Broadband Connectivity in Arfon

Part of 2. Questions to the Leader of the House and Chief Whip – in the Senedd at 2:42 pm on 14 November 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:42, 14 November 2018

Yes, we fund a number of programmes in this space: we fund Digital Communities Wales and, in fact, we are about to increase the size of that to £6 million to include health digital inclusion activities. We know from the national survey for Wales that about 60 per cent of people aged 75 or over and about 26 per cent of disabled people do have digital exclusion issues. So, the programme is particularly targeted to ensure that those communities can access health and social care services in particular, and also universal credit services.

We run a number of other programmes including business exploitation programmes. So, as the superfast programme rolls out, a team of people comes behind it, which is entirely aimed at increasing take-up and making sure that small businesses in particular in the area of the roll-out are able to get the benefit of getting online, and that they don't simply transform their old paper systems digitally, but they actually understand what that digital exploitation might look like and how they might increase their business in that way. We also run a whole series of digital pioneer programmes in our primary schools and secondary schools. And, of course, our twenty-first century schools programme is a collaboration, which includes strategic capital investment for our education estate to ensure digital inclusion in all of our curriculum.