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e-Government

: Again, my hon. Friend makes a fair point. For all sorts of reasons, there has been a vast increase in the number of older people using information technology. They use computers in all sorts of ways to break down some of the barriers that they face. One of the reasons why we want single account management for pensioners is so that they do not have to go to all sorts of different agencies. One contact with one pensioner would free them up from all the transactions that they expect to have with government. There are other personal motivations and drivers. Families are more mobile, and technology offers a way of keeping in touch with families across the globe. Their grandchildren—if not their own children—use information technology for homework, and it is a way of keeping in touch with grandchildren and supporting them in their homework. When I was in Ochil and South Perthshire, it was clear that about half of those in the audience were already using IT and the barrier to their using it further was not, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said, the capital cost of investing in a computer but uncertainty about the ability to commit to pay a continuous connection fee, such as for broadband. That is anecdotal, not scientific, evidence but it was important to hear that message. It was not a question of the £100 that they needed for a second-hand computer—in fact, a family member could have given them a computer—but the fact that, despite the increase in pension, the pension credit, the free TV licence and the rest of the support given by the Government, they could not commit confidently to that connection over the years. We need to find ways to provide cheaper online facilities for pensioners and others. My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire asked about business, as did some others during the debate. In addition to what the Cabinet Office is doing through the better regulation agenda to help business, there are specific ways in which we can break down bureaucracy. In my travels round the country meeting business organisations and small and medium-sized businesses as part of the better regulation agenda, I have heard that they feel that the regulations relating to IT are as impenetrable as some of the wider regulations. Whether or not that is borne out by statistics, it is certainly the feedback that small businesses have provided. One suggestion is that we find a way of reducing the bureaucracy involved in procurement so that smaller businesses have easier access to it. We are actively examining that. Are the barriers just too great for small businesses of one, two or three people to compete on a level playing field for e-procurement? As my hon. Friend said, the new portal through which small businesses that want to work with the Government can make suggestions about innovation to us is important. I will address some of the general points before I respond to a specific comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South. The cross-Government nature of IT services is essential. In fact, my hon. Friend made this point too. As we all know, organisations such as Netmums or the organisations that support the victims of domestic violence face a challenge in obtaining support because the nature of their work lies across so many Departments. How do we design systems of careful data sharing to match the needs of such groups? I have had informal discussions with Baroness Scotland about this. As my hon. Friend will know, Baroness Scotland is determined—driven, in fact—to secure a cross-Government solution, specifically on domestic violence. As a consequence of the suggestion and inquiries made by my hon. Friend, I will certainly have more formal discussions with Baroness Scotland. I have had experience in my constituency—we all have—of people having to repeat information over and over again. I will give a benign example of data sharing, but I will not mention the name of the individual because I do not have their permission to do so. As a constituency Member, I had the harrowing experience of a bereaved family coming to see me following the loss of a young child. They had to repeat the details of the bereavement on numerous occasions, for many different reasons, to all the different Government agencies. That just prolonged their immeasurable agony. They had to repeat not only the name and age of the child but the circumstances of the bereavement. Should we not design a system for data sharing that prevents such repeat questioning? We can accept repeat questioning in normal circumstances once or twice, but in those circumstances, that family, that mother, should have had to provide that information only once. For a good reason, everyone mentioned access for those who have traditionally been excluded—certainly at the earlier stages of IT development. Some work has been done, but an awful lot more needs to take place on things such as website design. Initially, Government website design was haphazard. We know that. