Event Report: A Long-Term Settlement for Digital Inclusion
On Wednesday 20 March, the Digital Inclusion APPG held a roundtable on A Long-Term Settlement for Digital Inclusion. The session focussed on three questions: How can the Government embed digital inclusion at the heart of its economic and social strategies; How can the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology ensure that technology improves public services; and What are the future funding options for digital inclusion?
The event was Chaired by APPG Co-Chair Julie Elliott MP. Speakers included: Chris Ashworth OBE, Head of Social Impact at Nominet; Helen Milner, Chief Executive of the Good Things Foundation; Helen Burrows, Policy Director at BT; and Julia Chippendale, Head of Business Development at We Are Group.
The session started with Julie Elliott MP thanking all attendees for coming and introducing herself, detailing her experience standing up for digital inclusion initiatives across her Parliamentary career – most notably on the Culture, Media and Sport committee. She then outlined that this meeting was the second the APPG had hosted in 2024 and would directly build on last month’s, which focussed on the changing drivers of digital exclusion. She concluded by saying the session would have the principle aim of formulating a cohesive national plan for digital inclusion at its heart. She then introduced Chris Ashworth OBE, Head of Social Impact at Nominet and Helen Milner, Chief Executive of the Good Things Foundation to give a presentation on the discussion points.
Chris began the presentation with a quote from Baroness Dido Harding, which read:
“It’s self-evidently obvious that the economic case is really clear, the social case is really clear and actually there’s really good evidence that the general public wants this so that makes the political case really clear. So, I’m mighty frustrated because it seems to me that for the best part of 15 years really government haven’t acted on this”.
Chris suggested that the quote from Baroness Harding outlined frustration among the representatives in the room that progress at an industry level was not being matched at a policy level. He then said that it would be a major misunderstanding to suggest that civil servants were not working hard enough on resolving digital exclusion – rather the reason for the slow progress was just because it remains such a ‘juvenile’ or new issue on the wider policy agenda. He noted the national education system is nearly 150 years old, so this issue is comparatively still very much only in the foothills. He then stated that despite the relatively new nature of digital exclusion, it is a problem that permeates across Government and feeds through every major department and quango. However, given its ubiquity and broadness, no single person or institution is currently held responsible for ensuring its delivery.
Chris next outlined the chronic social problems that digital exclusion has caused. Namely, he pointed to the fact that 10.2 million people lack basic digital skills, 53% lack necessary workplace skills and over 2.5 million struggle to afford their home broadband. This had huge knock-on effects on social cohesion and structural inequality, he suggested. Chris then stated that there is also a very strong economic case (both at the macro and individual level) for enhancing digital inclusion. He added that the potential positive externalities it could have on jobs, housing and skills could generate £13.7bn of economic activity.
Chris continued by telling attendees that the infrastructure is readily available in the UK to make digital inclusion happen. He noted that he was astonished by the work that had been done by industry representatives present at the APPG and across the wider community in ensuring digital inclusion was being maximised at an infrastructure level, however, he posited that serious questions remained about the structure that lay above that business-driven infrastructure and innovation. He concluded by saying that as a collective, there is a need for a closer relationship between the business and charity-led initiatives driving digital inclusion and the people who sit above that structure – i.e. national policymakers and government departments. Chris then handed over to Helen Milner, Chief Executive of the Good Things Foundation to give her half of the presentation.
Helen started off by noting that to make widespread digital inclusion a realistic possibility in the next few years, it has to be embedded as a goal across all policy areas and departments. Referencing a recent House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee hearing as well as recent conversations she has had with Baroness Harding, Helen suggested that the need for leadership was clear. She argued that this leadership must come from the Prime Minister down as the issue is so important. She then argued that to achieve a vision of digital inclusion, groups like the Digital Inclusion APPG needed to work towards creating a host of metrics and goals that government should aim to match and exceed in the coming years. Pointing to the slides she stated that leadership at the top would only be effective if it was partnered by a strategic framework (containing institutionalised goals and metrics) and a governmental structure (containing a tsar and a digital inclusion unit at Cabinet Office level).
