4. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Climate Change: Update on Digital Strategy

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:34 pm on 15 March 2022.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 3:34, 15 March 2022

Those were an excellent and fair set of questions, but I'm not a robot, so there's no way I can possibly answer all the detail in the time that's available to me. I'd be very happy to send a comprehensive reply to the Member, to work through those very fair and challenging questions, and I welcome the spirit in which he posed them. I think they are all good challenges, and we are doing work on each of them. If I can just pick up on a couple, to respond in the time available.

In terms of the relationship with the UK Government, as I say, I had a very good and cordial meeting with the Minister of State and her senior officials last week, and with her predecessor and other Ministers over the last few years. So, this is one area where it's not a question of static electricity; I think it's just a genuine different world view. We think the market alone will not deliver at the scale and pace required for communities like his, which are harder to reach and more expensive to reach. The market will do what the market does well—it will get its fastest and greatest return for the capital invested. That is done in urban areas, areas where we have already addressed market failure by putting superfast in. And the likelihood is, with the market model, that they will simply serve them more—they will give them faster, better services, and charge them for it, so they can get a faster return. Investing into rural areas—and it's not exclusively a rural problem, but let's just call them, for the sake of today, in shorthand, 'harder-to-reach areas'—is slower and more expensive and brings a slower return on capital. That's rational from a market point of view—it's what private companies do. But that is not good enough for this area. This is not a nice-to-have service, this is must-have service, and simply relying on the market to do it is a flawed approach, in our view.

The UK Government doesn't accept that, and, to the extent it does accept it, it has put measures in place, but measures that are acting too slow, and that, even after they're finished, will still leave significant parts of Wales underserved or not served at all. That is the nub of our conflict with the UK Government on this. We think this should be treated like a core utility service. We require the Post Office—a private company—to deliver a letter to every farm and every property, no matter the cost to them. We don't extend that logic to the providers of digital infrastructure, and, in our view, we ought to. If you want to provide digital infrastructure in this country, and get contracts, you should have to provide to every property. That is the fundamental difference in view on the role of the market and the role of the state that we have with the UK Government. Though it's lovely to hear about £11 million of funding in Milford Haven library, that just doesn't cut it. The sorts of sums we're talking about are significantly higher. There's good work being done by us, by the UK Government, by the city regions, and so on, but there is a fundamental gap here that needs confronting and needs addressing.

His challenge on digital skills is a fair one. I think digital skills is hard. I'm pleased to see in the new curriculum that we have digital as one of the core competencies, but there is an issue of teacher confidence and teacher skills. Not enough schools are teaching ICT, not enough pupils are doing GCSE, A-levels, higher skills in computer science. These are the skills that we need to have to make sure that we take advantage of the huge job opportunities there are—and the Member mentioned the salaries available. There is a massive skills shortage. I take his point about the employability and skills strategy. The Minister for Economy and I did a joint session with officials from across the Government a month or so ago, looking at what we were doing and how we were delivering against the digital strategy, and I think we accept there is more to do. This is something that we need to do with the regional skills partnerships, with the further education sector, with the schools sector, to raise our game.

Finally, on the point about engaging with sectors like farming, as I mentioned, it's been six years since I gave a speech in the Senedd about precision agriculture. We have now published a route map, an audit, of agritech and what's going on in Wales. It's a very exciting field, with lots of economic opportunities, as well as real advantages to farmers who are struggling in the face of economic forces to improve productivity and reduce their impact on biodiversity by using less fertilizer and fewer chemicals. I had good conversations with the National Farmers Union on the weekend, in Llandudno, about the subject as well. There's a lot more we need to do—we need to really up the pace. Lots of farmers get it; the NFU were showing me their apps on their phones, with the weights of their cows, with great pride. So, there's a level already there, but there's such an opportunity to do more, and it's not without its challenges. Let's hope we can go on that journey together. I welcome the comments and questions he's asked.