UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 305v

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

WELSH AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

Digital Inclusion in Wales

Tuesday 28 April 2009

MR LEIGHTON ANDREWS, MR ALUN BURGE and MR RICHARD SEWELL

MR ANTONY WALKER, MR RUSSELL LAWSON and DR GAIL BRADBROOK

Evidence heard in Public Questions 266 - 327

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Welsh Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 28 April 2009

Members present

Dr Hywel Francis, in the Chair

Mrs Siān C James

Mr David Jones

Alun Michael

Albert Owen

Hywel Williams

Mark Williams

________________

Memorandum submitted by Welsh Assembly Government

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Leighton Andrews AM, Deputy Minister for Regeneration, Welsh Assembly Government, Mr Alun Burge, Head of Digital Inclusion Unit, Welsh Assembly Government, and Mr Richard Sewell, Department of Economy and Transport, Welsh Assembly Government, gave evidence.

Q266 Chairman: Good morning, welcome to the Welsh Affairs Committee and particularly to this evidence session on digital inclusion in Wales. Could I begin by inviting you, Minister, to introduce yourself and your colleagues, please?

Mr Andrews: Indeed, I am Leighton Andrews, the Deputy Minister for Regeneration, and my colleagues today are Alun Burge, who heads our Digital Inclusion Unit in the Department for Social Justice and Local Government, and Richard Sewell from the Department of Economy and Transport.

Q267 Chairman: At the outset I should say we wondered whether we should declare the fact that we knew some of you, but one member of the Committee said that it would be strange if we did not know you, so we will not declare that. Could I begin by asking you a very straightforward question and thanking you for your very helpful written memorandum? You state in the submission that you intend to develop a Digital Inclusion Action Plan for Wales; how would that interface with the UK Government's Digital Inclusion Action Plan?

Mr Andrews: We obviously welcome the publication of the UK Government's Digital Inclusion Action Plan, but this is not an area where we are starting from scratch. We have had in place for some years our Communities @One digital inclusion programme which has spent £10.7 million over the last four years and has funded a series of community brokers around Wales who themselves have been, if you like, digital inclusion champions in their communities and have been working with community groups and others to develop initiatives to encourage people to take up the use of the internet, the use of computers, the use of other digital technologies. I guess that the way we want to proceed is to absorb some of the lessons that come in from the consultation that is currently being held on the UK Government's Digital Inclusion Action Plan. We have been in dialogue obviously with the Minister for Digital Inclusion at the UK level, the Secretary of State Paul Murphy, over the period of the last year; we have been engaged with the UK Government before that, with Stephen Timms when he was the minister, and indeed our officials of course saw drafts of the plan as it was being developed. We therefore have a very close working relationship already with the UK Government, we welcome the initiatives that are being outlined and we have also of course been involved in work streams that are related to digital inclusion as part of the work that Lord Carter has been doing on Digital Britain as well - we are involved in the work stream, for example, on media literacy and indeed the work stream on the universal service commitment. At the present time, therefore, officials in the Welsh Assembly Government are meeting across departments to look at the issues that arise and are starting to put in place some of the work that will lead to the publication of our own plan.

Q268 Albert Owen: Just to follow on from that you say you welcome the UK's Digital Inclusion Action Plan and in that plan it talks about the next steps, and you mentioned the local digital champions, but in their next steps they say they will have the digital champion for the United Kingdom. Will there be, for example, one in Wales, and who will be co-ordinating this and bringing it together to ensure that there is a charter so that people are aware of it, for example, and also who is bringing it together within the Welsh Assembly Government and how will that link up with the United Kingdom Government?

Mr Andrews: As I said, Mr Owen, we are not starting from scratch in Wales and I am delighted that in the UK Government's Digital Inclusion Action Plan they are proposing to have digital mentors in deprived communities which draws on some of the work that we have already done ourselves in Wales - that has been the role of our community brokers. I do not anticipate that we will ourselves have a digital inclusion champion in Wales, that is the role of myself as the Minister, to be the champion for digital inclusion across government and indeed outwardly across Wales. We already have in place a framework for the deliberation of digital inclusion issues, we had a successful digital inclusion conference last year, we have contacts across the whole of Wales, there are many different organisations who are engaged in activities in this area. For example, you will be aware that Ofcom has the Wales Media Literacy Network and we work closely with them, we work closely with a range of other organisations. I would anticipate that we would want to work closely, however, with the UK Government's digital inclusion champion and I hope that we will have, from the experience we have developed over the last few years, work that they will want to get to know and to learn from.

Q269 Albert Owen: Just for clarification, you will take the mantle of the digital inclusion champion in there and it will be yourself that will be liaising with the United Kingdom Government.

Mr Andrews: We have established a Digital Inclusion Unit over the last year which Mr Burge heads. The early part of that work has been to put in place the successor programme to Communities @One, Communities 2.0, which has just started, and that will be a nearly £20 million programme over the next five years, again seeking to engage people at a local level in activities to promote the use of internet, broadband and so on. Mr Burge has already, in representing us in relation to the UK Government in a number of areas, been in liaison with the Department for Communities and Local Government, with the media literacy stream within Digital Britain et cetera, and indeed he has just come hotfoot from the UK digital inclusion conference which has taken place yesterday and today, so we have those relationships already in place.

Q270 Albert Owen: Those agreed actions will be fed back to yourself as the Minister and then down to the community champions.

Mr Andrews: We need to identify from the action plan, obviously, those areas which are devolved and fall for us to do, many of which we are already engaged in. For example, within the education system there is a large amount of work that has been going on now since the millennium really on the ICT availability in schools, safety issues and so on, so we are already across many of those issues. It has been very helpful to have a Digital Inclusion Action Plan to draw together on a cross-governmental basis the work that is going on there. Additionally of course I should mention perhaps that the British Irish Council has established a work stream on digital inclusion as well and I was present at the British Irish Council meeting which established that work stream, and we look forward to playing our part in that as well on an intra-government basis.

Q271 Albert Owen: Sure. You say you are ahead of the game in certain areas; are there any digital inclusion issues that are different in Wales compared to the rest of the United Kingdom?

Mr Andrews: Broadly speaking the issues that matter are pretty much the same in Wales as they are in the rest of the UK, and indeed as they are, from the research that we have seen, in most EU countries - and we have played our own part in the European Commission's last two inclusion conferences. Most of what comes through in the research at those conferences suggests that people who are older, people who live in deprived communities, people in social classes D and E and people who live in more rural areas tend to be more excluded, and certainly our own figures bear that out. If you look at young people's engagement with the internet, for example, it is very high. There are a couple of areas in Wales where the Ofcom research suggests that certain factors weigh more heavily, for example cost. In the Ofcom research it is suggested that that weighs slightly more heavily and indeed motivation appears to be a factor, which is why our Communities @One project has been very much focused on working with people on the basis of their interests, getting them to see how the technology relates to the interests they have - whether that be the Heads of the Valleys Astronomy Group or the Islwyn Camcorder Group for example.