On the topic of the potential different funding models the UK could explore, Helen argued that just 2% of Project Gigabit funding could raise £100m for the acceleration of digital inclusion initiatives. Pointing to the slides, she also suggested that another way to reduce the costs of connectivity would be to remove the VAT paid on social tariffs. Helen then referenced an LSE study which came up with a similar idea to essentially reinvest all tax receipts received from VAT on social tariffs into a newly formed social fund which would in turn be used to alleviate data poverty and digital exclusion. This could help 400,000 people, she added. Moving on to the discussion around skills budgets, Helen noted there are worryingly low numbers of people in the UK taking up digital skills training. She suggested the Department for Work and Pensions and other frontline departments needed to signpost national digital inclusion services and initiatives better to increase uptake. She also highlighted that essential digital skills should be better integrated into the separate devolution deals across the country.
Helen then set out an example vision for a possible long-term settlement for digital inclusion. She said that leadership should come from the top and that the Prime Minister should form a cross-Ministerial Digital Inclusion Unit which would be established in line with a host of key targets. She also expressed her desire to see the Secretary of State for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology held to account by committing to publishing an ambitious three-year action plan for government to follow. Any future settlement must also commit to supporting the most vulnerable people in society – with actionable face-to-face support, she said. To conclude, she noted that while it was not just the Government’s role to fix the digital divide, it is wrong that civil society and businesses have picked up responsibility to do so.
Julie Elliott MP thanked both Chris Ashworth and Helen Milner for their contributions, noting her full agreement with what they had argued in the slides – particularly over the need for leadership at the top. She noted that as a backbench Labour MP, she is doing all she can to prioritise the issue, but that her efforts needed to be matched by Government action – and more specifically action from the Prime Minister and Cabinet Office. Julie Elliott MP then invited Helen Burrows, Policy Director at BT to give her presentation.
Helen Burrows started by thanking Chris, Helen and Julie for providing their contributions on the issue and outlined that her presentation would focus specifically on the role of the future of TV and digital inclusion. She suggested that based on conversations with the Government and Ofcom, it had become clear that TV reform holds a huge possibility to create sustainable long run change around digital inclusion. She started by agreeing with Helen and Chris that the need for universal connectivity has a huge potential for the economy. Added to this, she stated that the move from broadcast to IP (internet protocol) TV has a huge part to play in this transition as it is easy to use for the most vulnerable groups – who are often at the highest risk of being digitally excluded. She noted that broadcast TV as it currently works has a fixed cost of about £300m a year to operate, despite the fact that TV is increasingly migrating online (50% are connected to the internet). Further, the new Media Bill would bring ITV and the BBC onto IP boxes – meaning ‘freeview’ TV will operate through the internet not the traditional aerial. She suggested that these two facts, means that at some point in the next 10-20 years, the BBC and ITV will need to exit the broadcast market altogether and go fully online, given the high fixed up-front costs which are becoming increasingly unjustifiable. She then said that this change - which is imminent - offers industry a huge opportunity to up-skill and include previously excluded groups like pensioners in the digital transition. Using this evidence, she posited that the Government could use the transition around TV as catalyst to provide the skills needed to close the digital divide as TV is more ‘familiar’ and easier to use than other online devices. She stated that this kind of upskilling happened under last Labour Government with older technologies nearly 30 years ago, but progress has been halted since.
Building on this, Helen noted that 90% of the British population has broadband currently but a significant proportion of the final 10% do not want it. She pointed out that by 2030, 6-8% of people (1.7m-2.3m) would be deemed fully left behind by the IPTV transition if no action was made. She outlined her belief that the right way to support this left behind, vulnerable cohort of people was to help them with boosting IP connectivity, all the while ensuring that their essential day-to-day experience of TV doesn’t change.
