Digital Exclusion

Richard Foord Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Harris. On the subject of digital exclusion, we should also look at the opposite: digital literacy. When I go home on a Thursday or Friday, I am struck by how very digitally literate the next generation is. My children and their peer group are way in advance of anything that I can do online or with computers. I make that point because we tend to think that it is older people who are digitally excluded. Yes, they are, but lots of other people are also less digitally literate. Recent years have seen a rush, even a stampede, in company boardrooms towards moving services online at the expense of doing things in person. That has been to the detriment of many older people, particularly in rural and coastal communities, such as those I represent.

I want to highlight one specific example and give voice to a constituent. Brian, who lives in Weston, a small coastal hamlet that is tucked away on the beautiful east Devon coastline, wrote to me to explain how he lives somewhere where there is such poor 4G mobile phone signal and internet access that he is completely and utterly dependent on a landline. As has already been said, losing copper will have a profound effect on some people in our rural constituencies.

Finally, another constituent, who lives in the village of Luppitt, has no mobile signal or fibre broadband connection, and is concerned about the landlines being phased out. He writes:

“Think of all those who are unaware, infirm or technically naive. Will we be cast adrift and simply forgotten?”