Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Official Report 1187KB pdf

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Digital Inclusion

Our next item of business is a debate on motion S5M-14509, in the name of Kate Forbes, on a digital society for all: working together to maximise the benefits of digital inclusion. I encourage all members who wish to take part to press their request-to-speak buttons.

14:57  

I am pleased to debate how Scotland can become a digital society for all and how we are already well on our way to doing so. I thank the members who signed the motion to make the debate possible, and I look forward to hearing contributions from across the chamber.

What does “a digital society for all” mean? We can best understand that by talking to older or disabled users whose lives have been transformed by access to digital platforms. David, for example, led a fairly isolated life; he has epilepsy and chronic mental illness, which has made it difficult for him to socialise. He recently took part in the CleverCogs scheme, which is run by Blackwood Homes and Care and is designed to increase digital participation for adults who receive care and support packages. The scheme uses technology and design to develop low-cost ways to provide services that improve quality of life, choice and independence. Since David took part in the scheme, he has learned new digital skills that have given him the confidence to challenge himself and live life to the full. He used CleverCogs’ bespoke systems to educate himself on a range of topics, including ways to manage his depression and anxiety. However, members do not want to hear what I think. David said:

“CleverCogs has wakened me right up. It’s made me come out of myself so I’m not just sitting at home anymore. Almost every day I’m going out now and doing things for my neighbours if they are struggling because of old age. I didn’t do that before, I just kept myself to myself”.

David’s story demonstrates how technology has been life changing for not only him but his ageing neighbours. Earlier today, I had the privilege of meeting one of his neighbours, Mandy, who is another CleverCogs user. I believe that she is in the gallery, and I promised her that I would give her a wave so that she could wave back. Did she wave?

She did.

Good. Mandy, who uses a tablet, was the recipient of the service user achievement award for pioneering the system by tutoring her neighbours in the technology that CleverCogs uses, building a better sense of community and improving wellbeing. I asked her what she uses her tablet for, and she told me that she is the champion online bowler in her care home, that she listens regularly to Elvis on repeat on YouTube and that she FaceTimes her sister. Further, in terms of improving independence, because her tablet is linked to her caseworkers’ phones, she can use it to contact them. That gives her the control that she needs. The system is personalised to her, it is intuitive and she can even pick what she is going to eat for lunch, because the kitchen staff add the menu online.

CleverCogs and systems like it are building up digital skills among the older and disabled population. They give them more independence and control over their lives, and more and more people are getting online.

David and Mandy have clearly made great changes in their lives and the lives of others. Their experiences are documented in a report that was published today by the Carnegie UK Trust called “Living Digitally—An evaluation of the CleverCogs digital care and support system”. The results of that independent research back up the anecdotes and stories that I have heard from Mandy and David, and from many others. They clearly demonstrate the impact that digital participation can have. Participants in the study reported increased life satisfaction; most significantly, the life satisfaction of people aged 55 to 64 rose significantly. There were also improvements in the number of people accessing useful health information, with several indicators of improved levels of independence in customers’ daily living. That is a critically important point for me, as someone who believes strongly that Scotland can be at the forefront of the digital revolution.

We are seeing the enormous potential for our economy and our society in ensuring that our people have digital skills, that our businesses, third sector and public sector organisations use digital better, and that Scotland has the workforce, the expertise, the talent and the technology to enable us to share all of that with the rest of the world. However, at the end of the day, it comes back to the individuals whose lives are transformed. We want to create a digital society that is not just for those who can already access it, and we want to find new ways to tackle all the issues that affect digital participation.

Incidentally, that work must include connectivity, accessibility and affordability. Our commitment to provide access to superfast broadband for each and every home and business in Scotland is the most ambitious of any target across the United Kingdom. We set that target because we see the importance of two issues. We want to ensure that, first, the infrastructure does not exclude anybody and, secondly, once the infrastructure is in place, we are equally ambitious in supporting people to be able to use it.

Some £600 million is being invested in the initial procurement of the reaching 100 per cent programme, which is the single largest investment in digital connectivity by any Government in the UK.

My point is less about the delivery of the infrastructure and more about the skills that are required to use it. If it is true that one in five people in Scotland do not have basic digital skills—a figure that was given by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations—how will the Government address that?

That is a vitally important point. Digital skills are not just something that we should deliver to a particular section of the society. By the time that we give our young people digital skills at university or college, it is too late. The process must start first of all in schools.

In partnership with the current digital champions network, we are offering coding clubs to disadvantaged young people through schools and library networks. We continue to support the extension of extracurricular coding activities as part of the Digital Xtra programme. Jamie Greene will also be aware that, to date, we have funded CodeClan with more than £3 million to provide Scotland’s first industry-led digital skills academy. CodeClan offers students an intensive four-month training programme, with direct access to employers and an opportunity to attain a professional development qualification.

The opportunities are already there. In community hubs, silver surfers can get online, learn new talents, reduce social isolation and take advantage of all that the internet has to offer. We are also ensuring that young people pick up digital skills as they go through school. An example of where those two things work in tandem is Antonine primary school in Falkirk, where 55 schoolchildren have teamed up with 20 silver surfers to share knowledge about aspects of history—world war one, for example. A true digital society must recognise the ways in which we can share expertise across the generations; it must also be one in which everyone’s opinion matters.

The digital sector contributes to employment and economic growth across Scotland. In 2016, it was worth £5.2 billion in gross value added to the Scottish economy, and is forecast to be the fastest-growing sector in Scotland from now until 2024. To get the benefits of that revolution, we must adopt a cradle-to-grave approach. It is essential that we involve everyone at the most formative stage in their lives to ensure that we provide at the earliest possible stage the essential tools that will best equip their life journey.

One interesting initiative has been a partnership with the Scottish Book Trust, which operates the bookbug programme to provide book bags to every child in Scotland and is developing a smartphone app to complement the existing scheme.

That takes me to another aspect of digital participation, which is that we must consider people’s rights. We increasingly recognise that it is nonsensical to refer to a digital world as though it is independent of the world. The digital world is the current world as we see it. Last month, I opened a summit organised by Young Scot and youth leaders to promote the 5Rights agenda in Scotland. The ultimate aim of the 5Rights programme is to put power in the hands of young people so that they know how to be resilient and respond positively to all that the digital world has to offer.

It is the Scottish Government’s intention to use that 5Rights work as the foundation of a future proof and inclusive ethical framework that underpins how technology is built, provides the safeguards that we increasingly need and ensures that young people—and all generations—have the rights that they need in this digital world.

The opportunities are there for everyone to become confident, creative and fearless innovators, and to unlock the full potential of people and new technologies. From cyber tots through cyber teens to silver surfers, the Scottish Government is trying to spread an understanding among Scotland’s citizens that in a society where bad news travels faster than the speed of light, the internet can be used as a tool for good.

That is seen so clearly when it comes to the experiences of Mandy and David through CleverCogs. We can learn a lot as a society about embracing change and supporting people to realise their potential—wherever they live, whatever their age and whatever challenges they face. Digital should be a way of enabling us to live our lives to the full and we need to ensure that all of Scotland reaps the social, economic and cultural benefits that digital technology offers.

I move,

That the Parliament recognises the benefits that digital inclusion can bring to everyone in Scotland; welcomes the findings, published on 29 October 2018, of the two-year research project, Living Digitally, commissioned by Carnegie UK, on the impact of digital technologies on people with a range of disabilities; acknowledges the strong evidence of the positive impact of digital inclusion on their wellbeing; recognises that a combined focus by government, the wider public sector and private and voluntary sectors is the most effective way of increasing digital participation, which in turn will increase educational attainment, provide better access to fair work and higher-wage jobs, and supports effective, person-centred public services, such as the health and social care sector, to develop innovative solutions and enable Scotland to be a digital society for all.

15:10  

I take this somewhat belated opportunity to welcome Kate Forbes to the front bench. Representing my home constituency, she will be well aware of the problems of digital connectivity in our part of the world. I am delighted that she is representing the Government in this particular brief.

It is vital that we ensure not only that Scotland is one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, but that our citizens are the most technologically capable. By doing so, we can further grow our economy, create new jobs and remain competitive as a nation. We all know of the need to improve productivity in Scotland and, without doubt, digital inclusion is one of the many aspects of the solution to that pressing problem. Digital inclusion is also a practical necessity for people in their everyday lives, as new technologies can improve quality of life and improve personal health—to mention only a few of the many advantages that accrue from digital inclusion.

However, age barriers, lack of early intervention through education, the impact of disabilities and geographical location are just some of the barriers that exist. Frequently, when there is an issue of access—let us be brutally honest—that is because such access is unaffordable. As the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations notes, the evidence clearly shows that digital exclusion exacerbates existing deep-rooted inequalities, and affordability is a key barrier to those in the poorest communities.

The SCVO also states that 21 per cent of people in Scotland do not have basic digital skills. Given the ever-increasing significance of digital inclusion, the fact that people are being excluded due to the sheer cost should shame us all. In a report that was published earlier this year, Citizens Advice Scotland found that just over one third of respondents said they either “had difficulty” or “could not use” a computer.

In my Highlands and Islands region, there are still issues with the lack of reliable broadband and mobile internet access, which pose huge problems for local businesses and residences. I will come back to that later.

The Scottish Conservatives welcome efforts to improve the inclusivity of technology and increase access to it, and we welcome its inclusion in the Scottish Government’s digital strategy for Scotland. However, we will hold to account the Scottish National Party Government on those commitments to ensure that they come to fruition.

I readily acknowledge that digital inclusion is an issue that requires cross-party co-operation, but it is incumbent on me to set out our concerns that existing support schemes that could be used to improve digital inclusivity have not had the impact that might have been desired. For example, we note that it took more than a year for the Scottish Government to invest any money from the digital growth fund that it announced last year. Similarly, the Scottish growth scheme that was designed to support business has paid out only £25 million in two years, which is a far cry from the £500 million that was pledged to the scheme when it was launched. Although those two funds undoubtedly cover a variety of areas, it is concerning that such little progress has been achieved by them, and I ask the SNP Government to reflect on that.

