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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the oral answer by Lord Ashton of Hyde on 27 March (HL Deb, col 355), and in the light of the finding by the Coalition for a Digital Economy in its report <i>Global Britain: From local startups to international markets</i>, published in February, that one third of technology start-ups’ first ten hires came from outside the UK, what is their estimate of the shortage of specialist technical staff needed by the digital technology sector in the UK; and what estimate they have made of future staffing needs in that sector.

DCMS is leading a review focused on identifying the current and future advanced and specialist digital skills gaps in the UK’s digital technology sector and wider economy. This work will give DCMS a greater understanding of the characteristics of the existing advanced and digital specialist workforce in the UK, current and future advanced and specialist digital skills needs in the UK, and will inform how to focus efforts on developing the UK digital skills pipeline. We anticipate the review will be completed by summer 2017.