From there, Helen noted that the IPTV ecosystem is far more fragmented than digital terrestrial TV and that there are more layers of payments present. This means that is has the effect that traditional broadcast TV feels ‘free’ at the point of use for the consumer, while IPTV is far more upfront as households pay for connectivity in monthly instalments. Helen suggested that to address this concern that consumers felt like they were paying more to be online, content distributers such as Google and Netflix could ‘pay the difference’ as their operating costs through IPTV are far lower than in broadcast.
Helen finished her presentation by pointing out that the key problem with the online transition, was that if you need extra help, it's located far too sparsely across several different government websites. She subsequently suggested that agreed upon minimum standards need to be established to help people navigate these various different outlets, to re-assure people and give them confidence to take up IPTV. Helen also noted that while funding from the sector was needed, this had to be matched by wide-ranging government support. For example, the NHS and DWP have their own Digital inclusion programmes – essentially siloing them into small, inefficient pots. She concluded that the Government should centralize these disparate funds into a singular pooled resource.
Julie Elliott MP thanked Helen Burrows for her contribution and noted that discussions around the IPTV transition are fascinating and overlooked in public discourse. She argued that helping people transition online by using TV is a strong idea as vulnerable and older people, ‘trust’ their TV far more than their smartphone. Julie then opened the floor up for discussion asking Julia Chippendale, Head of Business Development at We Are Group.
Julia Chippendale started by agreeing with Julie Elliott MP that the presentation on IPTV transition was fascinating. She also noted her agreement with Helen Burrows that using TV as the medium to deliver change through increased bandwidth was done under the last Labour government, but that reforms did not go far enough and that progress since had been halted. She also noted that because the national adult education budget is shrinking, digital skills expansion is not happening fast enough. While essential digital skills became a statutory provision for providers two years ago, courses are only available through Further Education (FE) colleges, meaning that take-up is low. Only lip service is being paid to digital skills provision, she posited - it is not well advertised, and few nonstudents even think of attending an FE college. Arguing that digital skills should be provided outside of traditional education institutions, Julia suggested that Government needed to start going into homes to provide vital digital upskilling training. She also argued that the policy framework for digital upskilling was full of gaps - The UK Shared Prosperity Fund has limited provisions for it and there is no wider plan for a joined-up approach between devolved authorities. She referenced a conversation she had had with someone from Rochdale Council who had put together a mesh network for digital upskilling, with no larger support. Finally, she noted that comparatively, too much Government focus had been put towards financial literacy in recent years especially with regards to the £2.6bn ‘Multiply’ scheme, which holds no provision for digital literacy.
Chris Ashworth then added to Julia’s comments that the impact of combined authorities to ensure digital upskilling cannot be overlooked. Authorities such as Manchester and London who take a holistic, progressive and human centred approach to digital inclusion have been particularly successful, he added. He said that by learning from these local authorities, there is an opportunity to develop a national framework for digital inclusion and upskilling.
Julie Elliott MP thanked Julia and Chris for their contributions but added that we should be wary of a homogenised approach to digital inclusion. She added that most regions, towns and cities have their own organisations spearheading digital inclusion campaigns and these people should be empowered across the board. Julie then invited Claire Marshall, Director of Fundraising & Communications at Jangla to speak.
Claire Marshall asked what effect paying extra VAT on a social tariff would have for those on the lowest incomes. She asked to clear up if it would mean that those on a social tariff would essentially be paying ‘double’.
Helen Milner confirmed to Claire Marshall that this wouldn't be the case as it would be VAT on all broadband – not just on those paying the tariff. She also confirmed that hypothetically the money raised from the VAT would go back into a digital inclusion unit so it would be self-generative.
Hannah Whelan, Advocacy Manager at Good Things Foundation noted that a broad-stroke digital inclusion fund wouldn’t work in practice as it would be too knotty and complex for most people to access. If a fund were to be available, she noted, it would have to be specifically allocated to those who experience exclusion and easy for people to access. She finally added that to achieve widespread inclusion, the different industry groups at the table needed to work together more collaboratively.
