Liam Halligan, Ellen Judson and Hugo Drayton.

Q91 The Chair: We are continuing our inquiry into digital exclusion with two panels today. I will invite our first witnesses to introduce themselves in a moment. I would describe this first session as an opportunity for us to zoom out a little. We have heard a lot of evidence over the preceding few weeks on quite detailed aspects to do with digital exclusion. We are very pleased to have before us this afternoon three people who we hope will be able to look at some of the political and policy arguments in a broader context than we have perhaps focused on until now. Later on, we have Ofcom before us as well.

We are broadcasting live on the internet. A recording of this will be taken, along with a written record, both of which will be available on our website in due course. Could the witnesses please introduce themselves?

Liam Halligan: I am a columnist at the Telegraph. It is nice to see an old editor here. I am also the economics and business editor for GB News.

Ellen Judson: I am head of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media at Demos, the think tank. I run our digital and technology policy work.

Hugo Drayton: I am the chair of Citizens Online, which is a charity focused on the digital divide.

Q92 The Lord Bishop of Leeds: Thank you for coming. We are looking into digital exclusion, but of course that does not happen in a vacuum. There are other elements of exclusion as well. We face many social and economic challenges in this country at the moment. In your view and from your experience, how significant a problem is digital exclusion relative to other forms of exclusion or poverty?

Liam Halligan: It is not as serious as absolute or even relative poverty. I do not think it is as serious as energy poverty, which has obviously been a very important topic in the last 12 to 18 months, but it is a lot more serious than the Government make out. There is not nearly enough attention on this.

For many facets of modern life, being on the internet is not an optional extra. It is not leisure; it is access to employment. Some 90% of jobs are only advertised online. It is access to lower bills for almost everything. An incredible survey by YouGov suggested that households that are not on the internet are paying £300 a month more than everyone else, on average, for all their essential bills. More than one in 20 of our households have no internet at all and more than one in 10 have no broadband. Although coverage is a lot wider than it was pre-pandemic, the pandemic has also illustrated just how important being online is.

Amid all the statistics about the disabled being likely to be more excluded, big regional inequality when it comes to digital exclusion and the price rises that we have seen in April—they are all RPI-plus-linked, even though we are told inflation is only going up by the CPI—there is also a group of people who just do not want to be on the internet. It may be 5%; it may be more. We say that 10% of people are not on the internet, but I would say that at least half of them do not want to be. That is also an important caveat.

The Lord Bishop of Leeds: Can I just press you on one element of that—the impact of digital exclusion on other forms of poverty or exclusion? I know it is a bit chicken-and-egg.

Liam Halligan: It is pretty obvious to all of us that, unless you are actively engaged in managing your household bills, you are not going to get a good deal. That is just the reality of life at the moment. It may not always be like that, but it certainly is at the moment. All of us around this table, or members of our family, will be involved in managing our outgoings over the internet. When you have so few clearing banks now, particularly outside the big cities but even in some parts of the big cities, and places not taking cash, if you cannot use a smartphone and you cannot bank online, your life becomes very difficult indeed.

I have looked at some of the previous excellent evidence that you have taken and learned a huge amount reading the evidence that you have taken so far. There was one statistic that hit me: two-fifths of those who have never used the internet are under 60. It is not just a problem among older people. When you think about it, there are 3.7 million over-75s who are not using the internet. That is three-quarters of over-75s and it is worth putting that in context. There are quite a lot of younger people, surprisingly, who are not on the internet for whatever reason—a lack of access, a lack of will, a lack of money or a lack of wherewithal and confidence—but three-quarters of over-75s are not.

I speak as someone with aged parents. It is particularly worrying when you have a couple where one person, often the man, does all the stuff on the internet and then the other person, often the woman, does not. Then they do not know how to do anything when their partner sadly dies. I have outlined a very specific problem, but it is not uncommon. For the people involved, the mental anguish and the vulnerability is acute.

The Lord Bishop of Leeds: Lack of access, inability to access or the choice not to access has an impact on other elements of social engagement, medical health and so on.

Liam Halligan: Yes, of course it does. There was a fantastic study by the Centre for Economic and Business Research that was presented to your Lordships about this not just being moral, right and the nice, cuddly thing to do, but also the economic thing to do. We could make NHS appointments much more efficient, fewer staff, less anguish for everybody, if it was more online. You can only really press to the full efficacy and efficiency of online if you take with you everyone or everyone that wants to come with you. I was shocked reading these numbers about older people, over 75; 76 is not very old.