However, we welcome the Government’s recognition of the “Living Digitally – An evaluation of the CleverCogs™ digital care and support system” report by Carnegie UK Trust and Just Economics Research Ltd, which focuses on a system that is designed to help people with disabilities to access the internet with confidence. That is just one example of collaboration between the public, private and voluntary sectors. In particular, I acknowledge remarks in the report about the CleverCogs system, which the minister mentioned, which showed increased happiness and reduced feelings of depression among its users.

It is important that we ensure that every young person is able to access and benefit from digital technology. I found it particularly striking that, according to Citizens Advice Scotland, those in the least deprived areas are twice as likely to be able to “use a computer well” as those in the most deprived areas. It is imperative that there is early intervention for young people in order to alter those trends.

However, to achieve those aims and reduce digital inequality, we need to ensure that there is adequate infrastructure to facilitate that in the first place. Although this is too interesting and nuanced a debate to lapse into the usual arguments about who is responsible for broadband in Scotland, it is important to put on record that we continue to support the aims of the reaching 100 per cent—R100—programme.

As a Highlands and Islands MSP, I know all too well the importance of ensuring that every home, no matter how rural or remote, can access fast and reliable broadband. According to Audit Scotland, average broadband speeds continue to be lowest in rural areas, and of the 376,000 households that are still unable to access superfast broadband, less than half will be able to do so by the R100 deadline of 2021. I mention that simply as a reminder that we still have a long way to go to deliver the vital infrastructure that is necessary to afford all our citizens the opportunity to benefit from digital technology. That is why we noted that in our amendment.

The member appears to have cast doubt on the delivery of the R100 programme to 100 per cent of Scottish premises by 2021. On what basis does he claim that only 50 per cent of the remaining premises will get that coverage?

Quite simply, that is based on the Audit Scotland report that I mentioned.

I will move on and provide some local examples. It is easy to talk about digital inclusivity from Edinburgh, where we all work in a high-technology environment in the Scottish Parliament. However, to understand the benefits of inclusivity, it is helpful to share some first-hand experiences from the areas that we represent. I want to mention the e-Sgoil project in Stornoway, which I visited last month. Schools throughout the Western Isles, the Highlands and beyond have linked up, using state-of-the-art video technology, to deliver classes. As a result, young people in some of the most remote parts of Scotland have been offered greater subject choice.

One example of how that project works involves a local music teacher. Previously, she had to travel between three schools on Lewis, racking up miles in her car and spending little time with her pupils. Now, thanks to technology, she can base herself in one school for a whole week, be with the children there and deliver classes to the other two schools via videolink. The following week, she can do the same from another of her schools. For her, the project means cutting her travel time by a third; for the council, it means saving money; and for the pupils, it means face-to-face contact with their teacher.

Another example is the maths teacher who I witnessed teaching remotely. Astonishingly, his students were able to message him confidentially mid-lesson if they were struggling with a topic. That goes way beyond traditional learning methods. A barrier to education is now being resolved through technology, and that is truly inspirational.

However, on the flipside, we have all seen the mass banking closures throughout many rural and remote parts of Scotland. Rural parts of Scotland are far more liable to have slower broadband speeds than those in urban Scotland. That is why the decision of a bank or any major business to significantly alter or reduce its presence in our rural areas can have such a devastating impact.

A digitally inclusive society is as much about social progress as it is about economic benefit. If we can ensure that everyone, irrespective of background, not only has access to new and existing technologies but is able to cope with the ever-changing digital world that we live in, we can be sure that Scotland can be a digital powerhouse.

I move amendment S5M-14509.3, to insert at end:

“; recognises that a lack of quality broadband connection can prevent digital inclusion, especially in remote and rural areas; notes the negative effects of the removal of high street banking services from local communities, regrettably leading to circumstances of digital exclusion, and calls for a comprehensive and sympathetic approach by the Scottish Government that acknowledges the huge advantages that digital technology brings to Scottish society, but also recognises the risks of excluding those who are currently unable to access such technology in their daily lives.”

15:17  

I welcome Kate Forbes to her new ministerial role and wish her well.

Today, almost every aspect of society has been transformed by technological advancements. As we become an increasingly digital society, there are constant changes to how businesses operate, our approach to shopping, the services that we access, the way in which we are educated and the way in which we function in the workplace. It is therefore little wonder that research by Which? found that nine out of 10 people view a broadband connection as a necessity, alongside water and energy utilities, food and housing. That is a higher proportion than those who identify a television, a phone, a car or savings as a necessity.

Such advancements open up a vast range of new opportunities for individuals, businesses and communities, and they can bring significant social and economic advantages, as Kate Forbes highlighted in David and Mandy’s experience with the CleverCogs digital care and support system. I will say more about that in my closing speech at the end of the debate.

In moving Labour’s amendment, I want to highlight the fact that such benefits are sadly not often felt equally. It is too easy to presume that everyone has the basic skills to navigate their way around the digital world or that people have access to the technology, even if they have the skills. Too many people in Scotland are digitally excluded. There are many reasons for that. Scotland’s beautiful but fragmented landscape provides challenges to making the necessary technology available for all, and shortcomings in the Government’s connectivity policy have so far failed to overcome those barriers. The much-touted digital superfast Scotland broadband programme helped to facilitate the roll-out of digital broadband, but it also entrenched some of Scotland’s digital divide.

I recognise the comments that the member has made about infrastructure. What is his view on how we ensure that, where there is adequate infrastructure, those who can use digital are supported to do so? There is a disconnect between the 5 per cent of people who do not have the infrastructure and the much bigger number of people who are not using what we have.

Kate Forbes raises a very important point, which I will deal with in my speech. A large number of groups, whether it is because of income, disability, age or other factors, are currently excluded from accessing services. I will touch on that in my ideas later on.

People who live in rural areas are one of the groups that are digitally excluded. Although digital broadband coverage is at more than 97 per cent nationally, in some of our rural areas—Orkney, for example—coverage is down to 82 per cent and access to superfast broadband is at just 65 per cent. That is far from unique. In the Western Isles and Ross, Skye and Lochaber, almost 30 per cent of people do not have access to superfast speeds and, across the board, rural areas have much poorer access to digital and superfast broadband. The wider challenges that those communities face—challenges that relate to the economy and accessing services—are exacerbated by that digital divide.

It is not just connectivity issues that are holding Scotland back. The 2017 Scottish household survey found a clear correlation between income and internet access. It stated:

“Home internet access tends to increase with household income”.

Indeed, 99 per cent of households with an annual income of more than £40,000 have home internet access compared with 56 per cent of those who earn between £6,001 and £10,000. That is a difference of 43 percentage points. The most disadvantaged in society are too often excluded from the opportunities, services and information that home internet access provides.

The Scottish household survey also revealed a persistent age gap in internet use. Only 63 per cent of adults aged 60 and above and 37 per cent of those aged 75 and above use the internet, compared with 99 per cent of those aged 16 to 24. Although progress has been made in that area, a great deal more remains to be done.

Another worrying trend that was identified in the Scottish household survey was that those with some form of physical or mental health condition were 20 per cent less likely to use the internet than those without such a condition. That reveals a serious failure to remove the barriers that those with disabilities face. Again, that highlights how digital exclusion reinforces existing inequalities.

The Scottish household survey also identified a

“gender gap in digital skills”,

albeit that the information that we have on that is still limited. If we are to tackle digital exclusion, we need more comprehensive data on who is being excluded and why. What is already clear is that digital exclusion is inseparable from broader social and economic inequalities, and that advancing digital inclusion is therefore essential to improving inclusion more broadly.

On coverage, as Donald Cameron highlighted, the R100 programme aims to address the significant shortcomings of the previous broadband roll-out programme, such as the failure to set a minimum speed, and it aims to tackle some of the access issues that rural communities face. Labour fully supports the aims of the programme and its target of 100 per cent superfast broadband coverage by the end of 2021 or, indeed, sooner, but I am concerned by Audit Scotland’s assessment that meeting that target remains “difficult”. The commitment needs to be delivered in full, but I have yet to be convinced that the Scottish Government has the resources and a clear plan in place in order to achieve that.

I welcome the plan, and I also welcome the Scottish Government’s investment to enable improvements in 4G coverage. I look forward to seeing the details of its 5G strategy. However, although the work is welcome and much needed, it is still far from transformative. As I said earlier, expanding coverage is only the first step in improving access. Ensuring genuine digital inclusion means taking a holistic view of access and looking at the additional barriers that people might face. There is a real risk that individuals and communities that have been digitally excluded to date will continue to miss out on the opportunities that the growth in digital will bring.

It is clear that Scotland faces a digital divide. Rural communities, those on the lowest incomes, people with physical or mental health conditions, and older people are being excluded. That exclusion mirrors wider social and economic inequalities, but it also exacerbates those inequalities. A comprehensive strategy is therefore needed. That is why I am happy to move Labour’s amendment, which calls for that.

I move amendment S5M-14509.2, to insert at end:

“; notes that rural communities, those on the lowest income, people with physical or mental health conditions and older people are particularly affected by digital exclusion; recognises that digital exclusion exacerbates wider social and economic inequalities; believes that the Scottish Government has failed to adequately tackle digital exclusion, and calls for a more comprehensive approach by the Scottish Government to end Scotland’s digital divide.”

15:24  

As others have done, I welcome Kate Forbes to her position. I think that this is the first time that I have been in a debate with her in her new role in the chamber. I am sure that we all wish her well.

I draw members’ attention to the fact that I am a member of the Open Rights Group.

