survey of tablets. It is all very well my noble friend Lord Kirkwood saying that it is the iPad but, as far as I am aware, they did not try out any other tablet. The iPad 3 is now out—it was announced last week and it goes on sale tomorrow—and the iPad 4 may very well come before the end of this year. We have to take a decision: do we or do we not give people the iPad? There is evidence that money will be saved by using the iPad through a reduction in the amount of paper used. People can use their iPads rather than printing out information and using up great piles of paper or getting it stuck in the printer, whatever it may be. The iPad is there; it is coming; we need it. Fellow Members are constantly asking me when a decision will be taken: they are saying, “Do we buy our own or is it going to be provided?”. It may be that the Committee and the House authorities want people to buy their own and they can then say, “We will provide the services”.

It would not be entirely fair if they did that. We may not be employees but this is a place of work and we are here to do a job. I cannot think of any other job where the tools required to do it have to be provided by yourself—where you have to go out and purchase your own hammers, screwdrivers, computers, whatever it may be. I cannot imagine journalists, who probably will attack us if we provide or offer iPads to everyone having to buy their own computers, tablets or laptops. That does not happen.

We ought to take a decision to at least offer a tablet, preferably the iPad—at the moment there is not anything else on the market—to everyone who wishes it, not as a straight extra but as a replacement either for the laptop that people have, if it is due for replacement, or instead of the mobile device that they have. I can use this. I have used this on the last couple of nights and my wife has used it as a phone using Skype. Using Skype and providing Skype services may be another way of saving money.

I hope we will take that decision. I welcome the report and the further meetings of the Committee, where I will again raise these issues.