Albert Owen: Thank you.

Q272 Mrs James: Just expanding on this media literacy part, it is an important issue which is addressed in both the Digital Inclusion Action Plan and the Digital Britain Report. How are you going to co-ordinate these media literacy initiatives in Wales with those taking place in the rest of the UK?

Mr Andrews: It is fair to say that Ofcom of course has a statutory responsibility in respect of media literacy and there have been some suggestions that the remit that they operate is going to be looked at. In Wales they operate the Wales Media Literacy Network which works in conjunction with NIACE Dysgu Cymru and they have held a number of events. They are clearly in tune through their own organisations with what is happening at a UK level. Media literacy is an area which spans a number of potential government responsibilities within the Welsh Assembly Government, it is being taken forward obviously within the education system and we have a particular focus on ICT in the new curriculum that has been in operation since last September at all levels of the education system. It is for us in a sense to implement many of those issues through the work that we have; however, we are already, as I have said, represented on the media literacy work stream working within the Digital Britain work, so we are very well plugged into the work that is going on at a UK level.

Q273 Mrs James: We have had evidence from the Welsh Language Board about their concerns about Welsh language inclusion in the UK Government's Digital Inclusion Action Plan. How will you make sure that their needs will be met?

Mr Andrews: Can I say that one of the issues for us about the Digital Inclusion Action Plan is that inevitably because so many of the responsibilities for the actual implementation fall to us as a devolved government the action plan itself perhaps focuses rather more on issues concerned with the activities of government departments in England, and perhaps therefore there has been something of an oversight on the Welsh language side. We are very proud of the work that has been done by the Welsh Language Board and others in recent years in ensuring the accessibility of technologies for Welsh speakers - the work that has been done for example with Microsoft; there has been work that they have funded in the area of predictive texting, for example, there has been work done by a wide variety of agencies, and we have also, through our Communities @One project supported projects in the Welsh language in a number of communities - for example in Peblig and two other areas within Gwynedd where there has been some excellent work done at a community level. It is therefore for us to reflect back to the UK Government any issues that the Welsh Language Board has recently overlooked, but I think the Welsh Language Board has a good record in this area and one that we should acknowledge.

Q274 Mrs James: My last question is how do you address the issue of those people who are known as proxy users, who might choose not to use technology but are depending on other people to access technology for them?

Mr Andrews: The challenge for all of us is that more and more services are migrating online, and it is not simply of course a question of digital services in terms of the internet and broadband it is also, obviously, a question of digital television and digital audio, and that will be an issue that faces us significantly over the next year with digital switchover of course. The whole approach that we have taken has been about how do you get people to see the relevance of the technology? There are going to be refuseniks at the end of the day, but it is our job to do as much as we can to encourage people to see the relevance, hopefully reaching out to them through the interests that they have in particular areas, as some of your academic experts said right at the outset of this inquiry. What we have ensured, through Assembly Government investment of course, is that there are 300 public access points to the internet across Wales in public libraries. They are free to use, which is not the situation in all public libraries, for example, in England. We therefore have an infrastructure there that is capable of assisting people; the difficult task is dealing with the issue of motivation and increasing the demand for the services.

Q275 Hywel Williams: Can I take you back to the answer you gave to Mr Owen earlier on and the answer just now to Mrs James about the Welsh language where you said that there were certain features in Wales which were different, including cost and crucially motivation. I am just concerned that the provision through the medium of Welsh will be seen as a bolt-on extra rather than as a positive means of engaging people when they see that the content is actually as relevant as it possibly can so that having stuff in Welsh is a positive motivation as well as being perhaps something that is a problem but also in Wales is a social activity.

Mr Andrews: I agree with you completely and the importance of ICT was stressed in the Welsh Assembly Government's strategy document on Welsh language Iaith Pawb some years ago and has been followed through in guidance that the Welsh Language Board has produced, for example in the construction of websites and other initiatives. What is very evident is how creative Welsh speakers themselves are being at using the technology - we have forums such as Maes-e where I can have my Facebook page through the medium of Welsh if I want to - and sometimes I do because I am a Welsh learner - and you find that a number of those different kind of interfaces including Google of course have been adapted by Welsh speakers. What we have there is a hunger for the technology through the medium of Welsh and we have active engagement from a number of organisations, some in the private sector, some such as the broadcasters of course in the public sector, recreating more digital content on-line through the medium of Welsh. It is important - and this is an issue that I suppose has been important to me as an Assembly Member and also in previous lives - that we bear in mind the issues that will take people to using the technologies will be very much about the content and services and applications that are available. You do not necessarily need to know how the pipes work, you need to know what the pipes are for, and that is the critical thing.

Q276 Alun Michael: Can I go back to the question that Siān James finished on of access to technology? I take entirely your point about motivation - for some people it is will not or do not know and for others it is cannot. Have you made any assessment of means of getting past these perceived barriers? One thing that I understand is that Citizens Advice Bureaux in some pilots tried having a laptop so that people could see if they could get information on the internet but they found actually it was taking as much time to help people to know how to access the information as it would to actually go through an ordinary counselling session. Have you made an assessment of, for instance, Start Here, and the means of trying to bridge that gap to people who do not have the knowledge or the access to technology?

Mr Andrews: We met Start Here just a couple of months ago to discuss some of the initiatives in which they are involved. Let me just go back to our Communities @One programme that has just concluded; we have had over 200 projects throughout Wales there at a really different range of levels, and indeed I think I am right in saying that most of the constituencies represented by Members on this Committee have projects in their own communities, many in fact in Butetown in your own community, some in the Somali community there for example. There has been a really strong focus, drawing on best practice from around the world, about how you bring people in, almost using a community development approach if you like to understand that the technologies are not scary things but they are relevant, they are potentially of interest and they are, once you get used to them, simple to use. That means that people have had assistance from brokers in constructing projects that could have been around digital storytelling in their communities, could have been around digital photography, could have been in some cases around the creation of radio stations over a month in a number of communities - for example in ICT. There has been a really strong emphasis in trying to identify what the interests and concerns of people are, so there have been projects working with pensioners, there have been projects working with disabled people, there have been some very successful and indeed award-winning projects run by the Royal National Institute for the Blind in Wales which are mentioned in the UK Digital Inclusion Action Plan. The issue here is it is not an easy one to solve because it is not like digital switchover where everybody is going to have to ensure that their televisions are adjusted as it were, it is something that people are going to have to be walked through. That is quite a long term engagement for older people although the evidence of the younger age group is very encouraging and we said in our submission that 91% of people aged 10 to 15 access the internet on most days and only 5% of people aged 10 to 19 had never accessed the internet, so as that age cohort moves forward in practice a lot of the issues we currently understand around digital inclusion will disappear, but it is certainly in the older age groups where we have a challenge.