I welcome the chance to take part in this debate. I recognise that positive points are being made on all sides; however, I also recognise that aspects of the agenda are being missed by all sides. The Government motion, which I have got no great beef with and will happily support, says that increasing digital participation will, in turn,

“provide better access to fair work and higher-wage jobs”.

It will for some people, but digital participation alone is no guarantee of that. We are all very aware of those involved in the gig economy. They may be highly connected and adept at using online platforms, but they are being exploited in poorly paid and insecure work.

Digital participation, like many other innovations in life, can be used for good or for ill. The economy that we build around it can be fair and sustainable, or it can be exploitative and wasteful.

The Conservative amendment mentions the digital economy’s impact on, if I can put it this way, the real-world economy—that is, the high street. The digital services tax that was announced in yesterday’s budget is an interesting innovation. It is likely to be too modest in scale to reverse the impact that the UK Government is talking about, but it is acknowledging a genuine issue and we should all welcome the fact that that conversation is taking place.

However, the continual spats between Governments about exactly who is to blame for broadband roll-out not being as fast as some people would like it to be is a dynamic that solves nothing. If we want the state to act, we should argue for public ownership of infrastructure, and I do not hear that case coming from either Government.

We should also consider what the long-term goal is for broadband. How fast is “fast enough”? This is not simply a question of building infrastructure anew every decade or so when technology moves on apace and the demand for data goes up. The energy considerations alone of getting faster and faster are being ignored.

For the vast majority of domestic applications, is having only a 10 megabits per second connection really digital exclusion? I question that. I have stood in my living room flying around the virtual reality version of Google Earth, which is a fully 3D-rendered planet streaming through a broadband connection, perfectly happily without the extremely high speeds that we are talking about as though they are an absolute requirement for everybody. There is a point at which we should say that the speeds that we have are fast enough.

Labour cites many issues in its amendment that we should all share a great deal of concern about, not least the impact of inequality of digital participation. However, it is easy to say that “the Government has failed”, and, like a great many Labour amendments that we see in the chamber, its amendment today does not include much by way of positive proposals.

I will argue a little deeper and question the nature and not just extent of digital participation. Is digital participation about creating an online space in which we merely consume services and products, or is about creating a space for collaboration, creativity and community? It is the nature of that participation that we should be concerned about.

Is the role of education about empowering young people to be merely passive consumers or about empowering them to take hold of powerful new tools to make their society better? What can digital participation mean without digital rights? Publications from both the UK and Scottish Governments have been too silent on that question. There has been a particular failure in response to the scandals affecting companies such as Facebook and Cambridge Analytica in recent years.

A free and open internet is not just a commercialised space, and it cannot be allowed to be simply a commercialised space in which more and more control over our lives is taken silently and invisibly by service providers, content providers and advertisers. That applies even to the social media platforms that we all enjoy using—well, sometimes we can still manage to enjoy them—which many of us choose to use without necessarily being conscious of the degree of control that is taken by them.

In its recent paper on the impact of Brexit on digital rights, the Open Rights Group said:

“International trade deals have a long history of disregarding democracy and reflecting corporate agendas.”

The group also mentioned that tech giants around the world are becoming very dominant in

“negotiations with the US for cross-border trade and e-commerce.”

Among the arguments that it made was that digital privacy must not be allowed to be undermined in the name of protecting the free flow of data and that censorship should not be promoted through draconian or voluntary online IP enforcement commitments. I would like those issues, as well as the issues of the role of surveillance in our society, whether by state or corporate players, and that of privacy and consent to be addressed. They raise more questions than answers and I do not pretend otherwise. However, discussing digital participation only in terms of uptake fails to give us the fuller picture that we need. We should be at least as interested in the nature of participation and the changing social, economic and even political relationships that will emerge in our society.

15:31  

On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I welcome Kate Forbes to her new role. We wish her well because she knows, as we all do, that delivering the Scottish Government’s ambitious commitment of 100 per cent coverage of superfast broadband by 2021 will be challenging. The task that is before the minister has been made all the more difficult because of the glacial progress of previous ministers and cabinet secretaries towards that goal.

Fast and reliable access to the internet and a dependable mobile phone signal are no longer a luxury. I think that we all agree that good connectivity is now an essential service, which allows communities, individuals and businesses to thrive. Indeed, the benefits of good connectivity go far beyond the economic. Access to online knowledge, education and public services supports the spread of ideas, broadens horizons, should improve civic engagement, and enables research to take place almost instantaneously across borders and at a global level.

It is unfortunate that the people who could benefit the most have often been left behind and that society has quickly divided into those who can easily access our digital economy and those who are excluded. The Scottish Government would do a great service to the communities and individuals who have been excluded if it provided a meaningful programme of digital education and universal access to superfast broadband as soon as possible.

The minister will be aware that I lodged an amendment to the motion, which, unfortunately, was not selected for debate.

What a shame.

I point out to Mr Lyle that, in my amendment, I was trying to be helpful to the Scottish Government. Its target is for 100 per cent coverage by December 2021. Would it not be immensely helpful if the Scottish Government target were to be brought forward to 1 May of that year? After all, that is the date that was in the SNP manifesto for the 2016 election.

No, it was not.

I have read the manifesto; I am not sure whether the member has done so.

I am sure that the Scottish Government could bring forward the date, if it had the will to implement its own manifesto. I am, of course, trying to be helpful to the minister by making that suggestion.

This is not the first time in this chamber that I have urged the Scottish Government to get a move on with its R100 programme. I have brought to the attention of Scottish Government ministers the fact that thousands of homes in areas such as Aberdeenshire are experiencing nothing like the levels of connectivity that have been promised. In some cases, internet speeds reach barely 1 Mbps, and mobile phone coverage is intermittent or even non-existent.

Only last week, a constituent whose home is in Inverurie, a town of more than 10,000 residents, reported that he could not find a provider or a contract that would deliver speeds of more than 6 Mbps.

It is unfortunate that when the SNP promised, in 2012, to deliver 95 per cent fibre coverage and that

“next generation broadband will be available to all by 2020”,

it did not start by investing in the areas that would see the most benefit. Kate Forbes will be aware of that.

I have lost count of the number of times that I have been told that residents who live only a stone’s throw from a green cabinet can scarcely access the most basic internet services.

Like Mike Rumbles, I believe that universal connectivity is vital. However, my question to him, which is put in a constructive spirit, is about the fact that, even with connectivity, we see that not all adults know how to access the internet. I will give him one statistic: about one third of people between the ages of 45 and 74 do not access the internet at home—not because they do not have connectivity, but because there is an issue with their skills. How does he propose to respond to that?

The minister makes a good point. In the same spirit, I say that there is no point in educating people and helping them if they cannot access the service first. Not everybody will take up the service, but accessibility is very important. We have to tackle both those issues.

The truth of the matter is that the Scottish Government has relied on local authorities, business gateways such as Highlands and Islands Enterprise, commercial operators and the UK Government to do a great deal of the heavy lifting. As a matter of fact, the Scottish Government’s own contribution to the digital Scotland superfast broadband programme has amounted to around only 15 per cent of the total investment so far.

There is no need to remind me—and I say to Richard Lyle, even before he gets on his feet—

Will the member take an intervention?

Not on this point. I would rather make my point first; I am running out of time.

Will the member take an intervention?

Mr Lyle, please sit down.

If I had more time, I would be delighted to.

Mr Lyle, the member has said that he does not wish to take an intervention. Please respect that.

I say to Richard Lyle that I would certainly take his intervention if I had more time.

As I was saying, there is no need to remind me that this is a reserved matter and is the responsibility of the UK Government—just as there is no need to remind my colleagues in the SNP that it is now six years since they promised to deliver superfast broadband to everyone. Only three years of that commitment remain and it is yet to be achieved.

I fully support the motion that has been moved by the minister today. I also support both amendments. I hope that everyone in this chamber will agree that good and reliable access to our digital economy is not a luxury but a necessity. Therefore, in trying to be helpful to the Scottish Government, I ask the minister to return to the commitment that the SNP made in its manifesto and to deliver the R100 programme by May 2021, rather than by the end of that year. After all, would it not be proud to achieve 100 per cent coverage for all by the next election? It would be in its interests to do so.

We now move to the open debate. Speeches should be of up to six minutes, please. We are a bit pushed for time; no extra time can be allowed.

15:37  

I am pleased to speak in today’s debate as a representative of the South Scotland region, which is a rural area that has faced challenges in digital competence, connectivity and uptake.

We are all in agreement that tackling barriers to digital inclusion and ensuring digital connectivity across the whole of Scotland will be key to realising the advantages of the digital world, which have been highlighted. In turn, that will boost productivity and efficiency.

This afternoon, I will focus my speech on the last part of the Scottish Government’s motion, which suggests that improving digital participation and inclusion will also benefit delivery of healthcare in Scotland. As a nurse and as deputy convener of the Health and Sport Committee, I must alert Parliament to that.

The motion

“recognises that a combined focus by government, the wider public sector and private and voluntary sectors is the most effective way of increasing digital participation, which in turn will”

support

“effective, person-centred public services, such as the health and social care sector, to develop innovative solutions and enable Scotland to be a digital society for all.”

Members might be aware of one programme that aims to do exactly that. The attend anywhere programme, which is administered by the Scottish centre for telehealth and telecare, with NHS boards and NHS 24, is a resource that allows patients access to healthcare specialists and professionals, general practitioners, psychologists, nurses, physiotherapists and others, in the comfort of their own homes, at work or in places of ease and comfort to them.

The attend anywhere programme has many benefits for people’s daily lives. It means that patients can see their GPs without leaving their homes to go to surgeries. It also means that they can access their psychologists or healthcare professionals without going to clinics or hospitals, and it encourages them to seek medical advice from where they may not previously have done so, due to improved ease of access.