Helen Burrows, Policy Director at BT noted that the online TV transition is a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’ and that industry would be myopic to ignore the opportunity to maximise the benefits this could entail, especially around affordability. She then said that discussion around broadband coverage is often wrongly framed, and over-focusses on the solution of lower prices in isolation. A far bigger problem is that of low incomes in the economy more generally, she posited. She noted that comparatively to the US and much of Europe, in the UK, broadband is cheap, however incomes remain far too stagnant. Therefore a ‘voucher’ scheme to reduce the price of broadband would not actually deal with the structural issues and just complicate access further.
Jemma Waters, Head of Customer Inclusion at Lloyds opened her remarks thanking the group for inviting Lloyds to the event, which she noted had been very fruitful. She outlined how Lloyds are currently running a pilot with the Good Things Foundation to create a vibrant ecosystem which can provide skills and employability support in the digital inclusion sphere. She finished by offering collaboration opportunities to the industry representatives in the room and said that Lloyds looks forward to working with the APPG in the future. Shen then passed to her colleague Surina Somal, Director Group Customer Inclusion & Customer Specialist Support Transformation at Lloyds.
Surina thanked Jemma for asking her to speak and noted that the issue of creating a larger ecosystem is the key focus of LLoyds currently and the group are in the process of bringing together a coalition of technology firms and academies to upskill people. She then noted how, going beyond partnerships and collaborations with other firms, the group wanted to help people with referral programmes (for example with debt and online confidence training) to help form this wider ecosystem of help available to people. She added that digital inclusion had to be a collaborative, societally run initiative and not about maximising the benefits of different private companies. She concluded by agreeing with Hannah Whelan that the different groups at the meeting shouldn’t be competing with each other and should seek to forge constructive relationships with one another.
Julie Elliott MP thanked Surina and Jemma for their contributions and welcomed their desire to be involved in the APPG more. She added that more needs to be done in terms of leadership and strategy at a national level to provide coordination so that the different industry groups could effectively partner together.
Helen Milner agreed with Julie Elliott MP that national leadership in the field is vital. Referencing a Good Things Foundation pilot scheme, Helen added that leadership has to be matched by a national technology infrastructure which can adequately equip people of all ages and backgrounds with digital skills. For this, the Government and Civil Service need to work out a set of national goals which could be actionable.
Chris Ashworth OBE added to Helen’s contribution by saying that the Government Digital Service is the envy of the world and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is full of thousands of talented people working very hard. Despite this clear talent potential, he agreed that leadership is needed to maximise the capabilities of the civil service.
Hannah Whelan asked Helen Burrows at what point she thought the online TV transition would happen.
Helen Burrows answered that current trends in Government policy and the rate of take up of IPTV point to around 2034. She added however, that Government may extend that that until 2040. She said bringing it forward any further would be possible but would require prioritisation by a new Government in their first 100 days and widespread digital connectivity programmes will be needed to ensure its rollout.
Helen Milner added to Helen Burrows’s contribution by saying that as long the transition helps the most vulnerable, people will accept the changes to their day-to-day life and adapt relatively easily.
Helen Burrows thanked Helen Milner for her contribution and pointed out that IPTV connectivity could help enable wider positive change. Notably, she pointed out that IPTV could allow for the rollout of next-generation social care and living support, for example with sensors in different rooms which would mean that family and friends get alerts if there is suspicious movement in a vulnerable person’s house. She finished by noting that the Government keeps saying this is an industry problem which has resulted in stalled progress over the last ten years, especially in contrast to the previous New Labour Government.
Julie Elliott MP then thanked all attendees for listening and contributing to discussions and gave specific thanks for Helen Milner, Chris Ashworth and Helen Burrows for giving their presentations. She also noted that she was glad that the event provided a different angle of the digital inclusion debate by focussing on tangible, actionable solutions.