Lord Hall of Birkenhead: Hear, hear.

Liam Halligan: I am approaching that myself.

The Lord Bishop of Leeds: 80 is not very old.

Liam Halligan: I found it really shocking that three-quarters of over-75s are not on the internet. There is the whole silver surfer thing: “They are all trading stocks and shares”. They are really not. Three-quarters of them are not even on the net, and a lot of them are losing their life partners who were managing their household budgets on the net. Then they are lost.

Ellen Judson: I agree. It is really important to focus on how digital exclusion intersects with other issues and not to think of it as a standalone issue that either we tackle or we do not. There are ways in which digital exclusion is going to be compounding health issues, particularly thinking around what we have seen over Covid, with the impact of social isolation and loneliness, which digital inclusion can help tackle, and points about accessing public services such as health services more easily, being able to learn new skills more easily and get back into work when you are digitally included. Particularly we have seen an acceleration of digitalisation during Covid, and more services, more support and more solutions for lots of these issues moving into online spaces, and that trend is only going to continue.

It is important that this is an issue we really get a handle on now, before ever more becomes digitalised and people who are digitally excluded face further marginalisation as a result.

Hugo Drayton: I do not want to repeat, because I clearly agree with everything that Liam and Ellen have said. One of the important things is that it really does have to be integral to everything. It is not something that we can view, as you said in your opening comment, in isolation. It is endemic to everything, whether that is to do with culture or to do with work. Liam talked about job hunting; everything in life is now dependent upon having access to these essential digital skills.

Although the Lloyds research is a little bit more optimistic in that sense, we and Ofcom believe that one in five still do not have the essential digital skills. This is still a significant problem. Although Liam is right to focus on the particular issue for elderly people, it is not limited to that. There are a lot of young people who simply cannot get going in life because they do not have access. One of the reasons it is so hard is that it is not purely economics. It is about skills, which is about lifelong learning and commitment. It is not something you can solve in a two-hour session and then set people off. Those that do not have the skills need longer nurturing to make this part of their lives.

Q93 Lord Hall of Birkenhead: Could we move on to whether the right things are being done by the right people? Are Government doing enough? Are the regulators doing enough? Should more be done to encourage charities, private citizens and so on? What is the right amount of intervention by Government and by regulators? Is too much or too little of that being done? What is your judgment?

Liam Halligan: That is a question that encapsulates the whole of this inquiry, is it not? The third sector is doing a good job. There are the digital data banks. The food banks with SIM cards model is really very good. You are getting a lot of alternative internet providers that I know your Lordships have heard from in previous sessions. The third sector is healthy and should be encouraged.

There is a bit of confusion about the Government’s role because there are so many different technologies out there at the moment, such as full fibre 5G. The Government have not been particularly receptive to some investors who have been trying to move into that space. I am thinking of Stratospheric in particular.

Also our full fibre rollout is very low by international standards. It is still only at 42%, when it up in the 80s and 90s in continental Europe and in Northern Ireland, by the way; that is one part of the UK. Of course it is at 100% in many of the Asian economies, including China.

I am still trying to work out in my own mind what the role of BT is in all of this. I am aware that Ofcom is in the room. The regulated BT price is set, as BT itself has said, to enable rollout. If it were much lower, BT has said, the rollout of their network would be slower. BT sets a floor for competition at the lower end. At the top end, there is quite a lot of competition, at the £30 and £40 a month end, with services being bundled and so on.

I am not saying for a minute that there are restrictive practices or anything like that. This is not the housebuilding industry, though of course it would deny that; that is a different inquiry. There is some healthy competition, which is stratified in different areas, because you have this huge, dominant regulated entity. I am not saying it should not be there; it just is what it is. The Government find it difficult to know what to do.

The one area where the Government should know more about what to do is on social tariffs. I am sure we will come on to that. I find it really odd that social tariffs on energy and water are VAT-free but you pay VAT on social tariffs when it comes to digital provision. It would be a flick of the Treasury’s pen to get rid of that and it would be a huge benefit. It should be a major recommendation from this committee, if I may humbly say so. But you would have to make sure that those VAT savings are passed on, because it is our experience from the energy industry that they are not always passed on.