Q277 Alun Michael: You are probably right in terms of the majority of people but that tail is going to be difficult. It was interesting that it was actually a young person in the conference on digital inclusion yesterday at the QEII who identified members of his generation as sometimes having a problem, which can tend to become invisible. I wonder if we can turn to the issue of the risks of using technology and the risks of doing things on-line. I must say from my own engagement with internet crime or, rather, its prevention, there is an incredible alphabet soup of organisations, of small companies, lots of players funded in a variety of different ways involved in this. Can you tell us how you are approaching the co-ordination between players in Wales to make sure that there are clear and straightforward messages for users?

Mr Andrews: Can I distinguish between e-safety as it were, particularly in application to children and vulnerable people, and e-crime specifically. I know you heard from Detective Chief Superintendent Corcoran on the work that is being done by e-Crime Wales which obviously has significant funding from the Welsh Assembly Government and through that programme of course you have seen sessions for businesses being undertaken, you have seen sessions for the police, you have seen new ways of recording the electronic end of the crime if you like. There was a very successful conference held last year on all these issues and there is a framework in place that is relatively clear on that specific side. On the area of e-safety I survey it and we have the Wales Internet Safety Partnership which is run by Wise Kids, an excellent organisation, you have the UK Council on Child Internet Safety on which we of course are represented as is the Office of the Children's Commissioner in Wales. We have integrated issues of e-safety into the Communities @One programme right from the start; in our guidance document there is material there on e-safety, Wise Kids has run a series of courses across Wales for us and of course it is built into the work that goes on within the school system in any case. We have been funding schools for example to implement the Vector ICT self review framework, we have launched a website for teachers on e-safety issues, there is a strong focus within the revised national curriculum on e-safety, cyber bullying issues are included - they are mandatory in fact within schools' anti-bullying strategies, schools have to have an acceptable use policy and so on. There is therefore quite significant evidence there that the activities are taking place in a way that people can understand. I understand what you say about the alphabet soup but from the point of view of, say, the concerned parent, given that we have sent out advice to all primary schools in the past, giving leaflets to parents, we have done our best to ensure that there is a reasonably straightforward route and that people understand what should be happening at their local school, for example, in that area.

Q278 Hywel Williams: How have you been co-ordinating with the UK Government's Digital Britain work with regard to further development of infrastructure and also media literacy programmes?

Mr Andrews: On the media literacy side, as I explained, Mr Burge has represented us in the work that is going on there and we feel pretty strongly represented. Ofcom has, as I say, its Wales Media Literacy Network Framework - Mr Burge attends that for example - so we are clear that we are feeding in through the Ofcom framework and feeding in directly to the UK Government. On the infrastructure side I will bring Mr Sewell in in a moment, but it is fair to say that the Assembly Government has been involved in issues of infrastructure policy - although obviously telecommunications policy and regulation is not devolved - since the millennium and developed the term Broadband Wales Programme of course in 2002 which ran for five years. Mr Sewell and his colleagues have been representing us on the work stream on the universal service obligation - perhaps you might like to say, Richard, a few words about that.

Mr Sewell: That is something that we have had considerable experience to bring to the table through the regional innovative broadband support scheme which is the RIBS programme to bring broadband to not-spots and we felt clearly that it was important for the Welsh Assembly Government to be able to contribute directly to the Digital Britain process which would clearly impact on the current delivery programme but also might change Welsh Assembly Government policy or influence it. We have a representative on the USC group and we are taking forward the work in a collective sort of fashion.

Q279 Hywel Williams: Perhaps I could ask Mr Sewell therefore which technologies are most effective at reaching hard to reach groups and disadvantaged groups, are there particular technologies that work better?

Mr Sewell: The first thing to say is that as an administration we take a technology neutral approach. There is a collective understanding at the moment that to have universal coverage of any service you are going to have to look at a mix of technologies; some will be right for some areas and some will be right for other areas.

Q280 Mr Jones: If I could develop that particular line of questioning a bit further, as you have indicated, Mr Andrews, the primary responsibility for infrastructure resides with DBERR. We know that there are a lot of not-spots as we have just discussed but how do you feel that the Welsh Assembly Government can, particularly in the current economic climate, continue to support initiatives that would address these not-spots?

Mr Andrews: That is a good question, if I may say, and that is why I wanted to put on record at the beginning that of course telecommunications policy and regulation is not devolved. It is fair to say that we have invested from our own resources in the past and also indeed with the support of European funding in a number of the schemes that have been undertaken. There is no question that we face challenging budgets in the future - all budgets of course will be, I am sure, very actively scrutinised. This is an area where the use of European funding has been an opportunity for us and may continue to be so in the future.

Q281 Mr Jones: You mentioned the RIBS programme; it would seem to me that that is possibly a candidate for trimming if not excising altogether given the current economic climate.

Mr Andrews: You mean the RIBS programme itself?

Q282 Mr Jones: Yes.

Mr Andrews: In terms of addressing not-spots.

Q283 Mr Jones: Yes, in terms of the funding that is available to the Assembly Government because you, as you rightly say, are going to have to deal with a very constrained economic climate in the next few years.

Mr Andrews: I am sure that the Finance Minister will be grateful for your advice, Mr Jones.

Q284 Mr Jones: It was not advice; I was just wondering whether this was a concern of yours.

Mr Andrews: We are conscious across the whole of Government that the settlements are likely to be tighter in future and therefore all areas of government expenditure will I am sure be scrutinised for their value for money.

Q285 Mr Jones: In my constituency the village of Gwytherin benefited from the RIBS programme, and it is fair to say that the development of broadband in that particular village would not have occurred without it. My concern is that the Welsh Assembly Government is now facing effectively a reduction in its budget of some £400 million and it does seem to me that that sort of programme may well be in danger as a consequence.

Mr Andrews: I certainly would not want to give the Committee that impression at all from anything I have said this morning. What I do think we need to place on record is that as we move forward with Digital Britain the UK Government has set out plans to move towards a universal service commitment of two megabytes, which was of course affirmed in the Budget Statement, that that is their intention. There is some talk in the Budget Statement of funds that may become available from the remainder of the digital switchover work that has been funded through the BBC. It is probably too early for us to be able conclude what that might mean for investment from the UK Government in terms of addressing not-spots in Wales but clearly that is something that we will want to follow through in conversations with the UK Government.

