Tackling the Digital Divide

Shaun Bailey Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ali. This is my first Westminster Hall debate since I was elected, so it is a pleasure to be here to talk about this important issue.

We have seen from the contributions so far that this is a really wide-ranging issue that has many impacts. We see that in our communities. I do not share many of the experiences of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) or my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), but I sympathise a lot with what they say.

I have a few points to press with my hon. Friend the Minister, particularly on how we build this digital infrastructure. We saw the target for premises being fitted for fibre by 2025 reduced from 100% to 85%. It is vital that we hit that, and as part of that we must ensure that we get the processes right, particularly by ensuring that procurement deadlines are met by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. There have been delays in some of the procurement processes and, having spoken to officials, I know that the Department is working on them. However, it is important that we streamline those processes.

I have been heartened by the importance the Minister’s Department is placing on ensuring that the delivery, which will be really important as we build this digital infrastructure, actually happens. From a process point of view, it is important that we hit those benchmarks. I know that the Department has said it is confident that it can hit that target. It is good to see that confidence, but we need to see it translate through.

I think we can all agree that the other issue the Minister and her Department need to address is the reform of access issues. Particularly when it comes to construction and installation, access issues have been really prominent. Whether that reform relates to things such as wayleave or to broader access issues—for example, access to residential blocks, working with housing providers to ensure that no one is left behind and we can truly roll out this new network—it is going to be vital. We must ensure that everyone can see the benefits of the new network.

These are real operational issues; they are not particularly controversial. It is clear that we all have an aim, which is to see the roll-out happen. We just have to ensure that, operationally, it can. It is really important, therefore, that we solve the procedural anomalies to ensure that we can get the systems fitted. Obviously, I welcome the overall £5 billion that was provided for this. I know that £1.2 billion has been identified as part of the spending review so far. It is obviously important that we follow through on that. I think the Minister would agree that it is vital to ensure that that investment follows through and that we see its benefits. That is going to come down to the internal processes around procurement, contracting and relationships with the commercial sector in terms of delivery.

I should say that I sit on the Public Accounts Committee, and we have looked at this issue recently. The role of, and the relationship with, the private sector on the delivery has been an interesting one; it has enabled this to be delivered in the way that we wanted. Clearly, there are lessons to be learned. There are also lessons to be learned about how we get this right more broadly. I am not going to give it a 10 out of 10 for delivery. There are definitely things we can learn for the other broader public infrastructure projects that we will have to do as part of levelling up.

I want to turn to what the digital divide actually means. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) touched on what it means more broadly. I could not do justice to the way that he articulated it; he talked about access to the universal credit system, pensions, education and work—we know how important those things are. The example that was felt most in my community, particularly at the height of the pandemic last year, was that of education and access to digital devices for some of the most vulnerable young people in society. I pay tribute to Summerhill Primary Academy in Tipton, which went above and beyond to ensure that vulnerable young people could get devices. We know from the research that around 105,000 devices were dispatched to schools.

While that was a great initial response, there is clearly a bigger issue here: people in deprived communities, a lot of the time, do not have access to a basic digital device. As the right hon. Member for East Ham touched on, as we progress, and as the world of work develops and things change, it is going to become so important that we get this right. We must enable people to access those devices so that they can do basic things like homework and access the important public services that they depend on.

We heard about the skills work that has been done, particularly in the west midlands with our Mayor, Andy Street. Again, that happened because it was identified that we had pockets of deprivation where people did not have that skillset. It all intermingles with the underlying social issues that we have to tackle. The digital divide has highlighted the vulnerabilities in our society. We must not just see the provision of infrastructure as one step; we must look at the underlying issues that mean the infrastructure is not there in the first place. I think that there is an opportunity, in the work the Minister and her Department are doing to tackle this, to examine why communities like mine have for so long been excluded in this way.

I cannot touch on this issue in the same way that many hon. Members have in their comments. I will say that the fibre roll-out is a great opportunity, but the process has got to be right. I implore the Minister to get the internal processes right to realise that. On the digital divide more broadly, and the vulnerabilities that it has uncovered, there has to be a holistic approach. It is not just about the provision of devices and broadband, important though they are; it is about the underlying issues that this has uncovered. By addressing those, we can ensure that we finally plug the divide that people, particularly in my community, have had to deal with for so long.