Lord Hall of Birkenhead: Would you mandate social tariffs or have a more mandatory regime around it?

Liam Halligan: There are dangers in mandating social tariffs. I would lay down minimum standards for what social tariffs should be, in terms of the price and what they offer.

We should also remember that, at the lower end, many people are not taking up those social tariffs. Some research from Ofcom came out just this week. It is really amazing that out of the 4.3 million people who are eligible for social tariffs, if you take universal benefit and other means-tested benefits, I think 220,000 was the number. That is incredible. I dug a little into that and I asked around in the town where I live. It is clear that lots of people who are eligible for social tariffs do not want the social tariffs, because they can get a much better service for a few quid extra a month.

There is also a connection in the minds of the public between money and quality, even, with huge respect, at the lower end of the income spectrum. You do not need mandated social tariffs—that would skew the market—but you do need to have an information campaign about them. I would compel the providers to post them at prominent places on their websites. I would compel providers to tell their lower-income eligible customers about them. I would have them prominently on paper and PDF bills, so that people know that they are there—a lot of people do not know that they are there—and I would absolutely make them VAT-free.

Lord Hall of Birkenhead: Ellen, it is the same question to you, but can I ask you to look at something slightly different, because we have heard a lot of evidence on this? Should the Government be doing more to support civil society in terms of digital exclusion, particularly over the longer period? We have heard evidence from Wales saying that that sort of long-term intervention—it was either five years or six years; I cannot remember now—was really crucial to getting a change of the sort we want.

Ellen Judson: Yes, there are few things to pick up on that. One is thinking about digital exclusion and the diversity of forms that it takes, and so the need for different interventions to tackle different aspects. We might be talking about access to devices in one setting and about confidence in using digital technologies in another. There is a question about how Government can be supporting a diversity of interventions. Civil society has a crucial role in delivering that and, as Liam said, a lot of excellent work is already being done by civil society organisations, both nationally and community organisations, which support and engage with individual people to help get them online or upskill them in particular digital skills.

What is lacking at the minute is a coherent holistic strategy that covers all of that. There is lots of research, pilots and engagement being done, and good initiatives, but they tend to be a bit disconnected and being run by individual organisations without necessarily that holistic view from the Government on how they could be better supported as part of an overall strategy. Existing government policies and initiatives that could have a digital inclusion lens applied to them is also an area that would help bring that more to the forefront across the different areas.

Thinking about technology policy specifically, we have done a lot of work over the last few years on online safety. That conversation has not really connected it so much to people’s experiences of digital exclusion and how, if people are less confident in using digital technologies, they might struggle in the online safety landscape. We are talking a lot about AI at the minute and the need for skills, but it feels like all the conversations are happening in slightly different locations. Civil society is doing amazing work; there needs to be more support and investment, but through a holistic, joined-up strategy rather than by trying to pick off individual things.

Lord Hall of Birkenhead: That is really clear. On the point about it being longer term, too much is two years, one year or three years, but a longer-term view would be a longer-term commitment to initiatives and funding.

Ellen Judson: Given how fast technology is developing and changing, the nature of digital exclusion is also going to be changing in terms of the skills that people need or people’s confidence and access to the devices that people need to access to use. It is about having a longer-term look, so that we are not just fixing a problem for the next couple of years and then have to go back to it and completely change strategy in a few years.

Lord Hall of Birkenhead: Hugo, on the same theme, is the Government’s primary role co-ordinator and convener, or do they need to do more in terms of funding in significant ways?

Hugo Drayton: They need to do more. They need to be leading this. They need to be showing that digital inclusion has to be embedded in everything. There are a lot of people, a lot of us, who just take digital activity as part of our lives. It manifests itself a lot in the design of services and products where they have not really thought about people who are not digitally included yet. That makes it more difficult; the divide gets bigger.

For example, GDPR has become very much part of the conversation, with fines attached to people who do not comply. The consumer has now become much more aware of the role of data and the sensitivity around data. Digital inclusion needs to have some of that same fuel, so that it becomes a much more established part of the conversation. Without government support and, as I say, leadership, that may not happen. There is an awareness problem and a promotional problem. Although I am against too much legislation, this is an area that needs to become a statutory service. It needs to be something that people have to do. They have to consider it in order to provide services to the public.