Q286 Mr Jones: You referred to the universal service commitment - I am bound to say I was personally extremely disappointed at the lack of ambition in Digital Britain and in fact I was even more disappointed to read last week that Lord Carter seems to be acknowledging that several areas of Britain may not benefit from that commitment at all. It seems to me that Wales in this context is probably more exposed than any other part of the country. Is that fair, Mr Sewell?

Mr Sewell: It is an interesting point because first it raises a point of principle about the role of the public sector in supporting this area - what are the services that we are underpinning or trying to underpin - but secondly it also raises the question of how you use that two meg. If you are to provide two megabytes per second in very difficult to reach areas then in some areas the best way to do that is by deploying a fibre run through to the street cabinet, which in effect would provide more flexibility for the future and scalability - in fact you could get faster band width. So it is not just the words in the commitment, it is the ambition behind the commitment. From the Welsh Assembly Government perspective we have always tried to identify a minimum standard that everybody should be entitled to and then deliver against that. In the past that has been 512 but clearly the moves at UK Government level to go for two megabytes are something that we have to consider as to where we go from here. The big issue is how far will that two megabytes reach and where does that leave us in terms of picking up any gaps or just walking away I suppose.

Q287 Mr Jones: The Digital Britain interim report talks in terms of using mobile broadband as a solution but I have to say it seems to me in many respects to be a bit of a lash-up, a further problem being that those areas that do not currently enjoy broadband probably do not actually enjoy mobile services either. Frankly, that concern that I have and you possibly have too seems to have been underlined by Lord Carter's statement last week which appeared to be acknowledging that notwithstanding the universal service commitment it is probably not likely to be achieved in many parts of the country.

Mr Sewell: It is probably too early to comment on how far virtually everywhere will mean and, equally, to go back to a previous comment about the RIBS budget, it is possibly too early to make decisions about how we might use that budget given the two situations.

Q288 Mr Jones: I must say your answers do not fill me with much optimism.

Mr Sewell: In what respect?

Q289 Mr Jones: It does seem to me that the concerns I have got do not appear to have been assuaged in any way.

Mr Andrews: We are actually at early days on delivering the policy proposals from what the UK Government is doing. We have had an interim report from Digital Britain and we have a final report which we are expecting in June. We had some confirmation in the Budget that the two megabytes was going to be the USC and also we had some confirmation in the Budget of certain levels of funding. That was only last week and we have got to, through our work in the Digital Britain work stream, clarify what that will mean in funding terms for us as the Assembly Government. Clearly, we would not want to apply Welsh Assembly Government funding if the UK Government was through its own funding going to take care of the issue, particularly given that it is not a devolved matter, but that is not to say that we will not continue to be creative in the way that we have been with our £115 million Broadband Wales programme from 2002 to 2007 and with the other investments that the Welsh Assembly Government has made, including for example in Fibrespeed, in seeking to find different kinds of solutions.

Q290 Mr Jones: Could I, with the Chairman's permission, just refer you to a submission that we have had from the Broadband Stakeholder Group which says that Wales could find that a larger proportion of its population are without superfast broadband access in the future than is the case across the rest of the UK. While this is clearly a concern for the digital inclusion debate, the impact of this could be heightened by the fact that it is rural economies and societies that could stand it gain the most from next generation broadband deployment." That encapsulates my concern and I would hope that it is your concern as well.

Mr Andrews: We would be concerned about parts of Wales not having access to next generation broadband and that is what you are specifically referring to. We have already made a significant investment through Fibrespeed in the development of next generation broadband which has previously been acknowledged in a Broadband Stakeholder Group report on the subject in fact. From our point of view the approach that has been taken by the Assembly Government has been to examine the business case for the rollout of next generation broadband and we have been involved in helping to shape that policy through submissions that we have made to Ofcom and to others. Mr Sewell can comment further on the detail of those because I do not get involved in the detail.

Mr Sewell: We contributed right from the start. We worked with the Broadband Stakeholder Group on the Pipe Dreams Report and since that time we have been contributing to Ofcom consultations on next generation broadband in new build areas, from the wholesale markets to business connectivity. It is clearly a priority for us and we are very confident that introducing the universal service commitment can act as a hook to bring next generation services throughout Wales and through our work with the industry and with the regulator we are seeing the benefits of that working out.

Q291 Hywel Williams: Can I ask you therefore can you give us an assurance that the not-spots problem will not be repeated with the next generation access?

Mr Sewell: That is an issue about how the universal service commitment is worded and how often it is then reviewed, because clearly things do not stand still and services develop. At the moment the calculation has been made that two megabytes would provide most people with the tools to interact with the services they need but clearly in three years or five years time that might change and we might have to look at it again. The devil will be in the detail of the model that is applied to this.

Q292 Hywel Williams: Can I just pick up on one word you used there, "most" people, so potentially there might be some who are not.

Mr Sewell: When you are dealing with the very hardto reach areas when we look at not-spots we identify them as single dwellings and we believe we have the budget at the moment to bring 512 to each of those areas, or to as many of them as possible. If we change the metric to two meg we have to look at that and understand what that might mean, but there is budget there and we are committed to bringing a basic level of broadband to everybody that we can.

Mr Andrews: I do want to reiterate that regulation of telecommunications policy and the operation of the market are not devolved matters and these are obviously questions that would be well-directed to UK Government

Q293 Hywel Williams: Members of the Committee have heard me refer ad infinitum to a village in my constituency, Rhiwlas, which is not just a few houses but several hundred houses where there is an ongoing problem with current services. I just want to finish, Chairman, with one further question. My constituency is mountainous and fairly sparsely populated, generally at least. I know you said earlier on that you are technology neutral but in your opinion which technology is best suited to address the problems that arise in those sorts of areas?

Mr Sewell: I am not a technology expert as such and I imagine there could be a case for some sort of wireless or satellite service or even possibly a mix of wireless, satellite and fixed line in certain areas as a jump point.

Q294 Chairman: Could I end by commenting on and complimenting the work of the Welsh Assembly Government particularly in relation to the specifics of this inquiry, namely digital inclusion or digital exclusion. I must say that I have personally been very impressed by the work that you have been undertaking with NIACE Dysgu Cymru, a body that I have been associated with in the past. I wonder whether you could tell the Committee about some of that work because it has a long track record hitherto in addressing questions of social exclusion and now it is developing into this whole area of digital inclusion. Could you give us some illustrations of that work?