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston spoke about it. The emerging democracies—I should say the increasingly established democracies; they are no longer emerging—of eastern Europe started with a blank piece of paper. They learned from the years of experience in the countries neighbouring them to the west. In that sense, they had the advantage of learning from experience. We did not have that. It seemed that every Department and Government agency said, ““This internet thing is probably very interesting. We should have a website.”” So an industry became involved in designing Government websites. There are about 2,500 Government or agency websites in the UK. That is a vast amount. Many think that they are doing a good job, but some are entirely unnecessary. That is why we are moving towards Directgov. I also want to prod gently the software designers. They do not set out deliberately to exclude people from different backgrounds, but due to accident, lack of forethought or because it is not perceived to be in a narrow commercial interest, their design packages are not always the most accessible for people with less formal education or who have English as a second language. My experience of preparing for the debate over the past few days has been that when one logs on to many of the transactional websites, there is an additional barrier that I had not thought of for those who do not have a computer at home. The hon. Member for Cheltenham said that when he registered for home shopping he had to provide an e-mail address. Many people with no experience of using the internet do not have an e-mail address and when asked for one, the problem seems complicated. That seems to be a barrier, although it is not intentional because there are good reasons for requesting an e-mail address, such as marketing and so on. However, requiring an e-mail address as a condition of entry to a site may not be the most effective way of encouraging access by people from different backgrounds. A lot more could be done on that agenda, which is why the Government have been working with the Disability Rights Commission and others on web accessibility. Incidentally, 90 per cent. of households in England are within 5 km of a UK Online centre. There is a debate about how those centres are used and UK Online must keep adapting to ensure that its focus is right so that the customer comes first. On people from different economic backgrounds, during the summer I went to east Manchester, which is a relatively deprived community. I am shortly going to east London to see some projects in the community there. I also visited the Halton benefit express bus. As I travelled down from Glasgow, I thought that I was just going to see a bus with people who advise on benefits. It was parked outside a major supermarket in the morning and was welcoming. It was staffed by civil servants, but also by volunteers with good experience—the sort of people who were spoken of earlier—and provided real-time advice on benefits, welfare rights and almost anything imaginable. It was enabled by wireless broadband and linked into the local benefits service's databases. The Benefits Agency and other Government agencies came to the car park on the bus and met customers who had never been to the relevant Government office for information. That was the cutting edge, but it should not be the cutting edge. Such work comes about because driven, innovative and good people want to do things differently, but it should not be left to them. We must create a framework in which such excellent practices become normal practices. Turning to the last comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said, IT in itself is not important—perhaps I should not say that as I am the Minister with responsibility for e-Government. IT is a tool to achieve an end, and that end is modern and personalised public services that benefit from massive and record-levels of investment from national Government. We have invested seven times more than the previous Administration in rebuilding schools, putting IT systems into schools and connecting every school through broadband. The reason for efficiency is not just for efficiency's sake, although that is a good driver in itself. Efficiency is redirecting resources to the front line and improving citizen and customer focus to enhance people's lives. Despite the failings of the tax system that have been well documented, it would not have been enabled without IT. The direct payment of benefits is all about IT, as is job searching for those who want to find a job, improve their job or get a career. It is interesting that the most popular Government online service is their job-searching system, which receives 800,000 visits a week. There are 400,000 job vacancies listed on that website, which is enabled by the tool of IT. It enables policy ideals such as direct payments, the provision of information that people need to make choices and the extension of school opportunity. Sometimes we see IT as the end in itself rather than the means to achieve that end. I started by speaking about the four challenges that we face: scale, efficiency, delivery and relevancy. I finish by saying that we also face a global challenge. We all know that we cannot be first in prosperity, as the Chancellor said, if we are second in education. That is why we are spending seven times more on our education system—we are rebuilding schools and inputting IT. The fifth challenge relates to the emerging economies in a world where China will have the third largest economy within five years. The economies of China and India are growing at five times the rate of economies across the EU. The challenge for us is to allow human capital and technology to make the knowledge economy the engine of ongoing success. That is imperative as we face the great economic challenges that are common to all developed western democracies. We must meet those challenges strategically through e-learning, education, e-delivery and everything else about which we have spoken. We must be customer-centric. We need shared services and a greater degree of IT professionalism. Those three strands will be contained in our IT strategy, which will be published later this year. It is an agenda that we must deliver, and it is an agenda that we shall deliver. I thank you, Mr. Hancock, and all those who have attended the debate.