Q94 Baroness Harding of Winscombe: Mr Halligan, I wondered if we could come back to social tariffs. We heard earlier in the inquiry people calling for a wholesale social tariff. I am trying to combine your points around BT and the importance of awareness and the pricing of social tariffs. Should Openreach be mandated to provide a social tariff at the wholesale price to drive prices down at that end?

Liam Halligan: Given what you did for a living, you will know a lot more about the details than me. I think I am right in saying that the Openreach wholesale tariff is something like £14 or £15 a month plus VAT. Of course, Openreach is not mandated or does not offer a social tariff. That of course puts a floor on many other things. If you are determined to get that last 5%, the half of the 10% who are digitally excluded or choosing to be excluded, that 5% will be really important if you want to really try to crack this problem as we move towards a cashless society, as we are with abandon. We have all experienced the parking apps madness; I just want to put 50p in a slot so I can get to my lunch or appointment or whatever it is.

If the Government said to Openreach, “We really think that you should offer a social tariff”, that would be a huge signal across the industry. A lot of the other providers, if they do not offer social tariffs, under their breath say, “Openreach does not have to. Why should we?” If you want to engender a culture change, if you want to avoid the downsides of compulsion, which I know worries some of your members on this committee—it certainly worries me—you need to do something catalytic that brings about that culture change. The Government leaning heavily on BT Openreach to offer a social tariff, nearer zero than £14 or £15, would be transformational.

Q95 The Chair: I just want to ask my own supplementary to you, Mr Halligan, as an economist. Some of the alter providers, which are the competition to Openreach, fear that, if Openreach had a social tariff for a wholesale price, it would drop it in such a way that would force them out of the market, because they would not be able to compete on that lower price. I just wondered whether that was an angle that you had thought about.

Liam Halligan: I have thought about it a little. It depends on what the alt providers are in business for. Are they in business to solve a problem—there is always an element of altruism in what they are doing—or are they in business to make money? If it is the former, how can they possibly object to this huge monolithic provider making digital provision easier for most people? There will always be people involved. There is always fallout from whatever change you make, but I hardly think that they can complain if the problem, which they say their mission in life is to highlight, is being significantly addressed, at a stroke. It is not the priority of policymakers to worry about whether those companies stay in business.

Q96 Lord Young of Norwood Green: How should the Government prioritise their interventions? We have had a lot of ideas this morning. Should they prioritise certain demographics or outcomes when tackling digital exclusion?

Hugo Drayton: For prioritisation to work, it needs to be focused. As we have already heard, there are many groups, whether they are disabled, poor or elderly. Probably the prioritisation should be on low income, where there is a big overlap with the other groups that we are talking about. Low-income households are probably the best focus in order for the prioritisation to be effective. We are trying to get something that is going to help us not just with social justice and productivity; this is about the UK being competitive. A focus on the lower-income household would be the right place for the Government to be active.

Ellen Judson: Coming back to the point we were discussing earlier about different forms of exclusion being compounded, there is an argument to look at where the most exclusion is compounded by digital exclusion, and therefore where the most acute need is, in consultation with different affected communities to really understand the contours of what that looks like.

There is also something that we should keep in mind when we are thinking about prioritisation, which is the democratic imperative for tackling digital exclusion across the board. We have talked a lot about the specific outcomes that tackling digital exclusion would help, but I think particularly where digital technologies are such a fundamental source of access to information, freedom of expression, access to political information and political engagement, as increasingly we may be moving towards more digital forms of democracy, that is the through line of needing to lift everyone to be able to engage. That is an important one to keep in mind.

Lord Young of Norwood Green: You are going for a broader approach.

Liam Halligan: The digitally excluded who are old and who are young, in that order, should be prioritised. That is not to deprioritise the young but, as I said earlier, there is a generation in the twilight of their lives. This is all so new to them, particularly people who are left alone without their partner. It is not always the man.

The Chair: A lot of women would say it is usually the women.

Liam Halligan: Those people are particularly vulnerable. I wanted to take the opportunity while I was here to highlight that, and I have. The fact that the committee is taking so much time on social tariffs is very important, but if you are going to have some negotiation with companies—life is generally a negotiation—then priority should be given to homes with kids, because it is almost impossible to be an engaged pupil these days unless you can get on the internet. So much of what goes on in schools is on the internet. You do your worksheets on the internet; you talk to your teachers on the internet. After elderly—particularly sole elderly—households, a very close second for focus of assistance should be households on low incomes with school-aged children.