In addition, attend anywhere has benefits for health. It means that people with severe and complex healthcare needs may not need to travel to see their professionals, which in some cases—for example, patients who experience chronic pain and patients who have mental health conditions—might reduce the stress of their having to leave the house.

Between 2017 and 2018, the Scottish centre for telehealth and telecare enabled 7,500 new patients to have access to, and to benefit from, home and mobile health monitoring. It supported the scale-up BP programme, to deliver the largest scale-up of blood pressure monitoring to date. It delivered 1,200 consultations to patients, with more than 67 GP practices being registered to use the service. Most important is that it supported 4,000 people across Scotland to learn about the programme and transfer their knowledge of it to others in their respective areas. I understand, however, that some patients might be fearful or reluctant to take up the programme, and I absolutely understand the need for patients to have a choice about the programme after they have been informed about the positives and negatives of it.

Last year, the Scottish Government published its digital strategy, which set out how it intends to place digital at the heart of everything it does, from reforming public services to delivering economic growth. That is welcome, but in order to achieve the aim of placing digital at the heart of everything, the Scottish Government must ensure and encourage a combined effort from itself, third sector organisations and voluntary organisations, in order to help communities, people and businesses to have the confidence, resources and infrastructure to become digitally enabled.

One such third sector organisation currently operates in my South Scotland region. The Castle Douglas Community Information Technology Centre charity, known as the IT centre, is managed by Jackie Williams and provides access to computers, laptops and tablets for people who require digital services in their daily lives. People in the local area rely on the centre for assistance with applications for jobs and welfare support, and for access to college and university applications. The centre also offers courses in CV writing, as well as introductory courses on use of IT, basic programming and other skills. I would like to see such projects being rolled out and supported across Scotland as we move towards being a digital society. I invite the minister to visit when her diary permits.

If we are to have a fully digital Scotland, we must first ensure that we have in place the necessary resources to give people the confidence to use technology. I therefore encourage the Scottish Government to continue to make Scotland the best digital society it can be, while allowing people the time, education and resources to come to terms with changes such as those that come with programmes like attend anywhere.

Finally, the IT centre in Castle Douglas and other such places also offer benefits to many people who have additional learning needs, so they provide an excellent opportunity for people to become digitally competent.

15:43  

I welcome Kate Forbes to her role. The renewed focus on the digital economy, connectivity and digital inclusion is welcomed by the Conservatives. After I was elected to Parliament, I was made my party’s spokesman on the digital economy and connectivity, as some members will recall, and my interest in that portfolio stems from a career in media technology. I spent much of that time asking Government to focus on taking a centralised approach and on how Scotland can be a truly inclusive nation. I also felt that a dedicated minister to focus on digital was much needed, so the reshuffle was music to our ears.

The Carnegie UK report on the CleverCogs system is an interesting read. That system is a perfect example of how technology can be used in the social sector to great effect. It is true that digital change has come around very quickly over the past few years, and that adapting to that change has been difficult for some people. It is important that we take advantage of the digital society, but in doing so we must ensure that no one is left behind.

The minister opened the debate by talking about three ways of achieving that—connectivity, accessibility and affordability. That is a sensible and fair analysis of what we need to do, but I would like to put things slightly differently. I think that the three things that people need are the following. The first is hardware, by which I mean infrastructure—physical access to devices, be it smart phones, tablets or computers, as well as connectivity via broadband or other means. That access does not need to be in the home; it can be in public spaces including libraries, schools and community centres, where such access is often available throughout Scotland.

However, access requires my second point—having the right skills to use the hardware. Much has been said about that today. The development of those skills might start at school, or even pre-school, and continue through college, university and professional development, but it also needs to include people who do not have access to those. That involvement could be achieved through community schemes, charitable organisations, the third sector and even—dare I say it?—Government-operated schemes.

We need to ensure that, truly, no one is left behind. In that respect, the more illustrative we can be in today’s debate, the better.

Digital participation must be about more than essential skills. The digital participation charter has secured from more than 500 public, private and third sector organisations a commitment to working together. What does the member see as being the role of digital companies?

The conversation around big digital companies is often simply about taxation or employment opportunities. The way that they have transformed our economies is immense, but they also have a fundamental role to play in how people communicate, learn and discover; they have a huge responsibility. I will not name platforms and organisations, but they know who they are and so do we.

The minister is right that they have a huge responsibility to understand that a large proportion of society is now using digital platforms not just to purchase goods but to access information, and to contact and interact with each other in ways that people never did before. How the big digital companies use that responsibility is key; some are clearly using it better than others.

In the short time that I have left, I will focus on the important issue of skills. We often talk about infrastructure in terms of connectivity alone, about whose responsibility it was or is, and about how much money should or should not have been spent. It is fair to say that infrastructure is incredibly hard to deliver in rural parts of any country, especially if we are to reach the sort of broadband speeds that we need in our rural and island communities. It is very technically difficult to deliver to those areas, which is admitted by all sides.

As I said in an intervention, however, the question is what people do with that infrastructure once they have it. If one fifth of the population do not have access to basic digital skills, there needs to be a serious conversation about how we will address that. More than 11 million people across the UK do not have the basic digital skills that they need. If the digital economy is the economy of the future, then surely that one fifth needs to be reduced to zero.

A Citizens Advice Scotland survey found that 50 per cent of all respondents could not do simple things including downloading, completing, saving or uploading electronic forms. We should be mindful of that when we think about how we develop online platforms to access public services such as benefits and welfare services, or health-related services. If people simply cannot download, complete and upload basic forms, and instead still rely on a paper-based approach or face-to face contact, it is clear that something is not working.

I want to quickly plug some of the good work that is being done in my part of the world. North Ayrshire Women’s Aid has been helping people to improve their digital skills in a number of ways. For example, it has helped them to access their universal credit journals and to job search. In one case, as a result of that support, a woman was able to access voluntary roles, and that work experience helped her to achieve paid employment.

It is extremely important that we think about why we need digital inclusion. Digitally excluded people have poorer health outcomes than others, they are lonelier and suffer more from social isolation, and they have fewer employment and educational opportunities. They pay more for essentials, they are financially excluded and they are at increased risk of falling into poverty. They also lack a voice and visibility in modern society.

In a democracy, thought must always be given to how Government services are delivered to people online and digitally. That sums up why systems such as CleverCogs deserve cross-party support. A good start has been made, but more needs to be done.

I call Stewart Stevenson. You have up to six minutes, and you must not go beyond that.

15:49  

I declare that I am a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, all of which have interests in digital inclusion.

The history of the subject goes back a very long way. The Romans communicated digitally across their empire nearly 2,000 years ago, via a system of hilltop signalling. We are now in the electronic world, but some of the things that we are interested in today go back a lot further than we might think. I go back beyond the birth dates of two of the participants in the debate so far, to 1964, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology artificial intelligence laboratory. People think that artificial intelligence is modern, but 54 years ago Joseph Weizenbaum produced a programme called Eliza that was designed to answer questions in such a way that the user could not tell whether it was a human or a computer that was answering them, and very successfully he did that, too.

From that point onwards, we have always said that it will be five years before artificial intelligence takes over from us, and it is still five years away today. In computing, things can take a good deal longer than we would sometimes imagine or like.

Picking up on what Donald Cameron said, I have gone to the Audit Scotland report and the exact words are not as he suggested. Audit Scotland says:

“The Scottish Government achieved its initial target to provide fibre ... access to 95 per cent of premises. Its more recent ‘Reaching 100 per cent’ ambition will be more difficult to realise.”

I acknowledge that that is certainly going to be true.

Donald Cameron rose—

I really do not have time to take an intervention—I am sorry.

Audit Scotland also says that it might cost more than £600 million, but of course we will see how it turns out.

Mike Rumbles is not wholly wrong when he talks about some of the difficulties in Aberdeenshire. There and in Dumfriesshire, we have a huge number of exchange-only lines, which, with the current programme of technology, means that they cannot readily be attached to fibre.

Nearly 40 years ago, I said that the triumph of computers will be achieved when we no longer realise that we are using them—in other words, when we speak to them and they just do what we ask them. We will reach that point probably in my lifetime, and at that point digital exclusion will become a different animal. Many people cannot work keyboards and many people find the complexities of particular interactions with computers difficult to achieve. Right across Scotland, we absolutely need people to help them to achieve the access to the internet that matters to them, particularly those who are over 75, as 70 per cent of them do not use the internet, which is triple the Scottish average.

It matters economically, because it is estimated that when people use modern systems for their daily lives they save nearly £600 a year. Communication with friends and relatives in other villages, other parts of the island that we live on and other places around the world is now very electronic, too, and if people are denied that opportunity it is a huge loss in their lives.

For people with particular disadvantages, be they physical, mental or whatever, the computer can be a way out of those difficulties. I and two pals, Alasdair Macpherson and Robert Davidson, built the first home computer in Scotland in 1975, and a couple of years later we were able to adapt an Apple II computer for a quadriplegic ex-soldier who had had an accident in the tank that he commanded and was left totally crippled. All that he could move was his head. We were able to rig up a bit of kit, change the way the keyboard worked and develop something that he could hold in his mouth to tap at the keyboard. Within two months, he was writing programs that he was selling. I felt terrific about that. Unfortunately, his health problems eventually overwhelmed him.

Today, we have much more powerful computers that can do so much more for us, so the exclusion can become wider than it was when there were only little computers. Those who master the new technology can stride off over the horizon and are much further away from those who have not been able to do so. We should recognise that the phones and computers that we use are vital to our world.

A couple of years ago, the computer firm Unisys said that it takes people an average of 26 hours to report a lost wallet, but only 68 minutes to report a lost cellphone. That tells us something about how important technology now is in our lives.

