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e-Government

: Indeed, my constituency has great technological expertise in GCHQ, although most of us do not know what it does with it, and it is not allowed to tell us. What were once called new technologies are fast becoming mainstream. My wife and I found our house on the internet; we bought our car, booked our holiday, pay all our bills and do our weekly shop on the internet. One much-loved old technology after another, from analogue TV broadcasting to 35 mm camera film, is set to be overtaken by the digital revolution. The distinctions between our phones, our cameras, our computers, diaries, radios, alarm clocks and notepads are fast disappearing as technologies converge and overlap. Several hon. Members have mentioned, however, that not everybody is included in this revolution; the less technically literate, the less well-off and some older people are excluded from it. An interesting statistic from the Office for National Statistics shows that although home internet access for the UK population as a whole is about 50 per cent., it is 89 per cent. in the highest income decile and only 15 per cent. for households in the poorest income decile. That statistic can be addressed only partly by making IT more available. The hon. Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran) said that it was also about, for instance, making websites more simple, understandable and user-friendly, and involving the user in their design. I agree with that, but we must always have the fallback of human or paper-based options for those people who, for whatever reason, are resistant to the use of IT and may never be able to access it in the same way as others. From my own marketing background, I am acutely aware of the potential and the risks of this revolution. When visible to the consumer, information and communications technology offers the opportunity, to paraphrase the Government's e-Government strategy,"““of transforming the experience of users of goods and services, enhancing their delivery, and radically widening access both to goods, services and information.””" There are plenty of good examples of that. I have used the Inland Revenue's self-assessment process and it is a good example of how the online system can be made more user-friendly than the paper form, because it rather brilliantly does the maths for you. Another example, which I am glad that the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Gordon Banks) briefly mentioned, is university admissions. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service is based on the edge of my constituency, and the Minister is welcome to come to Cheltenham to see a superb example of an online system. UCAS is moving towards a 100 per cent. electronic application, and it has created a system that is continually updated in real time, so that students applying for universities can check the day-to-day progress of their application. The system will provisionally allocate places as it proceeds. It is quicker to use; it makes managing applications easier and less time-consuming; and it is more flexible and more accurate. UCAS says:"““As the electronic age becomes part of our lives, young adults demand facilities online.””" It told me quietly that that was less true of some of the academics handling the applications, but that only reinforces the point that some people need support in using IT. UCAS makes it clear that although it is aiming for 100 per cent. online application, it will always be able to provide at the very least a printed-out form. The form does not even have to go to a printing company but can simply be run off as needed. A paper-based alternative will always be available as a fallback. Another good example is NHS Direct. It followed the good commercial example of HSBC's First Direct, which has been a pioneer in using information technology in a people-friendly way, first with its phone lines and then moving on to a user-friendly online presence. After 1989, First Direct set a world-class example that has been followed by bafflingly few commercial companies. Many companies are far more willing to leave people with menus of choices, something that approximates to recorded music and blind alleys that they get caught in after endless loops. It is interesting that one of First Direct's latest innovations is a webchat service for online banking, thus reintroducing the human element. I hasten to add that I am not pitching for a corporate donation to the Liberal Democrats from HSBC. The new service could even extend to face-to-face contact online. The company is trying to make the systems more human, not less. Too many companies have taken the opposite path. I hope that the Government will take note and do the same with NHS Direct. The example of commercial database-driven marketing is that what is invisible to the consumer also matters a great deal. In marketing today, professionals can choose to analyse personal data from three main sources. Each source can be overlaid on the others to target consumers with a degree of refinement that sends marketers into ecstasy but might well scare many consumers. First, geodemographic data based on census information place people in hundreds of market segments based on postcode, age, gender and social characteristics. The result is hundreds of standard market segments, from corporate chieftains to bedsit beneficiaries, from fledgling nurseries to burdened optimists. The company Experian offers its clients categories such as small-town seniors, who are defined as mixed populations of lower-income pensioners and middle-income workers who live in second-tier seaside resorts and small semi-rural communities. Its groups are that specific, and it has 242 others on offer. Such bought-in data can be overlaid on in-house transactional data, whether on product usage, purchase or membership patterns, order values or enquiry patterns, and then perhaps overlaid again on attitudinal information gleaned from consumer surveys. If precise information on an individual is not available, it can be inferred and projected on to them—roughly speaking, by assuming that a person is somewhat like their neighbour, either their geographical neighbour or their neighbour in terms of transactional patterns. That is all very entertaining when the worst mishap that can befall someone is not to be targeted with a particular variety of nappy or marmalade. It is less funny when it prevents someone from getting an affordable mortgage or insurance, especially if the data are wrong or misleading, or if they result in the targeting of less sophisticated consumers by less scrupulous companies. The reason why I raise the issue is that, in theory, all that wonderful information manipulation is available to the Government, too. The right data pattern in the wrong government hands could trigger not the offer of a sale but an extra level of surveillance, for instance. It is no wonder that data protection and privacy legislation and action are so essential and that freedom of information rights need to be so jealously guarded. Otherwise, we would have a dramatic shift in the balance of power between the state and the individual. Therefore, the Government should take note when their own advisers issue dramatic warnings. The Minister may guess the example that I am about to quote, which is the Information Commissioner's concern about the Identity Cards Bill. [Interruption.]