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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support small businesses and the self-employed to improve their digital skills.

The Digital Skills Partnership (DSP), announced in the UK Digital Strategy 2017, brings together organisations from across all sectors to tackle the digital skills divide and ensure that digital skills initiatives are better coordinated and targeted more effectively. The aim is ambitious: to improve digital skills and capability levels across the skills spectrum.

The Government-convened Partnership has formed four Delivery Groups to drive forward action in priority areas. The Digital Enterprise Delivery Group, led by Lloyds Banking Group and the Federation of Small Businesses, is working to increase the digital capabilities of SMEs and Charities. This group is developing a peer-to-peer support network for SMEs and those running them and has to date created support materials including toolkits to boost skills and signposting to digital skills opportunities in their local area.

Government is also taking measures to address the UK’s productivity gap, launching the new Business Basics Programme and funding the industry backed Be The Business initiative - both aimed at supporting SMEs to utilise innovative tools and technologies, as well as simple management practices to improve their productivity. There will be a total of £2 million available in the first call of the Business Basics Fund.