Digital skills are crucial to our economy. We can’t afford inaction on inequalities

I am proud to be a co-sponsor of today’s backbench debate on digital infrastructure, connectivity and accessibility. Digital inequalities, which consist of unequal access to devices to connect to the internet, of insufficient internet connections, and of a lack of skills to make the most of those connections, drives many more elements of inequality. It furthers existing educational and health inequalities, it affects our employment and our prospects of employment, and in turn it holds back our economy.

During the pandemic, as face-to-face connections became less possible, the move online was quick and caught many by surprise. Offices rushed to order equipment for their workforce to work from home, services moved online to still try and serve customers, and classrooms moved to Zoom or Google Classroom.

This opened up a multitude of digital difficulties to a much wider audience than before, but the problems were not new. Those who were digitally capable and digitally literate were able to adapt, and those that were not, could not. Houses that may have been deemed digitally connected before, given they had broadband and a laptop, suddenly found themselves in a situation where the four members of the household were forced to share one laptop for all their education and work purposes.

Many services moved online, too. Whereas normally one would be able to go to the job centre, the community centre, the libraries or even into schools to use their internet to access such services as Universal Credit or bill payments, they suddenly found this access impossible. I had one constituent very recently who was contacted by her energy company with bills to pay, but only web links in order to access it. Though this was eventually sorted by a phone call, it is an example of digital exclusion that is repeated up and down the country.

The Good Things Foundation, a charity that supports socially excluded people, found that around nine million people in the UK are not able to use the internet independently, and more than one in ten people in the UK do not have internet access.

Whilst it is a problem nationwide, it is also an example of the North-South divide. Almost half of people in the South East of England are able to use the internet fully compared with just one in five in the North East. For Sunderland, where I represent and its neighbouring constituencies, this means that just under 150,000 adults are limited or non-users of the internet.

This simply must change. As the world of work changes, our workforce needs to be able to move with it, or we risk leaving communities behind. As many as eight in ten jobs currently now require digital skills in order to do the job, but less than half of people have the digital skills required.

This is why, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on digital skills, I joined the Good Things Foundation in their call for a Great Digital Catch Up. It is essential that we give those out of work the chance to upskill themselves, those in work the chance to develop their skills, and teachers the skills they need to pass on to our young people.

In Sunderland, like many places, we had a successful visit of the Google Digital Garage, allowing people to drop-in to training courses, and organisations like BT and City and Guilds offer accessible training to those already online to improve their skills. But we simply must see a combined, cross-departmental approach from government, making use of the already extensive resources that are out in communities, to ensure everyone has equal access to such training.

The economic benefit to this is clear. Every £1 invested in digital skills and inclusion sees a return of £15 of growth. In a time when the government must invest rather than cut, where the government must help people rather than freeze their pay, this is an investment opportunity that simply must be taken up.

Whilst we now may be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel with Covid restrictions, these inequalities will still persist well into the future. Investment in physical broadband infrastructure is welcome – although it is alarming that it has been slowed down by the government in its latest spending review – but if it is not combined with widened access to skills and connections, it only serves to speed up internet for those who already have access, widening the gap from those who do not. The government simply must do better.