Event report: Cost-of-living Roundtable
On Wednesday 30 November, the Data Poverty APPG held a roundtable on Data Poverty and the Cost-of-living Crisis. The session focussed on how to frame data poverty in the context of the worsening cost-of-living crisis and explored immediate policy tools that could be used to ensure the most vulnerable can get or remain digitally connected.
The session was Chaired by APPG Officer Julie Elliott MP. Attendees heard from political, industry and third sector stakeholders, including Stephanie Peacock, Shadow Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure, Helen Milner OBE, CEO of the Good Things Foundation, Helen Burrows, Head of Content and Services Policy at BT, Chris Ashworth, Head of Social Impact at Nominet, Kat Dixon, Fellow at Good Things Foundation’s Data Poverty Lab, and Paul McKean, Director of FE and Skills at Jisc.
Please see below for minutes of the session:
Julie Elliott MP began by welcoming attendees. She said data poverty often gets left out when talking about the cost-of-living crisis and that it’s important the issue forms part of the conversation around it. She passed on to Stephanie Peacock MP, Shadow Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure, thanking her for taking the time to attend the session.
Stephanie Peacock MP, Shadow Minister for Media, Data and Digital Infrastructure began by outlining how it has become clear over the past 10 years that broadband is a utility rather than a luxury. She pointed to online banking and a story in the day’s news about HSBC branches closing as an example and said the move to exclusively or increasingly online services risks excluding many from society. She called data poverty a self-fulfilling prophecy, where those without data are unable to get a job, and then are unable to afford data as a result. In terms of policy tools, she expressed an interest in solutions from attendees. From the Labour side, she set out the following recent commitments:
Ensuring wholesale prices rise with costs rather than inflation.
Removing loyalty penalties and other mid-contract changes to broadband deals.
All Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide a social tariff option.
Ms Peacock also highlighted the confused landscape around social tariffs as something which needs simplifying in order to raise awareness and increase accessibility.
Julie Elliott MP agreed that confusion around social tariffs is an issue the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee have found previously, and that the Committee is keen to widen access to them. She then introduced Helen Milner OBE, CEO of the Good Things Foundation.
Helen Milner OBE, CEO of the Good Things Foundation, began by setting data poverty in the context of digital inclusion. She spoke of Good Things Foundation’s focus on helping the hardest to reach people, who might not even realise they’re in data poverty, particularly through their databank and devices bank services. She then turned to the economic evidence underpinning the case for digital inclusion, with economists at Cebr and Capita estimating that for every £1 invested in digital inclusion, the UK taxpayer could receive £9.48 back, for a total of £13.3bn benefit over 10 years, for the cost of £1.5bn. Next, Ms Milner said how Good Things Foundation have asked DCMS to cut VAT on social tariffs, which is currently charged at 20%. She expressed a belief that private companies are unable to lower the price of tariffs without such a cut, but that DCMS have said it’s a Treasury issue. She said it was frustrating that DCMS keep putting social tariffs back onto industry, and that it’s now the turn of the Government to put an overarching strategy in place to tackle data poverty.
Julie Elliott MP said that throughout the pandemic it became obvious that DCMS are in charge of ideas, but that they have no money for anything. She suggested lobbying Treasury ministers for funding instead. She then introduced Helen Burrows, Head of Content and Services Policy at BT.
Helen Burrows, Head of Content and Services Policy at BT described how the pandemic brought data poverty to the forefront of BT’s brief, with the organisation and DCMS fostering a constructive relationship in tackling digital exclusion during the lockdown periods. She said BT’s relationship with the Department for Education had been less constructive, with the Department wanting BT to zero rate websites which they were unable to do. Instead, BT devised their mobile data programme, and DfE funded a small pilot after schools had returned. She said it proved difficult to drive uptake for this but found schools which offered the scheme through form teachers rather than through their IT departments did better. Ms Burrows told attendees this also gave the insight that data poverty is not an isolated issue, but a wider poverty issue. Next, Ms Burrows set out how the Department for Work and Pensions knew prior to the energy crisis that there’s a large band of society who can’t afford food, energy and other basic utilities. She said if you’re in a state of extreme poverty, it can be time intensive and difficult to fill in forms and search online for the best deal. As such, government needs to set out a simpler framework. She set out a belief that ISPs have done a good job providing cheap broadband for the UK, with higher prices in comparable countries such as the US, and lower uptake. She said only France are doing better than the UK, who had 13bn Euros of government funding allocated to broadband provision. Regarding Labour’s plans to go back on the Government’s deal with ISPs to allow wholesale prices to rise alongside costs, she warned this will lead to less fibre being built, unless the financial deficit is made up with public money. She proposed government using VAT from broadband to fund social tariffs, but said at present the Government are funding their own voters, through schemes such as pensioner’s energy support, rather than providing targeted support for those who need it.
Julie Elliott MP said the Government are being too reactive with their policies, rather than looking long term. She suggested the first step is to regard broadband as a utility.
Helen Burrows said that classing broadband as a utility would be a non-trivial intervention, and that to make such a change would require changing the whole model of its provision. She also pointed out that broadband has other differentiating factors from other utilities, such as the way that it goes at different speeds and can’t’ be turned on and off.
Julie Elliott MP said this doesn’t change the fact that broadband is essential.
Helen Burrows said there are interventions for this, and that we need to think about how to get broadband into every house in the UK – perhaps via consumer bills or public money. She noted the value chain of the internet is long, with multinationals such as Google and Amazon making billions from internet provision but giving next to nothing back.