I think that Jamie Greene referred to 20 per cent of adults; it is 20 per cent of adults in the most disadvantaged 20 per cent of areas in Scotland who do not use the internet. For a host of reasons, those people are deprived of many things that the rest of us take for granted. We need to have people in libraries and other public spaces who can help others to access publicly available computers. I hope that, when the Government looks at the comments in the debate and at the opportunities from digital roll-out, it will consider such an approach for the future.

15:55  

I, too, welcome Kate Forbes to her new post. Her constituency should inform her that all is not well with digital connectivity. I am not sure that it augurs well for the debate that the Government’s motion cites a report that was not available in hard copy—far less digitally—when the motion was lodged this week. Perhaps that reflects the Government’s digital policy—there are great aspirations but little delivery.

Since we previously debated digital inclusion, we have made little progress. The issues are the same—rural areas are being left behind, as are urban deprived communities. Sadly, that follows historical exclusion.

We had the opportunity to do something different with digital connectivity. We could have used it to bridge the social exclusion divide but, unfortunately, it appears to have deepened that divide. The Scottish Government did not have the same ambition for rural Scotland as for urban Scotland. The target of a 95 per cent reach for urban Scotland and a 75 per cent reach for rural Scotland starkly shows that lack of ambition. We are not at the forefront of the digital revolution; sadly, we are lagging behind.

The Government tells us that R100 will address that but, sadly, I do not believe that. People in the industry tell us that R100 will still not reach some communities. The little support that was available to rural communities has been withdrawn as we wait for R100. We are in a hiatus while the tendering process takes place. Surely that process could have been undertaken while the previous roll-out was running. Stopping the roll-out for any time is not good enough.

The member said that people in the industry tell us that R100 cannot be done. I recently met BT—I understand that it is one of the bidders, but not the only one—and was given absolute assurances that R100 can be achieved, although price is a different issue. Who says that we cannot reach 100 per cent?

BT.

Indeed—BT. Many people in the industry say that the technology is not available to reach 100 per cent of the population. However, there are things that the Scottish Government could do now to make a difference. It could map fibre—especially fibre that was paid for by the public purse.

Under R100, the public purse will pay for new fibre to be laid on top of fibre that the public purse paid for. The Government needs to keep ownership of all the fibre that it has funded so that subsequent upgrades and roll-outs can use it. To save money and ensure that we use all products of public investment, the Government also needs to trace what was laid historically. It would also make sense to map privately owned fibre, to see whether it could be used to speed up the roll-out of broadband.

We need to give small communities access to affordable backhaul and ensure that R100 does not undermine that, because commercial rates are too high and prohibit community solutions. That is another thing that can be investigated now.

The roll-out must not compromise current community solutions. As an example, SSE has laid fibre for the Ministry of Defence in Applecross. An additional cable has been laid at the same time, and will be commercially available to bring superfast broadband to parts of Applecross. Applecross has its own broadband system—AppleNet. It is not superfast and it can be unreliable because of weather conditions, but it is there now, providing a service as cheaply as possible to the whole community. If a larger provider buys access to the new fibre, it will be able to provide fast, reliable and cheaper broadband to the easy-to-reach parts of that community. If that happens and those customers are lost to AppleNet, it may well become unsustainable, meaning that most of the community will have no broadband at all. The public purse, through the MOD, is paying to put down that fibre, which has the potential to undermine a community’s access to broadband. The community system should be given access to that fibre at an affordable price. Then it would be able to upgrade for the whole community and make the system faster and more reliable.

It is such areas that will benefit most from digital connectivity. Who would not want to live in such a beautiful place? However, employment in rural areas is hard to find. Better digital connectivity would allow people to work from anywhere and make it easier for new businesses to start up. Such connectivity could make businesses in those places and communities far more financially viable.

I have concentrated most of my comments on remote rural issues, as members would expect, given my constituency. However, as I said, unequal access to connectivity follows the lines of traditional inequalities. Those in deprived communities suffer the same issue with access as those in our remote rural communities: it is not commercially viable for private profit-driven companies to provide them with broadband because they cannot afford to pay for it.

We need to find solutions to those issues and make sure that those communities do not fall behind. We are a long way from equal access to connectivity, which is no longer a nice add-on: it is an essential service that we need to provide.

16:01  

When I was a young graduate of computer science in the early 1980s, only a decade or so after the technology that took us to the moon was in place, we could still only dream of the possibility that everyone in the world could potentially contact, see and speak to anyone else in the world in real time, at any time.

“Potentially” is the key word, because although the technology is there to enable such an amazing possibility, people are not quite there in terms of their ability to access and use that technology. That is what I hope that the theme of the debate is about—bringing all our people along on this digital train journey so that no one is left behind at the station as the train speeds faster and faster ahead.

We need the technology to be up to the task, we need the connectivity to enable it all to work, we need skilled people to put it all together and make it easier for all of us to use, and we need Governments to think about how best to sell the tickets so that everyone can have a seat on the train, no matter what their circumstances are.

At this point, I make my usual plea for any of our young potential graduates of the future to think seriously about a career in software development. We are short of thousands of software developers in Scotland and good software is the key to the success of all this. It is heartening to see that the Government’s digital strategy paper has that in mind—it is essential, in fact. Technology in isolation takes us nowhere, so we need people with the skills to enable the rest of us to use it easily. It is a wonderful career for young graduates to consider. There is the potential to work anywhere in the world—although I hope that they will work in Scotland. The work is never the same two days in a row and it is well paid, and it is a career that can last a lifetime.

We know that there are bigger vacancy rates in the digital economy than in other sectors, with fewer than four out of 10 businesses in Scotland reporting that they have the right digital skills in place to meet requirements, so the Government strategy is crucial in trying to help. The digital growth fund and the pilot project in Edinburgh to help businesses to scale up their digital capabilities will certainly help. I would like to see that pilot being extended to all parts of Scotland, including Ayrshire, since, as we know, it takes far too long for my constituents to get to Edinburgh on a real train, never mind on a digital train—but that is a debate for another time.

We need to see more young undergraduates and especially more young women choosing software degrees to make any of that possible. The number of people choosing those degrees is going up slowly and it is not going up fast enough yet.

In European terms—and without politicising the point too much—we know that the digital single market is fundamental to Scotland’s place in a digitally competitive Europe. The single market is worth about €400 billion per year and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs. In my view, it is impossible to leave that market, despite the rhetoric that we hear. It is crucial that our Government finds ways to keep Scotland in that market, because otherwise we as a nation risk exclusion and isolation from it, and we cannot allow that to happen.

On wider inclusion issues, I am delighted to have convened for a number of years the Parliament’s cross-party group on digital participation. The group has heard positive stories of how communities across Scotland have been embracing technology and trying to broaden its appeal and relevance to as many citizens as possible. We have heard from community broadband projects that are working well; housing associations that offer innovative and affordable solutions for tenants; small businesses that rely on fast data access to reach out directly to a wider client base than they might otherwise be able to afford to contact; and from local initiatives across a number of councils that do great work in the important area of providing access to and demystifying technology, particularly for older citizens, many of whom remain sceptical and even suspicious about it.

My council in East Ayrshire is doing great work through its digital participation network to assess the skills gaps in communities wherever they are and to provide lots of support opportunities for everyone. The council knows the importance of reaching out and bringing people along on the digital journey that I mentioned.

We will probably never reach the end of the digital journey that we are so locked into in our modern society. New and ever more exciting technological achievements are bound only by our imagination. The value that our citizens see in all of that depends on our ability and willingness to make it easy for everyone to share the possibilities that come from it. The great Alan Turing said:

“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”

That is a wonderful reminder about the challenges ahead for all of us as we seek to build a digital society for all.

16:07  

I, too, welcome Kate Forbes to her new role as a minister. Speaking as a highlander, it is good to have somebody in that role who will have shared the many frustrations that a lot of us in the Highlands and Islands will have felt when using the internet.

As we have heard, digital connectivity touches the lives of an increasing number of Scots in an ever-increasing number of ways. I welcome the Carnegie UK Trust’s work in the area and the light that has been cast on those who have been left out. In a 2016 report, the trust set out some of its initial evidence about digital exclusion. We can see clearly the concentration of that exclusion in certain sectors of society as well as some of the consequences and outcomes of that. The issue has been a pressing one in the Highlands and Islands for some time, as the minister will be aware. For many communities in remote and rural areas of Scotland, digital inclusion remains little more than an aspiration.

The Carnegie Trust said:

“many of those groups who are currently digitally excluded could benefit disproportionately from the benefits of being online.”

That is an important conclusion that is especially true in areas that are distant from public services, where there is a dependence on goods being delivered and where isolation can be a problem.

I will turn my attention to some of the affected groups. I am pleased that the motion touches on employability, as the evidence shows that digital inclusion is at some of its lowest levels at the lowest-paid end of the socioeconomic scale. There can be no doubt that digital skills are of huge benefit in finding good-quality work in our modern economy and are now invaluable transferable skills in a range of jobs. Increasingly, people look for jobs on the internet, and the online services that agencies such as Jobcentre Plus offer make finding jobs increasingly convenient.

In the Scottish Government’s programme for government earlier this year, it committed to greater support for retraining, which I hope recognises to a degree that the nature of employment and careers is changing. However, if we reflect on how people access retraining opportunities and how they keep their skills up to date, the worrying conclusion is that, if the digital skills gap remains unaddressed, the gap in reskilling and adaptability in the labour market at the lowest end of the income scale will grow, too. An economy in which the lowest earners are excluded from those opportunities is not a fair economy.

Being connected can have advantages for older people, too. Many people will have read in the weekend newspapers that only 16 per cent of UK care homes have wi-fi access that is available to all residents—I assume that the figure for Scotland is broadly similar. Care homes use wi-fi in various ways to improve residents’ lives, such as to bridge geography by arranging video calls between residents and their families. Demand in the sector will only grow, and older people who live in their own homes will also increasingly expect to have digital connectivity to provide entertainment and to power consumer devices. The impact is even more apparent in the provision of support to older people. In some cases, internet-connected monitoring devices can help people with dementia and allow them to live independently for longer.

