Building a digital Britain

By Ben Bradshaw MP

Digital communications underpin everything we do. In a short space of time, they have transformed the way we live our lives.

We have a choice in Government: leave it to the market to shape our digital future or have an active industrial policy that maximises the benefits of the market and secures social justice.

For those of us on the left the choice is obvious.

For example, more than one in ten households do not have access to today’s level of broadband technology. Without government intervention, one third of households and businesses will be left out of next generation broadband.

Here is a classic example of where the Tories would fail our economy and our social cohesion. Labour, by contrast, is guaranteeing universal broadband by 2012 at a minimum of 2Mbps and we will help fund the universal roll out of the next generation broadband using a 50 pence per month levy on current fixed phone lines – against a background of steadily falling telecoms bills.

The market is failing in the area of regional and local news too – the existing model is not sustainable. A plurality of providers is important for a healthy and vibrant democracy. So we will consult on the option of sharing a small fraction of the BBC licence fee (approximately 3.5%) in order to ensure high quality, plural provision of news in the regions and nation in the long term.

There are other announcements we are making today, on protecting our creative industries, video classification, accelerating the provision of government services online and others. Full details can be found here.

Let me have your views.