Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they plan to review the assistance they and private sector providers offer to people with limited digital skills or understanding, in the light of the increasing number of public support and information services being provided online; and what assessment they have made of the adequacy and funding requirements of services provided to people living with disabilities in accessing public services online.

We are committed to improving citizens’ digital skills and particularly those with limited skills and understanding.

We recently published our plans to improve adult basic digital skills by updating the national standards setting out the digital skills people need to get on in life and work and introducing improved basic digital skills qualifications at two levels:

• ‘beginner’ designed for adults with little or no prior experience of using digital devices or the internet.
• ‘essential’ designed for adults with some experience of using digital devices and the internet but lacking the full range of basic digital skills needed for life and work.

We are also introducing a national entitlement to basic digital skills courses from 2020, similar to the existing legal entitlements for English and Maths.

In the interim, we will continue to support the provision of basic digital skills training for adults in colleges and community learning centres across England through the Adult Education Budget and other programmes, including the Future Digital Inclusion programme funded by DfE managed by the Good Things Foundation and delivered through the 3,000 strong Online Centres network. To date, this programme has supported over 800,000 adult learners to develop their basic digital skills, many of whom are socially excluded.

We have also established the Digital Skills Partnership (DSP) to bring together organisations from private, public and third sectors to improve digital skills and capability levels. The Government launched a Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund in September 2018 to support innovative projects aimed at helping older and disabled people.

Government ensures its services are accessible by design and has also committed to ensuring that assistance to access its services is always available for those who are not online. Government departments are mandated to provide assisted digital (offline) support for their services where it is required. Video Relay Service (VRS), for example, is available for some government services, including for claiming welfare benefits. VRS allows two parties in two separate locations to connect remotely via a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter so BSL users can make and receive telephone calls. The three parties involved in the call (caller, called party and interpreter) can all be in different locations.