Finally, it is often said that, in terms of the digital prices faced by our households, we are doing so much better than the States. We are, but the States has a particular telecoms history, as many of you will know, that means there are high prices regionally. But our prices are not cheap compared to continental Europe, or indeed to many emerging giants, such as India, Pakistan and Vietnam. Our prices are really quite high. I am not saying that is because of restrictive practices; it is because we have a legacy industry here, and there are big vested interests that need to be managed and shifted over time.

It is not just the old and then the young, though it is partly them. It is also that everyone is not getting a great deal here. Just like British steelmakers rightly complain that the energy they pay for is far higher than in continental Europe, a lot of our businesses and a lot of our people are paying a lot of money for their digital services.

Lord Young of Norwood Green: I am trying to focus on prioritising. I will only say this: beware of making sweeping generalisations about the elderly. I have a mother-in-law who is 98; she is quite capable of dealing with her iPad, emails et cetera. There are a lot of elderly people who are silver surfers. There are a lot of elderly people who, during the pandemic, actually found that they wanted to communicate with their grandchildren and were assisted in that way.

I am absolutely at one with you on children in households. During the pandemic, I had a lot of contact with teachers who said that it was a disaster. They had people who just had a mobile phone, so I absolutely agree with you on that.

Just as a supplementary, should the Government have targets to lift people out of digital exclusion, or is that the responsibility of the individual?

Ellen Judson: Yes, they should. There has been a lot of interesting work done around the idea of a minimum digital living standard, which would set out the minimum access to digital goods and services that people would need. That project gives a good indication for how that minimum target could be used, above which, as you say, more support could be targeted at particular demographics who might be more in need.

There should certainly be both links to positive social outcomes but also, as I mentioned, the fundamental principle that citizens are going to need to be digitally included and have access. Even if they may choose not to engage with digital services and technologies, at least having a meaningful choice is increasingly becoming part of our social contract. The Government should work on that.

Hugo Drayton: The most useful thing that the Government can do—Citizens Online believes this should happen—is that there should be a minimum digital living standard. That would be a really helpful target and establish a baseline for what is expected.

Lord Young of Norwood Green: Last but by no means least, be as brief as you can.

Liam Halligan: I will be uncharacteristically brief, but as a journalist I will be characteristically prone to making sweeping generalisations, if I may say so, and also to a slight scepticism. I would not call it cynicism. As soon as there is a quantitative target—as opposed to a qualitative target, which Hugo has outlined, which is a completely different thing that I do agree with—the target will be gamed. It is an easy thing to set a target. Ofcom actually does a very good job of monitoring this and reports regularly on digital exclusion. Committees like this, think tanks, journalists and third-sector people should be publicising those Ofcom readings. We then take it from there.

Lord Young of Norwood Green: That is a really helpful distinction, made with brevity as well.

Q97 Lord Lipsey: I am interested in when we are trying to prioritise. I am trying to draw a distinction here between younger people and the elderly. The younger people will contribute far more to the national economy, are digitally literate and can get jobs that require digital skills. That is a big addition to the national wealth. With older people, it is rather different. I turned 75 last Friday, so I have a view on this. What you really want it for is to be able to have a Zoom or a WhatsApp with your kids somewhere else. That does not actually return any financial return to anybody. I am struggling to see how you balance what is monetised against what is really important to the people concerned but not monetised.

Liam Halligan: You are clearly one of the 5.4 million plus one over-75s in this country. You are not one of the 3.7 million that lacks essential digital skills. There will be many silver surfers who are completely internet literate; my mum is one of them. My concern is that my dad really is not. If she was not around, he would really struggle not just to Zoom the kids but to pay his bills.

We should not really be weighing up whether we should help the elderly or the very young more, because it is not an either/or, but to govern is to choose. The reason I put the elderly slightly ahead of kids in digitally excluded households is because, for many of the elderly people, it may be about access to hospital appointments or to heating. I do not want to overdramatise this but, for the elderly, for the 75% of the over-75s, whether they can get access to digital really could be a life-and-death issue. That is why, reluctantly but inevitably, I put those over-75s slightly ahead of children in digitally excluded homes. I was shocked by the number when I came across it in recent days. I would not like to choose.

