6. Statement by the Counsel General and Minister for European Transition: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:16 pm on 6 May 2020.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 5:16, 6 May 2020

Thank you for that. Just on your initial remarks—and thank you for the support that you've indicated—with regard to the broad-ranging aspects of the role, one of the key points that we are seeking to ensure happens is that the Government in all its aspects has a common understanding of some of the challenges that lie ahead and that that can be fed into the work of Ministers and civil servants and be mainstreamed in our shared understanding, across portfolios, of what some of the impacts are. It's obvious that there'll be interventions in one area that will impact others, and so that's part of the rationale.

On the digital point, which was the main point of his question, the issue of digital exclusion absolutely is at the heart of the sorts of issues that we've been discussing, both in terms of the immediate response to COVID, recognising that there are benefits, clearly, in how local authorities have been able to provide much more information online about the support they are able to give to people who are isolated, and the speed, really, of our ability to introduce GP appointments online, over video, at scale. I think part of the challenge for all governments in the future, really, is not to unlearn that behaviour and to be able to make that kind of change into the future in, hopefully, more benign contexts, in more benign climates.

But the point that you make is absolutely at the heart of the discussion we had yesterday, for example, about public service reform and the importance, obviously, of continuing the process of delivering services digitally, because that frees up human capital for other support the state can give, and also to build into that the notion of how we tackle exclusion, so that you're involving the user and the service user in the design of those services so that you're taking people on that journey with you as well as addressing the points in your question around digital competence, but also digital access. Yes, it's about broadband, and that does have a spatial dimension. It's also about access to kit, isn't it? Not every household has a laptop and a couple of smartphones, and people can't go to libraries at the moment. Internet cafes don't exist in the way they used to. So, these are access challenges as well as challenges of competence.

There will also be, I think, challenges in the future from the choices that he is describing in his question. People who can work from home may choose to do that more in the future than they have. That may do something to where people choose to live. If people don't feel they have to be in such close commuting distance, then the distribution of habitation may change, and that may also pose pressures in the future on broadband distribution. So, there are quite big challenges there.

On the representation of business, in a sense, there were 21 people, I think, over three sessions, so, actually, everyone is lightly represented, I think, in that context. We had a couple of businesspeople, I think, in one of the sessions yesterday, who spoke very much from a finance perspective and from an entrepreneurial perspective, which I thought was a very important contribution to the discussion and a very valuable contribution to the discussion. We'll obviously want to make sure, when we do our next set of round-tables, that we continue that level of representation across the board, to make sure that there's a range of voices in that mix.