Mr Andrews: I will perhaps bring Mr Burge in to comment in more detail on that since he presents this on the Wales Media Literacy Network. It is fair to say from the observations that Ofcom has made at this Committee that they are pleased with the work that has been undertaken by that network. They have run certainly a number of conferences bringing a wide variety of interest groups together on these issues - I spoke at one of those last year and they have looked at a whole series of different initiatives including, for example, e-democracy, and it is good that we have that co-operation. A lot of the challenges that face us will only be resolved by partnership and co-operation with different agencies working together. Mr Burge.

Mr Burge: Thank you. There is a close collaboration with both Ofcom and NIACE. The Welsh Media Literacy Network which Ofcom and NIACE service is the most vibrant in Wales and has very active participation. The last meeting was last Friday and broadcasters were there, the academic community is represented, third sector organisations and the Welsh Assembly Government and statutory bodies. We are now looking forward to the results of the Digital Britain Report. The UK Ofcom media literacy work stream report has been submitted to DCMS for consideration and we look forward to seeing what the outcome of the Digital Britain Report will be in June. We are essentially tooling ourselves up for the next stage.

Q295 Chairman: Thank you very much for that and thank you for your evidence today and your sometimes robust answers to some occasionally robust questions, but that is in the nature of our work. Could I also place on record my thanks on behalf of the Committee for the way in which you, Minister, and your colleagues have been supportive of the work of this Committee, particularly in supporting our inquiry manager Judy Goodall and also our specialist Dr Ellen Helsper. I am sure that that co-operation will continue in the future in the run-up to the production of our report.

Mr Andrews: We look forward to your conclusions, Chairman,

Chairman: Thank you very much.

Memoranda submitted by Broadband Stakeholder Group, Citizens Online and Federation of Small Businesses

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Dr Gail Bradbrook, Citizens Online, Mr Russell Lawson, Federation of Small Businesses Wales, and Mr Antony Walker, Chief Executive, Broadband Stakeholder Group, gave evidence.

Q296 Chairman: Welcome to the Welsh Affairs Committee and, for the record, could you introduce yourselves, please?

Dr Bradbrook: Hi, I am Gail Bradbrook, I work for a charity called Citizens Online.

Mr Lawson: Russell Lawson, for the Federation of Small Businesses in Wales.

Mr Walker: Antony Walker from the Broadband Stakeholder Group.

Q297 Chairman: Could I begin by asking a very straightforward question? What evidence is there about the extent of digital inclusion in Wales and whether it differs from any other parts of the United Kingdom?

Mr Walker: Obviously Ofcom have done some fairly detailed work looking at digital exclusion issues across the regions and that is well documented. From a broadband perspective it is quite clear that broadband penetration levels in Wales are slightly below the UK average but it should be noted that they are still above the EU average. I was thinking about this earlier in terms of Wales and in terms of an area that is largely rural Wales performs quite well compared to other rural areas around the world. My initial response would be, yes, Wales faces some particular challenges in terms of digital exclusion and specifically broadband coverage which is our focus, but if you look at international comparisons Wales does quite well given the challenges that it faces,

Dr Bradbrook: Can I come back on that? I guess you are aware that there are some big discrepancies in the data so I do not actually understand what is happening in Wales at the moment. Some of the data from ONS and backed up by OCSYS says that Wales is doing the best in the UK and at times I believe Wales should be shouting from the rafters about the great successes they have had in the last two years, probably on the back of programmes like Communities @One, and then if you look at Ofcom data it seems to be saying that Wales is behind. As well as that you have a higher proportion of C2DEs in Wales, which would suggest that you have a bigger hill to climb, so if you are doing so well you should be extra pleased. If you are going to benchmark against other countries, including internationally, and also understand internally the success of the programmes you have run, that is something you have to get underneath as soon as possible.

Q298 Mrs James: In your view what are the strengths and weaknesses of the Government's digital inclusion plan? Do you want to start, Mr Walker?

Mr Walker: Firstly having a strategy and a plan for digital inclusion is extremely difficult because it is such a complex issue because it relates to so many different layers of government and different players across society who can have an impact on digital inclusion. My take on the plan so far is that it currently looks like a very good and detailed plan for a plan as it were, but it does not quite seem to be there yet in terms of a full action plan. One of the big challenges is actually building and generating support across different government departments and across different parts of government across both the UK and also at the devolved level in Wales to make sure that some of those issues are mainstreamed across many different diverse areas of government. The theory is there, there is good analysis of the issues, but in terms of actions and taking things forward we are still in the plan for a plan stage.

Mr Lawson: It really is getting the message across about how important this issue is, not just economically but socially and environmentally as well. That perhaps is a weakness; it really needs to promote that message more. For example, one thing we have been very much looking into and very much supporting is the idea of home working and giving our members the ability to offer home working because it does increase productivity and can be seen as a good employee perk, for example, but of course you need that flexibility within the infrastructure that you have got to be able to offer that. There is a whole level of implications for that - there are environmental implications with a possible reduction in carbon emissions, for example, there are social implications because obviously you have workers who are able to be more flexible with their work life balance and on top of that you have the economic implications as well, so really it is looking at this issue across departments as Antony says. It has all sorts of different implications and that is how important the issue is.

Q299 Mrs James: It needs very much a holistic approach.

Mr Lawson: Exactly.

Q300 Mrs James: Sorry, Ms Bradbrook

Dr Bradbrook: The plan reflects the fact that the officers and civil servants engaged currently are very knowledgeable, but it fundamentally lacks a vision and by a vision I mean some very concrete ideas like, for example, let us say that the UK will be the leading country for digital inclusion, or that 85% of citizens should understand the relevance of technology, or everybody who works with the socially excluded should be technology-enabled and so forth, what are the strong sort of vision messages. It lacks that and it lacks that because underneath it is a lack of funding and a lack of desire because of funding to scale up programmes, and there is a lot of mention of individual projects but no idea about how you roll those out. I am very concerned, having worked in this field for about ten years now, about how the Government works with the corporate sector, it just makes the same mistakes over and over again and I have submitted some written evidence about that. I also think the focus on transforming government and the links between that and digital inclusion are very weak.

Q301 Mrs James: Just to tease that out a little more - and this is specifically to you as representative of Citizens Online - what are the most effective types of intervention which promote digital inclusion in some of our most deprived communities?

Dr Bradbrook: You have got to see digital inclusion as being two things, and the first one is an attempt to ensure that socially excluded and disadvantaged people are engaged with technologies that are relevant and are going to help their lives to go better, and Wales has done really well, particularly through Communities @One, in doing that work from a community development perspective; it is not novel but it is good because it works and it is founded on community approaches. I am sure people have said this, it is about finding hooks and finding motivation for people, but there is another side to digital inclusion which is about ensuring that innovation occurs for social exclusion problems, so at the moment the corporate sector are busy innovating for business ideas and for having things go well for people with money to spend on leisure pursuits, but where are the people spending their time thinking about the problems of homelessness, how does technology help that, both the technology that exists and the technology that we could invent, for ex-offenders, single parents or whatever. There is a whole need to innovate therefore and that requires partnership between the third sector, government and the corporate sector, and it needs to be based on mutual respect. I feel that that is a piece that is lacking.