Julie Elliott MP then introduced Chris Ashworth, Head of Social Impact at Nominet.
Chris Ashworth, Head of Social Impact at Nominet, thanked Julie Elliott MP and said we need to look at the structural and circumstantial issues behind data poverty. He said we’ve had two years to address the former, and the APPG’s State of the Nation Report touched on a lot of these. Now, we’re in the circumstances of a cost-of-living crisis and need to look at immediate viable initiatives to cover over structural weaknesses that went unchecked. He agreed with Helen Burrows that social tariffs can do lots but not everything, and are constrained by the profitability of ISPs. He said zero rating can provide a minimum initiative through a portfolio of essential online services that the UK public can access for free, either underwritten by the Government, or industry providers such as Virgin Media O2. He handed over to Kat Dixon, Fellow at Good Things Foundation’s Data Poverty Lab.
Kat Dixon, Fellow at Good Things Foundation’s Data Poverty Lab, introduced herself as researching ways to tackle data poverty, with a report launching on 8 December. She described how she interviewed 85 people for the report, from policymakers to those with lived experiences and everyone connecting them in between, across the UK to map solutions to data poverty and see which would be suitable for scaling. She said she found a lot of goodwill in the sector but also a lot of frustration at the impact of data poverty on people’s lives. Next, she set out how she wrote her report in three parts:
1. ‘A Periodic table’ of the internet, mapping out what the internet is for, to communicate how it touches every aspect of our lives.
2. A systematic analysis of solutions – looking at nine options including social tariffs, data programmes, libraries and community centres.
3. Policy recommendations
She ended with a story of someone in the care system who lost her job in the pandemic and whose phone got cut off. This person borrowed a phone from a friend to get a new job, using the smallest amount of data possible to get to a job interview.
Julie Elliott MP then introduced Paul McKean, Director of FE and Skills at Jisc.
Paul McKean, Director of FE and Skills at Jisc, said he agrees data needs to be categorised as a utility, but this would be a difficult step to take and the APPG could consider what steps need to be taken to ensure it’s a workable solution. He told attendees there remains a need to educate ministers and officials over the effects of data poverty and how we can alleviate it, referencing recent HSBC bank closures as an example of data poverty being relegated to an afterthought in the cost-of-living debate. He made the point that data poverty is something that can affect people even if they don’t have data for a short amount of time, which is occurring more frequently as people run out of money towards the end of the week or month. This means people in work are getting affected as well as those in more regular poverty. Mr McKean next called for clearer signposting to a social tariff or databank before you get cut off from an ISP provider. He agreed with the call for zero rating, despite acknowledging its complexity. He then turned to a recent student survey which found 51% of learners currently have issues accessing WIFI, and IFS research which found students are losing £90 a month in November compared to last year, due to inflation. He said this is only going to get worse. He told attendees Jisc still want to put their eduroam service in all government buildings, however only 7 councils have taken the offer up, despite promotion from Michelle Donelan MP when she was DCMS Secretary.
Helen Burrows said that during the pandemic, BT zero rated all NHS resources and government websites, and some charities.
Chris Ashworth said O2 had also zero rated the Citizen’s Advice Bureau but were struggling with video content.
Helen Burrows said BT had ended BBC Bitesize’s zero rating because videos are too expensive. She said this was the same with Google classrooms, as they link to the whole of Google and that would break the mobile network. She also expressed concern that net neutrality and the trend towards greater encryption will make zero rating harder in future, not easier. BT found that they were unable to zero rate video platforms on the NHS for this reason. Ms Burrows then turned to mobile debt, explaining to attendees BT slow data down before they cut it off, meaning their mobile debt cut off rate is only around 1%.
Julie Elliott MP asked if BT’s customers know that.
Helen Burrows replied that she hopes so, but it’s not something BT advertise as they’re concerned it would encourage some customers to stop paying their bills.
Leigh Smyth, Chair of the Digital Poverty Alliance, said she’s tried for 15 years to look for ways of driving digital inclusion. She said people need to look at the benefits digital inclusion can bring, including access to work and better work. She cited the Lloyds Digital Index proving digital inclusion helps people with their finances. She agreed with the frustrations with the Government raised by Helen Milner, where every department benefits from digital inclusion but none of them pick up the cost. She agreed with Helen Burrows that commercial companies are some of the biggest to benefit from the internet but are not picking up the costs. On the utility debate, she agreed it needs to be treated as a utility, but that we need to find a way to pay for it, and that similarly the mandate that all government services need to be digitally accessible needs supporting by giving people access. Ms Smyth next asked whether it would be possible to use government data on digital exclusion, for instance from the Department for Work and Pensions, who she said knows who’s offline due to the means through which they receive universal credit. She asked if DWP were able to share this data safely to help target those in data poverty.
Julie Elliott MP asked if the numbers held by DWP would be exact or an estimate.
Helen Milner said there are plenty of data sets in South Yorkshire looking at the issue.
Leigh Smyth said there are examples of accessing DWP data sets in the past.
Paul Finnis, Chief Executive of the Digital Poverty Alliance then told attendees that he liked Leigh Smyth’s point about focussing on benefits. He raised concerns over siloes in government, giving the example of a conversation in 2020 where the Department for Education said if they’d known the NHS were buying lots of devices then they could have worked with them to share the costs. He said we need to talk about digital inclusion as an investment and are now facing a reality where large amounts of the population won’t be able to be online for a long time. He called for DWP to fund digital inclusion.
Julie Elliott MP ended the session by thanking all attendees.