Q98 Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill: In all your evidence, you all agree. I just wonder why it is hard for the Government to address digital exclusion and the bigger picture. Why is it not a more prominent policy issue? Do they just regard it as too difficult? Is it just a social justice issue rather than making an economic case? You have spoken about the need for leadership and strategic policy. I just wonder what you think the overarching Government role should be.

Hugo Drayton: It is very hard. We have not established a link between digital inclusion and policy-making. Ellen referred earlier to how technology is evolving the whole time. Nothing is static. This is a moving feast and it makes it very hard to measure or to put in metrics. As Liam said, metrics can be difficult to manage anyway. That is one of the reasons it is just so hard.

Also, because it is being dealt with piecemeal, trying to bolt things on, it has not really addressed the fundamental problem, which is that, coming back to the earlier answer, this has to be integral to everything, because it affects every aspect of our lives and the country’s life. Probably the simple answer to your question is that it has been too difficult. We need to establish some goals so that they can be achieved, rather than simply passing it on as things get more and more difficult.

Ellen Judson: There is also something about how we approach digital policy-making in general. That has historically tended to be very reactive. Technologies become more prevalent in our lives, development is accelerated and a few years down the road we identify some problems and try to retrofit solutions. I am not sure we have quite got to grips with the fact that we are a digitalised society now. There is still a sense sometimes that access to phones and laptops or something is a nice-to-have and a good thing for people to have access to, but it is not “real life”.

There can be a lack of engagement with how essential these technologies are for people’s everyday lives and how essential being able to access them confidently and safely is. There is just a bit of catching up that we have to do around seeing the trajectory of digital and the integration of the online and the offline. They are not separate anymore. They are all the society that we are in, and we need to be thinking about that as a whole.

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill: Mr Halligan, I know you do not want to overregulate, but there is surely more of a role for Government.

Liam Halligan: There is. Ellen is completely right about the online and the offline world being completely melded and merged now, and some people getting left behind. The reasons why Government do not do more in this area and why we have not had a digital exclusion strategy paper since 2014 are under two headings: it is too difficult and it is not sexy enough.

It is too difficult because, in the minds of some Ministers and officials, they understand that this country unfortunately has a big problem with, frankly, functional illiteracy. We are towards the bottom end of the OECD tables. There will be some people for whom a screen-based world will never apply. Ridiculously high numbers fall into that category in this country and that is one reason.

Another reason why it is too hard is because we are dealing with a complex industry, with many legacy players, and many politically sensitive and powerful interests. To try to move them around is difficult. It is not interesting enough because it is not food and it is not energy, which are the really big parts of household budgets historically. They are the politically explosive ones. We do not pay that much of our household income on our broadband and digital connectivity, though we do pay too much, as far as I am concerned, if you look at international tables, excluding the US.

It is just not sexy. Ministers like talking about unicorns and AI. They like being photographed with the tech bros in T-shirts and sand shoes, rather than dealing with what is a necessity of life now, as Hugo rightly says. They are the reasons why it is a Cinderella issue for politicians. Within that are an awful lot of people who are suffering, both towards the end of their lives and at the beginning of their lives. That is why what this committee is doing is important, particularly when it comes to social tariffs.

Q99 Baroness Wheatcroft: Ministers like to talk about growth. We have had evidence that a majority of people in the workplace cannot do their jobs to the full, because they are digitally not up to scratch. Do you think there is an argument that says Government should be doing more on this front because it will boost productivity? If you do, do you have any idea what that boost might be? I will start with Liam and declare an interest, having been editor of the Sunday Telegraph when I hired him as economics editor.

Liam Halligan: It is all her fault. Even though we—not least me—have talked a lot about social tariffs, this is not only a soft and cuddly issue at all. This is all about hard-nosed economics, as Baroness Wheatcroft has indicated.

I refer back to the Centre for Economics and Business Research report, which I mentioned earlier. It says that, if the Government spent £1.3 billion on digital training and digital access under various headings and various scenarios over 10 years, they would get back £13.7 billion, in terms of economic benefit to households and broader GDP, not least from working-from-home benefits. That is a cost-benefit ratio of one to 10, which even the National Audit Office would think was pretty good. It is a bit better than the cost-benefit ratio for HS2, but that may be for another committee.