Q302 Mrs James: Do you see a role there for the corporate sector to actually deliberately target those types of things? They are doing a lot and they have been in front of us, so they have claimed that they are spending a lot of money on this, but does it need to be more targeted in those areas, do you think?

Dr Bradbrook: It is hard to ask the corporate sector to come up with innovation if you are not going to show them there is a market there. I am not corporate so I guess these guys would speak better on that, but if you are going to ask them to come up with a particular application to, say, focus on supporting ex-offenders - there is a game called Lifting the Weight that is to help an ex-offender play out some of the things that they are going to face when they get back into the real world so-called to try and prepare them mentally for that, but why would you invest in that if there is not going to be a marketplace for it? It really has to be a tripartisan approach and some desire, as I said earlier, for scaling things up. I am sure there are also other ways in which the corporate sector could innovate if they had more information and there was a partnership and information about what homeless people need or what a certain community needs.

Q303 Mr Jones: This is to Mr Walker primarily. The interim report of Digital Britain, of course, included the proposed universal service commitment to broadband by 2012; could you tell the Committee what are the main difficulties of achieving the levels of broadband envisaged by the report and how could those difficulties be overcome?

Mr Walker: In terms of the universal service commitment the BSG was one of the organisations that first floated the idea that now is the right time to take on board a commitment to making broadband universally available and I am delighted to see that that idea has been picked up and we think it is the right thing to do. The first thing I would say is that having floated the idea there is still a lot of work to be done to define exactly what the universal service commitment means and what two megabytes means, and that is because there are an awful lot of technical uncertainties behind that that need to be worked through and are currently being worked through in the process of Digital Britain, so there is quite a lot of detail to be worked out.

Q304 Mr Jones: Just interrupting you, as a lay person I would have thought two megabytes per second meant two megabytes per second. Can you expand on that?

Mr Walker: It depends how you measure it and it depends whether that is a headline speed, an average speed, is that a speed taken at three o'clock in the morning or is it a speed measured at seven o'clock in the evening. There are various issues about how you define exactly what two megabytes really means in layman's terms which is the subject of quite a lot of work within the USC work stream in Digital Britain, so there are some issues around definition. In terms of actually delivering USC, according to our figures - and again data varies on this - we think somewhere between 25% and 34% of premises in Wales could well be getting a service below two megabytes currently. In some places that issue could be relatively easily addressed by improving things like home wiring where some of the noise that is generated by a crossed fork on home wiring can have a significant impact on broadband performance, and BT have developed a new product that can resolve that problem and quite often improve a customer's experience by one or two megabytes. There are some issues, therefore, that can be dealt with relatively easily in the home, that may require an engineer visits the home, and there is a cost associated with that, but some solutions are in the home. In other areas it becomes a lot more complex. There will be some clusters of premises where perhaps a whole hamlet or a group of properties are simply too far away from the local exchange and therefore they cannot get broadband, and in that situation it may well be possible, as somebody referred to earlier, to actually take the fibre direct to a street cabinet that serves that hamlet or that group of properties, and actually what you could then find is that those properties could get a service significantly above two megabytes, so that might be part of the solution. In other areas there will be locations, particularly in more mountainous areas, where the challenges are more difficult, and particularly if it is an isolated location it will be very expensive to deliver a single fibre, but then you are looking at wireless or maybe satellite solutions, but then again there are difficulties in delivering wireless and satellite solutions in some places in mountainous areas because they are in the lea of an escarpment or something.

Q305 Mr Jones: The interim report seems to envisage much more use of mobile broadband; what observations would you have about that, particularly in the mountainous areas you have been talking about?

Mr Walker: We are likely to see different technologies deployed in different places depending on the local characteristics and the problem they try to solve. At one stage there was a thought that maybe there is potential for a major initiative that would perhaps lead to a commitment to deploy wireless broadband earlier and more widely across the UK. The debate is moving away from that solution now and it is much more focused around choosing the right technology solution, the most cost-effective solution for anyone given the location, so we are going to see a mixture of technologies deployed.

Q306 Mr Jones: You mentioned the scattered hamlets and the mountainous areas and you mentioned the possibility of using wireless or satellite technology. These sound quite expensive technologies, is that fair to say?

Mr Walker: The economics of broadband networks are always defined by population density so getting any technology into a rural area is, generally, always more expensive. The exception is satellite and satellite services have been deployed quite effectively in Scotland and probably play a greater role. Also, satellite technologies are improving all the time and we will see a next generation of satellite technology that will be able to support a higher quality of service as well.

Q307 Mr Jones: Would that be relatively cost-effective?

Mr Walker: It could be, but again it depends on the location. It is very hard to generalise and say that one solution is going to deliver this universally. The best approach is going to be a mix of technology.

Q308 Mr Jones: How realistic do you think the universal service commitment will be and will it be possible to achieve it because Lord Carter seems to acknowledge that that is going to be very difficult?

Mr Walker: I think it is possible. It will obviously need additional public funding but it looks from the Budget Statement that that will be provided, and it will need quite a lot of close collaboration between the commercial players and also public authorities as well looking at different areas. Within the 2012 timescale it certainly should be achievable and it is important that everybody pays close attention to that to make sure that it does.

Q309 Mr Jones: You do not share Lord Carter's pessimism.

Mr Walker: There will be isolated locations, in particular isolated households and remote farms and so on where it is just not cost-effective to deploy any technology, so there will be places where you simply cannot deploy, but for a lot of places it should be possible.

Q310 Hywel Williams: Can we return to media literacy and a number of questions there. How effective are current media literacy projects and how could they be improved?

Mr Lawson: I do have a personal example. My father-in-law is nearly 70 and he decided that he would get himself a laptop and figure out how to use this internet thingy. He is a classic car nut and so he does a lot of fiddling about with nuts and bolts and thought it would be great if he could trade classic car things. He signed up to a local course and he lasted three attempts at going on this course because by the time they had gone through how to do Word and then how to do Excel and then how to do databases, it was just what was the point of all that when really people are just looking at how to use the internet, how to go onto whichever search engine they use, what sort of terms to put in, how are you going to buy and sell things on line, for example. If that is an example of the kind of courses which are being run through a local college, they take people who are maybe not media literate at all but really are going into things that they are never going to use, then maybe we should be looking at tailoring courses more specifically for what people actually want to use a computer for, certainly in a business sense that would be much more effective. What a lot of small businesses rely on particularly is people coming into the business and employees - younger employees - really being the IT literate ones and it is usually the owner manager who calls down to whoever to ask them to work something out or to fix the printer or things like that. It would be good if there were more courses targeted at specifically what individuals want to learn, rather than saying "Here is a computer, you need to learn everything about how this computer works before we will let you loose on the internet", for example.

