Meeting of the Parliament 03 November 2016
I will try not to—don’t tempt me.
I will begin by explaining that G5 is a brand new handset that a certain mobile operator has just brought out. I think that it came out last week, so it is very topical. I thank Labour for bringing that up.
It is a great pleasure to open the debate as the Conservative spokesman for technology, connectivity and the digital economy, and as a member of the cross-party group on digital participation. I refer members to my entry in the register of interests.
I want to set out my vision on digital Scotland and to demonstrate the importance of universal digital participation to Scotland realising its full potential in a digital world. Here in this chamber, we often debate the subject in terms of connectivity and digital infrastructure and we look at targets and percentages, but when considering digital participation, it is important to look behind the numbers.
Let me expand on that. I am sure that every member receives many letters and emails from constituents who struggle to access high-speed internet; indeed, we sometimes hear from constituents who struggle to access any-speed internet. That is the case not just in rural areas but in our towns and cities. I think that we will hear many examples of that during the debate. My tuppenceworth on the issue relates to someone who lives just a few miles from the Parliament but who cannot access high-speed internet because he lives on the wrong side of the street. Where I live in North Ayrshire, as I mentioned in my maiden speech to Parliament, I still achieve a speed of 1.5 megabits per second, which is a speed of years ago.
It is important to acknowledge what the Royal Society of Edinburgh pointed out in its 2014 report on digital participation. It said that, although investment has been forthcoming and welcome, and numerical targets are all well and good, such targets
“leave the door open for existing inequalities to go unaddressed.”
Those inequalities include a lack of affordable internet, a lack of devices to make use of it and a lack of basic digital skills to use either of those tools. For those on low incomes, for example, buying a tablet or paying a high monthly fee for broadband is not always an option. Therefore, their digital participation is already restricted, regardless of whether broadband is available in their area. If someone lives in a city but has no 4G coverage in their area, their digital participation is restricted. The future digital participation of children who attend a school that does not have a computing teacher is already restricted. Those restrictions create inequality and hold people back from what the great online has to offer—namely, making day-to-day living cheaper, faster and easier.
I will consider one example of that: healthcare, where those inequalities are most prevalent in Scotland. In one community, we might be able to make a general practitioner appointment, see our medical records or order repeat prescriptions online. If we drive a few miles down the road, the story is quite different—it is a phone call, a two-week wait and a piece of paper. However, in a small country such as Belgium, people can use the same identification to access their healthcare as they can to download documents from their town hall.
While other countries are investing in e-health, in Scotland a person’s postcode determines whether they get their prescription by post or email. I have seen how proper digital back offices work in other countries, where substantial investment in digitised records, single logins and user-friendly websites and apps lets the public access public services cheaply, more quickly and more easily.
NHS Education for Scotland’s director of digital transformation, Christopher Wroath, pointed out only last month that health services also face challenges that are, in part, down to the lack of information and communication technology skills in the healthcare systems. In Scotland, three quarters of firms say that digital technologies are essential or important for their plans for growth, but 30 per cent of the Scottish population lacks basic digital skills. It is up to the public and private sectors to use digital innovation not only to connect every citizen to the services that they need but to promote businesses that contribute to our country’s social and environmental wellbeing.