This is all about economics and productivity gains. It is about a more efficient public realm as well, with more efficient education and NHS appointments. If you want, you can link it very much to net zero, if people are working at home more, if more services are delivered digitally. You cannot have a hip operation down the line, as we say in television, but there is an awful lot of consultation and physio that can happen down the line. We need to move away from this idea. Do not get me started on face-to-face GP appointments; there need to be a lot more. We need to get back to at least where we were before the pandemic—80% rather than 55% to 60% at the moment.

There is a lot that we can do down the line, particularly for those who are digitally excluded, but also we are the world’s second biggest service exporter. We have just signed the CPTPP. We are blowing up the idea that gravity models of trade matter. Distance is a lot less important than it was, which is why we trade so much more with the UAE than we do with Sweden.

If we are the great service provider that we are, if we are going to carry on specialising in IP, entertainment and gaming, which is an astonishing export revenue earner by the way, we need to be super-connected. We cannot have this situation where Singapore has 100% full fibre, Spain has 89%, the Italians have 44% and we have 42%. That is a really ridiculous number economically, not just morally. That does not say that Britain is open for business.

Hugo Drayton: I agree with pretty much everything Liam has said. UK competitiveness depends absolutely on digital connectivity. Liam just mentioned gaming. I sit on the board of an esports company. All of these things at which the UK excels creatively and technically depend upon connectivity and the persistent existence of a poverty premium at the other end of the scale is another reason why we should be encouraging those that need it most to gain those essential digital skills. It is absolutely key to growth and cannot be underestimated.

Ellen Judson: I agree. I am particularly thinking about technology. We have an ambition for the UK to become the world’s tech superpower and to be world leaders in technology and innovation. None of that is going to be possible without workforces that are digitally skilled and digitally included. Particularly to the point again about technologies evolving and the recent ambition set out in the AI White Paper, this is only going to become more important. I agree with the others that there is a risk of the UK being left behind. We have seen the EU Commission recently calling for member states to invest much more in digital skills. Other countries are making moves on this; if we leave it too late, we will be left behind.

Q100 The Chair: Would it be fair to say that to get the reaction from the Government and for them to give this challenge the priority and attention that it needs, you might advise that it be framed as an economic challenge, or rather something from which the benefits are growth and economic prosperity?

Liam Halligan: I would actually go further. I would frame it as not just morally the right thing to do; you are going to get good coverage in the Guardian for this, or less bad coverage. It is not just economically the right thing to do so that the City and the financiers are happy, but I would frame digital rollout, particularly 5G, as part of levelling up. It takes a long time to build railways and do reverse Beeching, though some of that is happening. It takes a long time to build roads, particularly in this country, where apparently it takes seven years to get a spade in the ground on any project.

But it does not take long to collaborate with British companies that are flying drones on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere and using them for quick 5G rollout in collaboration with German Government-backed Deutsche Telekom. That is really happening. Why are the British Government not doing more of that? I know Openreach is now talking to Stratospheric Platforms, the Cambridge-based company. You do not have to dig up the roads to make certain parts of the country, certain northern towns, 5G hotspots. If you combine them with an enterprise zone where people do not pay corporation tax for the first year and an NIC reduction, watch investment go to those towns. You do not need to spend much public money to do that.

The combination of digital rollout—smart digital rollout, virtual digital rollout, not digging up roads—and judicious use of tax breaks could revolutionise the levelling-up agenda. If I were advising Government, that would be how I would frame it, alongside the other completely laudable things we have been talking about on the social tariff front. If you want this to supercharge growth and you want it to actually address the fact that we are the most regionally unequal economy of all the advanced economies in the world, digital rollout can play a huge part in correcting those massive regional imbalances, securing all kinds of political prizes for whichever Government have the brains to do it.

Hugo Drayton: I agree. It should be framed economically, but also socially and culturally. It is in everything. It is absolutely essential that we do this as a country.

Ellen Judson: I agree. It is about framing it as an economic opportunity but also one that really just underpins government objectives across levelling up, getting people into work and tackling the health crisis. There is something important about its role in enabling fundamental freedoms. The Government are very concerned that digital and technology policy, such as the Online Safety Bill, does not infringe on freedom of expression. There is a really powerful freedom of expression and freedom of information argument to be made around digital inclusion and access to digital technologies.

The Chair: Thank you, all three of you, very much for your time this afternoon and for the clear preparation that you also made in order to come and give a very powerful testimony to us. We are very grateful to you all.