My colleague Donald Cameron spoke about the educational work that utilises digital technology in Scotland’s island communities, particularly in the Western Isles, where it shows how digital can support our local linguistic and cultural heritage as well as provide educational opportunities.

Parts of my region are heavily dependent on tourism, and an expansion of digital services can offer opportunities, whether in Speyside, Scotland’s whisky capital in Moray, or the attractions of my home area of Orkney. The work to support small local businesses to get online pays dividends and provides a low-cost avenue through which bodies such as VisitScotland can attract and inform visitors. Many businesses are small, particularly in island communities like Orkney and Shetland, and the barriers to fully embracing a digital society are higher for them. We must ensure that the Highlands and Islands are not at a competitive disadvantage.

I refer back to the words of the Carnegie Trust: it is in those communities that digital inclusion will have the greatest benefits, so I have been repeatedly disappointed that, when broadband roll-out takes place, they often appear to be at the bottom of the queue. That leaves a geographical concentration of digital exclusion. Indeed, we know well that the Highlands and Islands have many of the worst areas in the United Kingdom for connectivity—that is not a legacy to be proud of.

In March last year, the responsible cabinet secretary said that

“economic success demands that our ability to benefit from digital is not limited by where we chose to live or work”.

That is a fine aspiration, but it is far from the experience of many of my constituents. As the Scottish Government looks forward to the future of its work on digital inclusion, it is clear that people face varying levels of multiple exclusion across many parts of Scotland.

The reality is that much of the expansion in digital inclusion has come from the private sector, as the growth in connected devices has been consumer driven. In the past 20 years, exploitation of the potential of digital technology has moved from the desktop into people’s pockets, on to their televisions and even on to devices on their kitchen counter. Digital technology is becoming far more accessible, but an excluded minority remains challenging to reach. The first priority must be to make digital connectivity available. In my region, we have found ourselves lagging behind; it is clear that the timing of roll-out is vitally important.

Therefore, we should look not at challenges and costs but at the opportunities: the potential for economic growth, higher pay, reduced isolation, personalised public services and improved living standards.

16:13  

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on a digital society for all, and I thank the minister for the opportunity to talk about the record of the Government on delivering digital participation, thereby providing better access to fair work and higher-wage jobs, which were a key priority for me in my election to Parliament.

Many members may think that they know all about broadband, but we need to see our grandchildren showing us how to access Peppa Pig or robot Transformers. I ask members to forgive me for an aside that sounded a bit like one by my friend Stewart Stevenson.

In an answer last week, the Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands, Paul Wheelhouse, outlined that the Scottish Government has repeatedly urged the UK Government to match Scotland’s ambition of 30 megabits per second, rather than the 10 megabits that it has proposed, as the broadband universal service obligation commitment, which would help to deliver the superfast broadband connections that our rural communities need.

Indeed, Scotland is the only part of the U.K to have committed to extending superfast access to 100 per cent of premises, supported by an initial procurement that is worth £600 million. The minister said that despite numerous requests, and despite regulation of and legislation on telecommunications being wholly reserved to the UK Parliament, the UK Government has contributed a mere 3.5 per cent of that investment, with the Scottish Government committing 96.5 per cent.

Colleagues will therefore understand why I was perplexed, during a summer recess visit to my son’s house in Aboyne in Aberdeenshire, by what I read in a letter to him from the local Conservative member of Parliament, Andrew Bowie. The first wrong thing that I noted was that Mr Bowie did not even have the goodness to put my son’s name on the letter. In the letter, Mr Bowie stated:

“the overwhelming concern for those I spoke with were the changes to local bus services into Aberdeen and”—

wait for it, because this is where I laughed—

“the lack of broadband provision in the area”.

Mr Bowie went on to state that he had been in

“constant communication with both Openreach and Digital Scotland with a view to receiving more information on when better provision will be provided”.

My son’s broadband and his access to FaceTime and telephone services are excellent. Perhaps Mr Bowie would have been better writing to his colleagues in the Conservative UK Government and asking them when they will help to foot the bill for the investment and, in his own words,

“when better provision will be provided”.

I hope that Mr Bowie and his Conservative colleagues in Westminster and, indeed, in Holyrood will remember that the matter is reserved, and that they should get on with the day job and help this SNP Scottish Government to deliver for all of Scotland.

On the topic of remote and rural communities, it is clear that bringing accessible and sustainable wi-fi to remote and rural communities needs innovative ideas that will require us to support wider thinking about potential solutions. I have over recent months been engaging with a company that has ideas that are innovative and involve exactly the type of solution-based approach that we will require. Its idea is to have lamp posts, coupled with self-sustaining electricity through renewables, that would also act as wi-fi connection points for communities. That type of wider thinking is exactly what will be required if we wish to meet the challenges that we face in delivering digital inclusion for all.

The challenges are ones that this Government has recognised and is working to address, having just last year published its digital strategy, which set out how the Scottish Government intends to place digital at the heart of everything that it does, from reforming public services to delivering economic growth. That included the creation of the conditions that could lead to 150,000 jobs in digital technology across Scotland by the start of the next decade. As Willie Coffey said, jobs are the key focus of our work.

That work also involves ensuring that every premises in Scotland is able to access broadband speeds of at least 30Mbps by 2021, as I have already mentioned. All that takes place against a backdrop of funding and investment through a new digital schools programme, a new digital growth fund and a round of funding for community digital inclusion projects, and the expansion of Scotland’s digital participation charter.

Closing the digital divide in Scotland will positively impact on social cohesion and will improve social and economic inclusion. That is a fact. It is a sad fact that digital inequalities are more likely to be experienced by people who are already disadvantaged according to other measures. Indeed, in Scotland, the digital divide remains in a number of dimensions, including age and socioeconomic deprivation. For example, 26 per cent of adults—more than one in four—who live in the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland reported not using the internet, compared with 16 per cent in the rest of the country. It is also concerning that 70 per cent of people aged 75 and over do not use the internet.

Closing the digital divide is critically important to the future and to creating a fairer Scotland. I am proud to support the Government, which is doing that.

16:19  

The advance in technology is one of the biggest things that has happened in my lifetime. In 1981, I was a computer information systems student at Glasgow College of Technology. To get a computer program into the college mainframe, students first had to write the program out on coding sheets, which were then keyed on to cards with a keyboard operator. Before the program could be compiled, the cards had to be fed through into the mainframe. If there were any errors, we had to go through the process again. It is quite astonishing to look at how technology has advanced. Back in 1981, when people went on holiday they sent postcards home. When people go on holiday now, they can take photographs and share them immediately on Facebook or WhatsApp, and people back home and throughout the world can instantly see them enjoying their holiday.

The advance in technology is also great for people in education. There is a wealth of information on the internet that can help students and people who are simply looking to better themselves by acquiring more knowledge. As many members have said, technology saves people money. When people are purchasing goods and services, they can compare rates using the technology that is available.

It would be easy to sit back and bask in the glow of the tremendous advances that have been made in technology, and just to think that everything is fine. The reality, however, is that a lot is going on that means that people do not have access to that technology. In a council ward—Rutherglen Central and North—near where I stay, 28.26 per cent of children live in in-poverty households. Indeed, in Cambuslang and Rutherglen, more than 3,000 children live in in-poverty households. Many of those households do not have access to the sort of technology that members have spoken about in the debate.

That was brought home to me when, as part of the recent challenge poverty week, I visited the Whitlawburn hub, which is an excellent facility that provides IT support facilities to people who do not have IT access. A lot of the people there were locked out of IT—they simply could not afford computers, tablets or smartphones. They required IT accounts in order to access properly the benefits system, and some were using the hub to develop their CVs and to try to get back into work. The IT and CV support in the hub is very beneficial to the people who use the facility.

We should bear in mind the role that is played by big IT providers in excluding people from the digital world. A lot of them try to lock people into long-term contracts that involve substantial financial commitments. They also bundle up a number of facilities and try to lock people in, in that way. People can get locked into contracts that they cannot afford, and then they run into debt. Others simply cannot afford a long-term and expensive contract.

Research by Harvard University has demonstrated that there is a real benefit in community-owned IT providers. Indeed, there is one near where I stay. West Whitlawburn Housing Co-operative has set up its own communications co-op, which provides short-term bundles so that people can access technology for a week at a time. Since the co-op was established, internet access in the area has gone up from 39 per cent to 80 per cent. That shows the massive reach that a community-based IT facility can have.

A lot needs to be done to make progress. There are clearly major policy challenges in respect of the number of people who are in poverty, and the number of people who are doing two or three jobs and do not have enough money to access the facilities that we have been talking about. That is part of the wider debate on the budget that will take place.

I wish the new minister well in her endeavours, and I urge her to do more lobbying of big business IT providers to provide better and lower-cost packages in order to get more people into IT. We should also do more to support community solutions. We have made a lot of advances, but there is a lot still to be done.

16:25  

I welcome Kate Forbes to her new role and thank her for bringing this topic forward for debate.

I note with interest how much of the motion highlights the impact of digital technologies on people with a range of disabilities. That is important, because it recognises how technology has the capacity to transform lives. That is to be embraced and celebrated. New digital technologies, such as assistive technology, can allow people with disabilities to access work at all levels of employment. As we become a more digitally focused society, it is important to consider how technology can help people with disabilities, whether they have a physical disability or a learning disability.

Today, I will focus on one particular way in which technology has the capacity to improve the lives of dyslexic people, particularly while they are in higher education. Dyslexia Scotland estimates that one in 10 people is dyslexic in some way—that is more than half a million people in Scotland. Dyslexia is genetic and commonly runs in families. Although it is known as a learning difficulty, it has many associated abilities: dyslexics tend to be very good problem solvers, innovative thinkers and artistically or musically talented.