Dr Bradbrook: The issue with media literacy is that it means digital inclusion to a large part, and we have had separate but overlapping groups of people working on the same agendas and within three days of each other there would be one announcement and then another, and people did not know that the same kinds of things were being done, so trying to bring those parts together is important. Then the bit where media literacy looks different is about understanding the value of the message that you are getting. What people tend to talk about is trusted brands: do you understand that NHS Direct and the BBC are more trusted sources of information than, say, come here and be anorexic dot com or whatever. However, there is a danger in just pushing the trusted brands agenda. To me the biggest threat to democracy is the fact that capitalists own big media and that big media tells repeated lies. The web too has enabled people to develop their own media. Some of that will be nonsense, it is people's opinion and it is people's made-up stories and it is not particularly media literacy then, it is just the same as sitting in a pub and listening to people's chatter, you just get to decide your own opinion, but it is really important that national media are subverted. That is why Barack Obama won and that was the most optimistic thing that ever happened in my life so I celebrate that. I do kind of question the value of media literacy therefore.

Q311 Hywel Williams: Can I just ask you, therefore, in your opinion is media literacy sufficiently well-integrated with other government education and skills programme developments?

Dr Bradbrook: I do not know at a detailed enough level to answer that fairly.

Q312 Hywel Williams: Mr Walker.

Mr Walker: It is one of those questions that it is very hard to say yes to. Can government be more joined-up? Always. One of the things that strikes me about media literacy is that people's needs, interests, motivations and contexts all differ and what is quite important going forward is that if there is going to be this major push on media literacy it really needs to be a set of coherent but carefully targeted and segmented initiatives. You also need to leverage all the potential contacts that you have with people, whether it is young people in schools and further education or whether it is elderly people who are housebound whose contact may be through carers, for example. It is thinking about how you can leverage all of those contacts, who are the people who can influence, help and inform and perhaps develop people's skills. That is the real opportunity but driving awareness of that through so many different parts of the public sector is extremely challenging.

Q313 Mrs James: Just going on about the literacy initiatives we have heard a little bit about this from Ms Bradbrook; do you think that these initiatives should take account of the needs of businesses or are they best focused on disadvantaged and hard to reach groups?

Mr Lawson: I am bound to say that it has got to be both because we have to remember that when we are talking about this we are talking about not just businesses, but also consumers - businesses are consumers as well but it is no good businesses being media literate without having consumers who buy goods and services from them as well. It has got to be a whole programme if you like and, obviously, there are particular issues that disadvantaged groups are going to have in terms of access to media, but obviously from a business point of view the more people who are going on the internet and using the internet, being influenced by it, shopping it through it, then obviously the more important it is going to be for businesses to also have that internet savvy in order to take advantage of that. It is kind of a holistic approach.

Q314 Mrs James: I have been really surprised by one of my local bingo halls which had done a little bit of research into how many of their users were actually playing bingo online. It was a really high percentage, and these were quite elderly people. How they access the internet is important; it is interesting to see what they are accessing.

Mr Lawson: Yes, you can see by how many bingo sites there are and how many poker sites there are how popular it is. Visitors really need to be aware of this and they also need to be aware of the increase in social aspects of the internet as well, that it is becoming less one of these areas where somebody sits in isolation, just surfing and looking at pictures, it is more social interaction, and of course that is going to be something that is increasingly important for businesses to be aware of.

Mr Walker: One of the confusing things about media literacy is that it spans so many societal targets or societal objectives. Clearly for businesses having an informed and skilled workforce coming through is extremely important, so all of those educational aspects, making sure that all young people develop the media literacy skills that they need in the workplace is extremely important. The other extreme to that is the social exclusion agenda where you are trying to do quite different things and you are trying to bring people back and engage them in society. That is a lot less business-led, so again there are a range of different objectives that you are trying to reach and the way in which you seek to exploit and use and engage people through digital technology will vary depending on what group you are engaging with. So it is not one model fits all, it really is not.

Q315 Mrs James: Do you think that the Government's Digital Inclusion Action Plan takes sufficient account of the risks which potentially vulnerable people might encounter when they start using the internet?

Dr Bradbrook: I do not think so. There is some evidence, for example, that for a homeless person who is in a particularly difficult spot, who has maybe got drug addiction issues, mobile technologies once they get their hands on them make the problem worse because they will trade the phone for drugs or they will use the phone to contact a drug dealer for the drugs, that kind of thing, and there is also the possibility to get addicted to things or to gamble. When you think about digital inclusion you are thinking about social inclusion and you have to start from the basis that social exclusion is the problem in that, to use sociology terms, you lack social and cultural capital, meaning that you lack the social networks and you lack the ability to work with social networks and bring benefit to you. Some people, if you take that homeless example, might have some strong networks, but they are quite negative for them and if they can work those networks better it is going to make life even worse. If you take an older person who is isolated, they just lack networks, so you cannot just overlay technology onto that problem, you have to help people with the social and cultural capital which is what community development approaches do, but at the same time you have to think about the field of operation. I said before it is whether people are innovating and whether they are taking the full perspective into account, so for people who are socially excluded there are often issues of literacy, there are often issues of financial exclusion, so people do not have credit cards and if you get them online they are not necessarily going to be able to shop online. There could be issues of disability, which is a huge area that we are failing on massively in this field, and then more generally when you look at problems of social exclusion if you take older people and the telecare agenda, you are starting to put broadband pipes into old people's housing but purely for telecare reasons, so you are not giving them on the back of that an ability to email, say, grandchildren overseas or whatever, and yet we know the health agendas for older people are very much affected by depression, very much affected by isolation, so the need to think holistically is important.

Q316 Alun Michael: I am directing this mainly to Gail Bradbrook if I may. You referred a few minutes ago to community development approaches and the same applies to adult education approaches, that you may target people who are if you like socially excluded by whatever phrase you wish to use, and in trying to get people across the threshold, whether it is literacy in terms of reading and writing or whether it is numeracy or whether it is digital literacy, there is a danger sometimes in reaching those who are most excluded, a tendency to reach those who are convinced that there is an advantage in going online, for instance, and not getting to those who have not even become convinced of that. What is your view of the way in which those sorts of issues are being addressed in Wales, particularly at the moment?

