Growing the digital economy

By Matt Han­cock, min­is­ter of state for dig­i­tal and cul­ture

Super­fast broad­band is avail­able to more than 90 per cent of UK homes and busi­ness­es, and is on course to reach at least 95 per cent by the end of next year. We recent­ly announced a fur­ther £440 mil­lion to sup­ply quick and reli­able inter­net con­nec­tions to the hard­est-to-reach parts of the coun­try, which will help half a mil­lion more homes and busi­ness­es. And we are also leg­is­lat­ing for a uni­ver­sal ser­vice oblig­a­tion for all.

Look­ing for­ward, we need to be ready for the next tech­nolo­gies. Full-fibre roll­out is hap­pen­ing all over the world and take-up is high. We announced more than £1 bil­lion to sup­port the roll­out of full-fibre broad­band con­nec­tions and future 5G mobile in the Autumn State­ment to ensure we stay ahead.

Get­ting the right infra­struc­ture in place is only half the chal­lenge. Research shows more than ten mil­lion adults in Eng­land still don’t have basic dig­i­tal skills. That holds peo­ple back, not least as jobs increas­ing­ly need these skills. So we are mak­ing train­ing in dig­i­tal skills free to any adult in Eng­land who needs them, regard­less of age or back­ground.

Once peo­ple are online, we need them to be safe too. We want the UK to be the safest coun­try in the world to live and do busi­ness online. In 2015 one in four of all busi­ness­es expe­ri­enced a cyber breach or attack and a quar­ter of large firms were hit at least once every month. This impacts on con­sumer con­fi­dence and costs the UK bil­lions of pounds. So we are invest­ing £1.9 bil­lion to pro­tect the UK online.

The dig­i­tal sec­tor is grow­ing twice as fast as the rest of the econ­o­my

We have opened a new Nation­al Cyber Secu­ri­ty Cen­tre to pro­tect cit­i­zens, indus­try and pub­lic ser­vices. We are also launch­ing two new inno­va­tion cen­tres where start­up firms can base them­selves in their cru­cial ear­ly months and get expert advice to devel­op ground­break­ing cyber-secu­ri­ty tech­nol­o­gy.

Safe­ty also means the free­dom to explore the inter­net with­out the wor­ry of stum­bling on poten­tial­ly harm­ful mate­r­i­al. Along­side indus­try, we have tak­en action. There are now fam­i­ly-friend­ly fil­ters for an esti­mat­ed 90 per cent of the UK’s broad­band mar­ket, mem­bers of the pub­lic can report online mate­r­i­al that pro­motes ter­ror­ism or extrem­ism to the Counter Ter­ror­ism Inter­net Refer­ral Unit and mea­sures in the Dig­i­tal Econ­o­my Bill will help pro­tect chil­dren from harm­ful pornog­ra­phy online.

We are com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing all our dig­i­tal busi­ness­es at every stage of their devel­op­ment, in fin­tech, med­ical tech, smart cities and edu­ca­tion tech­nolo­gies, to name a few. And we’ve sup­port­ed the shar­ing econ­o­my to allow peo­ple to earn more from their assets, and want to see the tech indus­tries inno­vate and grow.

The results are impres­sive. Recent sta­tis­tics show the dig­i­tal sec­tor is worth more than £118 bil­lion to our econ­o­my a year and accounts for more than 1.4 mil­lion jobs. The num­ber of dig­i­tal enter­pris­es has hit almost 200,000 and the sec­tor is grow­ing twice as fast as the rest of the econ­o­my. Last year six UK cities were ranked in the top twen­ty for sup­port­ing both star­tups and scale­ups in the Euro­pean Dig­i­tal City Index.

If we stay focused on all these mea­sures – on access and infra­struc­ture, on skills train­ing, on secu­ri­ty, on indus­try sup­port – we will achieve our goal of a dig­i­tal econ­o­my that every­one can ben­e­fit from.