Research shows that an equal number of boys and girls have dyslexia, so it is not gender specific. Research has also found that UK entrepreneurs are five times more likely than the average UK citizen to have dyslexia. Despite that, learning can be very challenging at times, as the dyslexic way of thinking often does not fit in. In 2017, the organisation Made By Dyslexia produced research showing that nine out of 10 dyslexic individuals said that their condition had made them feel angry, stupid or embarrassed. The frustration that a dyslexic student can feel while at school or university can damage their self-efficacy—and by “self-efficacy”, I mean the belief of the student or pupil in their ability to achieve and how that can make them aim less high in their work, which affects their grades. Among many other factors, a dyslexic student’s frustration commonly comes from taking sometimes three times longer to read and comprehend a passage of text.

I will give members a simple example of how technology has the potential to transform the experience of dyslexic students in higher education. Online academic texts can be made available in dyslexia-friendly fonts. That is not an earth-shattering change and it does not require upheaval to make it happen. As education increasingly becomes available online, whether through modules or access to academic texts in digital libraries, there is new potential for education providers to make learning accessible in ways that were not previously possible.

The idea of creating a mechanism for books or articles to be read in a dyslexia-friendly font is not a new one and has already been adopted commercially. Perhaps one of the most significant adopters of dyslexia-friendly fonts is Kindle, as almost all Kindle books are available to read in such a font.

Microsoft Word provides the OpenDyslexic font for people to use on their computers at home or work, which means that if people download a document in Word rather than PDF format, they can manually change the font themselves. The United Nations allows its treaties and documents to be downloaded in Word rather than PDF format, which allows people to make appropriate changes if they deem that to be required.

The Scottish Government’s digital strategy is promising. It highlights that digital technology should be at the heart of everything that the Government does, and it promotes cross-sector collaboration in the adoption of digital technologies.

I welcome consideration of the impact of digital technologies on people with a range of disabilities. I encourage those who work in our leading education sector to consider what changes can be made to help students with disabilities of whatever nature to engage and contribute to the best of their abilities. Working in conjunction with digital libraries such as JSTOR, our Scottish universities have the capacity to make one small change that could have a transformational impact on the lives of dyslexic students.

It is important that we use technology to the best advantage possible. It is available and it can be used, and I very much support the direction that the Scottish Government is taking.

16:30  

I, too, welcome Kate Forbes to her new role.

A digital society is a good thing and something that we are striving to become. However, until we become a digitally inclusive society, we will be failing. We need to be inclusive—that is the key word—of everyone in Scotland. The term “digital inclusion” means that people are able to access digital technology and, perhaps most important, understand how to use it.

Last night, I attended an event at which the minister spoke. I was left sitting there thinking, “I haven’t got a Scooby about most of the things they’re talking about.” Someone can look at something and press buttons but, unless they understand how to use it, frankly, we will not have made much progress.

At a basic level, more and more is done online. We pay our bills online, we look at public policy online, we get application forms online and we do our shopping online. All those things are good in themselves. However, other members have spoken about the geographical issues and other problems that people face in accessing, and being included in, digital material.

I suggest that disabled and elderly people, wherever they live in Scotland, face a greater challenge than the rest of society does. The Centre for Aging Better found that the over-55s made up 94 per cent of non-internet users. That is a startling figure, and it is one that is likely to grow unless we address the problem quickly.

What can we do to address some of those issues? First, proper access is needed. Most of us have our computers at home and our iPhones in our pockets, but elderly and disabled people often do not have that option. Unless there is access to the equipment, we will simply fail. Even if someone has access to the equipment, they then need to have the confidence and the training to use it. That can often be a big challenge for people with disabilities and the elderly.

We can overcome some of those challenges. Computers can open up opportunities, particularly for disabled people, that simply were not previously available. For example, Dragon, which allows people to speak into a computer, opens up access to people who find it difficult to type or use a keyboard. We need to look at whether the right people are getting access to that software. Dragon has revolutionised the way in which I write emails and speeches and correspond with people. Rather than needing to type all the time, I simply speak into the computer. Unfortunately, often gibberish still comes out, but that is my fault, not the computer’s. Such things are basic and comparatively cheap, but a lot of people in society simply do not get access to them.

There are good examples of engaging with older people, some of which we have heard about from the minister and others. The moose in the hoose project that is being run in care homes in Edinburgh is an information technology outreach project for older people who live in care homes. On a weekly basis, volunteers in five care homes in Edinburgh encourage and help people to use the internet, email and Skype. That gives older people whose families no longer live in Edinburgh a regular opportunity to catch up with children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.

There are challenges ahead and there are opportunities. The Governments north and south of the border need to work together. However, perhaps the overriding message is that we should not be scared of digital technology and that we should encourage people to use it, but they need to be given the training and the confidence to do that.

I call Colin Smyth to close for Labour—you have up to seven minutes.

Mr Smyth, you do not have your microphone on and your card is in upside doon. Just change consoles. [Interruption.] Please give Mr Smyth a spare card. It would happen in a digital debate, wouldn’t it? We could not plan it. You now have six minutes, Mr Smyth.

16:37  

I will not accuse anyone of switching off my microphone halfway through or even before I get started. It is usually at the end of my speech that the Presiding Officer cuts me off.

Today’s debate—give or take the odd technological fault—has made clear the importance of digital inclusion. There has been real unity of purpose in seeing the barriers that far too many people in our society face when it comes to benefiting from the technological revolution. That revolution impacts on every aspect of society, and every aspect of our lives is changing as a result of digitisation.

In opening the debate and in the Government’s motion, Kate Forbes highlighted the Carnegie UK Trust report “Living Digitally—An evaluation of the CleverCogs™ digital care and support system”, which gives us a glimpse into the potentially transformative effect of digital inclusion on health and social care. The pilot showed an increase in digital participation among people who used CleverCogs and clearly illustrated the wider benefits of digital participation. The report suggests that the use of CleverCogs resulted in improved overall mental wellbeing, with participants recording higher average life satisfaction, increased happiness and decreased boredom; it also showed improved self-management of health conditions among participants, and some indicators suggested improved independence more broadly. The project also highlighted the help for those who work in the health and social care sector and showed that staff who used CleverCogs saved an average of approximately five minutes per visit in time spent on administrative tasks.

The report concludes:

“The system holds promise ... for reaching those with the most entrenched digital exclusion and improving their quality of life.”

That is just one example of how utilising new technology and supporting digital engagement can help to deliver person-centred care and improve wellbeing in the health and social care sector. Emma Harper highlighted the attend anywhere initiative, which is another initiative in healthcare.

In communities throughout Scotland, such innovative, locally led work is taking place to improve digital participation and inclusion. The SCVO has done invaluable work to support such projects throughout Scotland. It has provided £1.6 million-worth of funding to 169 local projects and has received a commitment to tackle digital exclusion from 600 organisations from across the public, private and third sectors as part of its digital participation charter.

In my region, Trust Housing Association has been working with the SCVO to deliver the aims of the digital participation charter across its local services. One resident—a 78-year-old woman—who was initially sceptical about efforts to promote digital learning, now regularly uses her iPad and has said that it has reduced feelings of isolation and boredom. When another resident was having trouble accessing information on her iPad, although the staff were not able to help, a fellow resident managed to solve the problem. That illustrates how digital learning can not only promote independence but foster a sense of community.

Such modern, innovative projects have huge potential across a range of policy areas, and I welcome the Scottish Government’s role in supporting them. However, as the debate has shown, that needs to be supported by the necessary infrastructure, and speaker after speaker highlighted the fact that, at present, that infrastructure is not yet fit for purpose.

We all agree with the aims of the R100 programme, which learns from the weaknesses of previous programmes in not setting minimum speeds for everyone. Patrick Harvie may be happy with his internet speed in the centre of Glasgow, where he seems to love nothing more than whirling around Google Earth, but if he visits many rural parts of my region the only whirling around that people have when it comes to broadband is the red circle on the screen when they try to load a Netflix programme but do not have the internet speed to do so. R100 aims to tackle that but, as Rhoda Grant highlighted, we are still waiting to see an overall strategy for delivering genuine 100 per cent coverage at the speed that we want; in particular, there are no details on the planned intervention scheme.

If 100 per cent coverage is possible, the Scottish Government needs to provide details of how that will be achieved and map out clearly its planned timeline of activity as soon as possible after the procurement process has concluded.

As the debate has highlighted, accessibility is not just a matter of coverage. If we are to genuinely advance digital inclusion, we must also consider how to improve affordability and ensure that everyone has the necessary skills to make use of the technology when it is available.

James Kelly highlighted the barriers that people in his area face but, crucially, he also highlighted the many local initiatives to break down those barriers and the need to expand those solutions. Bill Kidd highlighted that those with disabilities can face exclusion and he set out how technological initiatives can break down some of those barriers and transform the lives of those with dyslexia.

Jeremy Balfour spoke very personally about how technology has helped him to break down some of the barriers that he faces, even if none of that takes away from the fact that, as he said, he still talks “gibberish”. Nonetheless, he provided a very positive example of how digitisation can be used to redress inequalities. The roll-out of R100 is important in ensuring that people who are on low incomes, those with disabilities and those who do not have access to the internet at broadband speeds are supported so that those barriers are broken down.

Well recovered, Mr Smyth.

16:42  

I am pleased to close the debate today on behalf of the Conservatives. I, too, welcome Kate Forbes to her new ministerial role, which is a role that I am pleased to shadow. We have already had positive discussions, including those that go beyond who has the most beautiful constituency, and I look forward to having further positive meetings.

In the words of the founder of the World Economic Forum:

“We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society.”