Dr Bradbrook: For the most excluded people, if you were to take those two examples of an older person and a homeless person who is rough sleeping, it is much more about focusing on the needs of that person and the way technology can address those needs, so it may be that people who work on behalf of those folks are technology-enabled, mobile working. We did some research for the DCLG looking at four groups: ex-offenders' needs, mental health and learning disabilities and looked at not only how the people themselves use technology but also their workers, and quite often the workers are not technology-enabled; if they are they are often writing paper notes as well, so there is a lot of inefficiency in the system. Data sharing problems are often used as an excuse for not working more smartly and in joined-up ways so I would think much more about those people in terms of how the world that is supposed to be making their lives go better is technology-enabled.

Q317 Alun Michael: You have described normal behaviour by professionals and normal behaviour by people who are struggling; what is the answer to it and where do you see the exemplars?

Dr Bradbrook: That is a really good question and I was hoping that the digital challenge would be a route for developing some exemplars. One of the talks I give is showing that as far as I am aware there are no exemplars. There are pockets of good practice that cover parts of solutions but I do not see an example of a young person who is not in education, employment or training being supported in a very holistic way through technology.

Q318 Alun Michael: You say that there are not but I was actually hoping that you would tell us the things that are happening well and how they can be replicated. I remember coming across a project called Computers for the Terrified which was getting elderly people online about eight years ago; Ruralnet did an enormous amount to create a movement of the most unlikely people in looking at internet access within many rural areas; both of those are describing things from a few years ago, but where are we now?

Dr Bradbrook: They are examples of supporting people to get online with the technologies that exist today generally. They are very valuable and Citizens Online have run 23 three-year projects called Everybody Online that have given over £60 million of value, so I am not saying there is need for projects.

Q319 Alun Michael: How are you doing at getting to those at the end of that line then? If you are talking about everybody are we talking about not the 80% or the next 10%?

Dr Bradbrook: That is the answer that I was trying to give before. Say we are talking about 33% of people, roughly, who are not using the internet; about 9% of those are deeply excluded, that is what the data shows. They may be facing issues of arthritis alongside a visual impairment, alongside health issues, so it is not enough to think that you can therefore just get them down the library and get them online, it is much more about saying what issues does this person face and is technology underpinning their life?

Q320 Alun Michael: You just told us a few moments ago that you have had a lot of money to run a lot of courses over a long period of time, and you used the word "everybody" in the title of the project that you described. Tell us about getting to that. We know what the problems are but can you tell us about the solution, tell us about what you have experienced, what you have done?

Dr Bradbrook: In Northern Ireland, for example, we had projects focused on social housing for older people specifically where we went into of the order of 20,000 social houses across Northern Ireland for older people and got to people that way.

Q321 Alun Michael: Give us a bit of shape; how did you do it?

Dr Bradbrook: It is just basic partnership working, frankly, and you also need to work with a cadre of volunteers because if you hire a person and pay them a salary there is only so many people they can work with, so it is important to have volunteers as part of that programme.

Q322 Alun Michael: Can I just ask Mr Lawson about the availability of digital schools training and qualification for employees, particularly in small and medium sized businesses. I was reflecting earlier when you talked about your father's experience that those may not have been the sort of things that your father in his circumstances would want to learn but they are probably the sorts of things that you as a chief executive of a small business would want employees to learn, are they not?

Mr Lawson: Yes, as I say, there are an awful lot of employees coming into the workforce now who are very media literate but whether that is literacy that they have developed in a formal sense in a formal setting is doubtful. This is probably more to do with the fact that obviously we are all growing up with computers now and we naturally pick up how we use things.

Q323 Alun Michael: Are the courses available to businesses and to their employees being well targeted on the skills that those businesses would use, again, to take the sort of person-centred approach that you were referring to when you referred to your father's experience?

Mr Lawson: I think there needs to be some recognisable qualification. Obviously we have the European Computer Driving Licence but there are still very many employers who do not know what that is, what that actually means, who has that, and what they can actually do.

Q324 Alun Michael: Is that something that you would promote as an organisation?

Mr Lawson: It is not something we would promote, to be honest. It is something where really we need to make more of our members and employers in general aware of what it actually does.

Q325 Alun Michael: Not to be unkind to the Deputy Minister but businesses are more likely to listen to you, are they not?

Mr Lawson: I would like to think so, so the offer is there that we will promote that scheme as much as possible with the development of these new broadband proposals. It is important though that employers themselves also have a level of literacy.

Q326 Alun Michael: I think I was suggesting that there was a need for leadership from within business organisations in the interests of their members.

Mr Lawson: Yes, this is a problem. I have been in so many businesses where the height of technology is still the fax machine, where businesses have computers but they very rarely turn them on, only really to write a letter and print it out. We need to be looking at businesses that could be doing their accounts on-line or by computer, that could be doing their stock control by computer or that could be doing their payrolls by computer. These can save an enormous amount of time and therefore will save productivity for businesses, and of course the only way really to increase the wealth of Wales is to increase productivity.

Q327 Alun Michael: Can I end by asking you about strategies, again particularly in relation to the smaller end of business, for avoiding or minimising risks, because the risks are not just about children or just about elderly people, they are risks to business. How much are you engaged in dealing with those issues within Wales and how successful do you think we are being in Wales in countering those risks as well as using the opportunities?

Mr Lawson: We have been members of the E-Crime Steering Group since it was formed. It is obviously now Wales Against Business Crime. It is the only unit operating in the UK where you can directly report to the unit about electronic crime. The biggest problem with electronic crime is that it puts so many business off wanting to get into the whole area of on-line trading because obviously the trouble is you are always playing catch-up with cyber criminals, who are very advanced and have enormous resources, and they can rip businesses off for £1,000 or £2,000, which to a small business is an awful lot money (it is often a year's profits) and this is what puts a lot of businesses off trading on-line. On the one hand, we have got to try and start getting more businesses more technology aware and get them using technology but, on the other hand, we have also got to get them trained up in things like all the on-line crime, on-line fraud, phishing scams, all these various things and make them aware. That is where often businesses then get a bit reticent about the whole area, so it is a big problem. As I say, we are more advanced than anywhere else in the UK, but I think it is something that we really have to put resources into if we are going to get our businesses to be investing more in technology for themselves because, as I say, at the moment it is a big put-off.

Chairman: Thank you very much, all of you, for your evidence today and also for the very helpful written evidence which helped us considerably in preparing for this session today. If you feel that there are issues which arise from today's session which you would have liked to tell us about but you have not had an opportunity to develop, we would be very pleased to receive a further memorandum from you.