However, unless we take urgent action, the dawn of the digital age will not be coming soon to a small town near you. That is clearly true of my constituency, where the lack of reliable digital connectivity remains one of the biggest issues.

I do not often agree with Patrick Harvie, but in this case he is absolutely spot on. The issue is not the lack of superfast speeds, but the lack of reliability. We know that superfast fibre broadband will deliver much improved reliability and a network that we can depend on to deliver the information and the services that we need.

In debates in this chamber and elsewhere, we hear constantly about the speeds that the two Governments want to commit to. The reality is that people who are left out from the digital world do not care much about the commitment to speeds; they just want to know when they will be reliably connected. Right now, too many of our vulnerable and isolated people have little or no confidence or trust in their broadband network. Unreliable internet connection alone is a barrier to their even considering accessing the internet and its benefits.

I genuinely hope that the Government’s R100 programme can be delivered by 2021. However, as has been said by other members and suggested by Digital Scotland, the Scottish Government faces significant challenges in delivering R100 within the timeframe. That said, the Scottish Conservatives welcome the motion and the Carnegie UK report that the minister referred to.

If we get it right for Scotland, everyone, wherever or whoever they are, should benefit from solutions in the blue light and justice sectors that will deliver better governance and automation and therefore speedier responses; and from improved choice and availability in education, moving from reliance on physical posts to digital channels. In health, benefit will come from better support for clinicians and from technology that encourages patient engagement. Improvements will also be derived from individually focused communications and transactions between councils and their citizens. Interactive solutions for social housing and care at home will bring more choice and independence and more face-to-face time to those who need it most.

The biggest benefit from digital inclusion will, of course, be felt by those groups who are currently excluded from participating in much of what the majority of people take for granted. Getting everybody on board, and getting those who need it most on board first, is therefore critical. That should be our overriding ambition.

Members have mentioned the Carnegie report in which CleverCogs is highlighted as a digital and social care system that helps those who have never used the internet or who do not have the technology skills, confidence or ability to use it independently at home. CleverCogs brings huge positives for many of its participants.

The SCVO reported that it is vital to have projects such as CleverCogs in place as we push for an inclusive digital society. As the SCVO said,

“One in five people lack essential digital skills.”

It is equally worrying that almost half our businesses in Scotland identify gaps in their digital skills, with some 21 per cent of businesses identifying a significant gap.

We seriously need to push for more children to get involved in digital skills courses—a point that was not lost on the leading businesses that took part in last night’s RBS techpitch 2018 event, which the minister attended.

Responses to Scotland’s draft strategy on tackling social isolation reinforced the importance of inclusion. As it says in, “Analysing responses to ‘A Connected Scotland’ the Scottish Government’s draft strategy to tackle social isolation and loneliness”,

“Digital technology can facilitate social connection, particularly where it links people to in-person activities or services. It was also viewed as beneficial for rural communities and disabled people as a way of overcoming geographical and physical barriers to social interaction.”

Including everyone in the digital revolution is one of the biggest challenges that society faces. If we do not get it right, we run the risk of creating a further digital divide, not just in relation to connectivity but between the people who can benefit from our fast-approaching digital society and those who cannot do so. The problem is apparent in rural areas—my colleague Donald Cameron’s amendment refers to that.

It is equally important that we ensure that everyone has the required skills to be able not just to utilise but to develop digital solutions. Education and training must start now and must include everyone—almost from the cradle to the grave. Digital inclusion will be the defining challenge of our age. Let us get it right.

16:48  

I thank members who took part in the debate. At the outset of my speech, I will resolve the argument between Mr Carson and Ms Forbes: neither member represents the most beautiful constituency in Scotland; that privilege is entirely mine.

I welcome the speeches in the debate, which, by and large, demonstrated a great degree of consensus. I think that that comes from an acceptance by all members that, as Colin Smyth said and Rhoda Grant emphasised, access to digital services is, just like access to the utilities, an essential component of life.

I recognise that it is socially and economically imperative that we ensure that people have access to technology and infrastructure and also to the skills that they use to harness them. In that regard, it is important that we recognise the work to increase digital inclusion across the country. That work has been led by this Government, it involves the wider public sector and the private and voluntary sectors, it has taken place across the length and breadth of Scotland and we have seen significant progress on it. The latest available figures show that digital participation in Scotland has risen from just under 63 per cent in 2007 to 82 per cent in 2016. Over the same period of time, the gap in internet access between the lowest and highest income brackets decreased from 67 to 30 per cent. I say to Colin Smyth that, although I recognise that we have had great consensus, I thought that his amendment saying that the Scottish Government is failing to tackle digital exclusion is a little uncharitable, so I cannot accept it.

However, I can say that I recognise that there is still a challenge before us. As I have laid out, we have seen the gap in digital participation narrow, with better digital infrastructure and internet access. Over the past few years, we have seen a flatlining among those in the highest income deciles, largely because we have reached saturation point as regards access to the internet and to digital technology. The challenge now is for us to ensure that we bridge the gap between those who have such access and those who do not.

Jamie Greene said that the SCVO had identified as a concern the fact that one in five people in Scotland lack digital skills. Of course that is a concern, which is why the Scottish Government has laid out its digital participation strategy. One of the key players in responding to that challenge is the SCVO itself, with which the Scottish Government is working closely—as we are with registered social landlords and third sector organisations—to respond to that challenge. We are doing so because we recognise that they are in most direct contact with the people whom we need to involve in the process.

As has been said, the population in which we see the digital deficit at its most pronounced is older people. That is why the Scottish Government has introduced its let’s get online campaign, which encourages older people to take the first steps to doing so and is supported by a wide range of promotional activity. In that regard we have made a lot of progress. There is more to do, and it will be done. Mike Rumbles spoke of the need for a meaningful process of education. Of course I agree with that, which is why, as part of our science, technology, engineering and mathematics strategy, we encourage people to pursue careers in digital by providing a variety of careers advice, information and guidance that they can access in schools. It is also why we are putting in place, in the school environment, a foundation apprenticeship in software and hardware. We are increasing the number of college and university student placements with employers in STEM curriculum areas and we also now have a graduate apprenticeship in software and hardware, to ensure that our education system is geared towards equipping people with the digital skills that they need.

In addition to my point on education, my main point was that where there is a will, there is a way. I am trying to be helpful to the Scottish Government here. If it could bring forward the 100 per cent target to May, it would benefit tremendously, as would the people of Scotland. The Scottish Government would reap the rewards if it would do that, in accordance with page 9 of its manifesto.

I look forward to Mike Rumbles’s new-found charitable attitude to the Scottish Government being the hallmark of every future contribution that he makes in the chamber. I assure him that I will take on the issue of infrastructure in a minute, because I recognise that it is important, but first I will pick up on contributions from a few other members, particularly Emma Harper, because she invited Kate Forbes to visit her region. I am happy to accept that invitation on Kate Forbes’s behalf, and I can tell the chamber that she said it would be okay to do that.

Emma Harper also spoke of the need to utilise digital technology for better health management, and that is one of the other ways in which we can demonstrate the need to increase the digital competence of Scotland’s population and to invest in that area, because great health benefits can be achieved through that approach. That is why we welcome the fact that there are now more than 2 million visitors in a single month to the NHS inform website. That is why we now have the attend anywhere video consultation service operating in the NHS Highland area, and why we have home and mobile health monitoring being used to inform self-management decisions by patients and to support diagnosis, treatment and care decisions by the professionals supporting them.

It was encouraging to note in the findings of the report that we are debating that, although social care was not part of the main study, CleverCogs’s potential as a telecare device was welcomed. The City of Edinburgh Council has helped 15 people who wanted to change their method of overnight care, which has improved the service for them and has also led to savings for the local authority.

Bill Kidd spoke tellingly of the power of technology in supporting those with dyslexia, which was another reminder of the positive power of technological change.

I may have been the only member who talked prominently about digital rights, but does the Government accept the basic point that I was making, that as we live more of our lives online we are going to maximise the benefits and reduce and manage any potential downsides only if digital rights are every bit as much a part of the Government’s focus as digital participation? What will the Government do to address that agenda?

The short answer is yes, I accept that point. Work is under way, but time for this debate is short, so I would be happy to respond more fully to Mr Harvie if he wanted to write to me on the issue.

I turn to infrastructure, because there was understandably some discussion about it. Mike Rumbles invited me to comment and so did Donald Cameron. I want to place this in context, because it is important to do so. The digital Scotland superfast broadband scheme exceeded its 95 per cent fibre coverage target by the end of last year and it has benefited some 900,000 homes in the country. The point of saying that is to place it clearly in the context of infrastructure development, and I want to take the Highlands and Islands area as a specific example, because I know that Mr Cameron will be interested in it. Without that level of investment, coverage in the Highlands and Islands would have been just 21 per cent. There was no planned commercial coverage at all in Orkney, Shetland or the Western Isles, so it is only through the activity that we have engaged in that we now have the coverage that we do, although of course we need to go further.

That is why the R100 programme remains an area of concerted focus for us. Concern was expressed that we will not hit that target. I will be very clear about the manner in which we are delivering the contracts that we have put in place. The prioritisation of the areas in rural Scotland that we know must be targeted first because they will not be served commercially will be the focus of our activity, so we are very confident of hitting that target. If Mr Cameron or any of his colleagues have such concerns, they are of course welcome to raise them with us, but equally I hope that they will speak to their colleagues in the United Kingdom Government to express their concern that the UK Government is committing only 3.5 per cent of the £600 million of investment that we are leveraging into that infrastructure. That is a sign of this Government’s commitment to the agenda, as is the range of activity that we have in place and that is under way to ensure that everyone in Scotland can benefit.

I will close by responding to Jeremy Balfour’s point, which I agreed with. If we do not have a digitally inclusive society, we will have failed. I agree with that, Presiding Officer, and I make it clear that this Government does not intend to fail.