Event Report: Roundtable on Skills & Will

On Wednesday 28th May 2025, the Digital Inclusion APPG held a roundtable session on “Skills and Will”.  

The event was hosted and chaired by Co-Chair of the Digital Inclusion APPG Dan Aldridge MP. Speakers included Minister for Data Protection and Telecomms Chris Bryant MP, Shadow Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) Minister Viscount Camrose, Iqbal Mohammed MP (Independent – Dewsbury and Batley), Gill German MP (Labour – Clwyd North) and Tom Collins MP (Labour – Worcester).   

Please see below for minutes of the event.

Opening the session, Dan Aldridge MP welcomed guests to the APPG, noting that the roundtable was the third event in the group’s schedule for the year, following previous ones that focused on regional approaches to digital inclusion and the Digital Inclusion Action Plan. Referencing the second event with the Chair of the Digital Inclusion Action Committee Baroness Armstrong, Dan Aldrige MP also added that the newly published Action Plan would provide a unique opportunity to have cross-party and industry-based consensus on the issue – while holding the Government to account on their promises.   

He noted that it was vital that the Plan recognised that there would never be 100% digital inclusion in the economy as the target for what counts as “full digital inclusion” is always moving and expanding. To overcome this moving target, he called on those in the room to figure out ways to incentivise people to get online.   

Noting that his constituency of Weston-Super-Mare was outside of a Combined Authority region, he added that areas like his don’t have a seat at the table in these debates and called for the Plan to have a role in equalising delivery. He added that because Somerset at large was relatively wealthy, the funding allocation was too broad and not prescribed enough to help those in Weston which is relatively deprived. He then called on Chris Bryant MP to speak.    

Chris Bryant MP noted that when he first got into Parliament in 1997 the issue of the computerised electoral register was the biggest technological hurdle for candidates to overcome. He suggested that this indicated the pace of change with technological confidence and capability across the last 20-30 years. In the modern day, he said the issue of exclusion was more concerning and noted that if people weren’t confident online, it would lead to tangible problems, such as children not completing their homework or adults being unable to log in to their online banking.   

Minister Bryant said that the rationale behind the “First Steps” document was his desire to know what works well in communities on a localised level. He suggested that he wanted to layer maps of differing forms of exclusion – including financial, social, and age-based – so that solutions could be targeted and tailored to different needs. To this end, he suggested the Action Plan could play a vital role in ensuring that a digitally enabled NHS is workable. Noting the fact that Doncaster Hospital has 42 people employed to carry physical medical records around the premises, he said that the scale of change facing the public sector was substantial and argued that the Action Plan played a key role in finding solutions. As well as the NHS, he also posited that the Action Plan should look at how the country’s school-age curriculum is run and could make suggestions for the Department for Education to make learning more accessible for children on their mobile phones.  

He then opened the floor up to questions.   

Humayun Qureshi, Policy, Communications, and Policy Lead at Wavelength Charity, noted that his charity – which provides equipment to get people connected and online – had found that people experience most of their challenges around service accessibility. He added that vulnerable people don’t want to use digital services – especially from the public sector – due to low trust rates and suggested that the Government needed to empower community groups to reverse this trend.  

Minister Bryant agreed and noted that digital exclusion had become incredibly socially intractable and required a holistic solution. He said that Humayun Qureshi was right to make the point that community groups play a vital role in ensuring the rollout of digital skills and suggested that he’d like to see groups physically going into areas such as care homes to enable greater take-up. To this end, he added that he is willing to work with a range of community groups to enable this – and suggested that the Innovation Fund within DSIT was designed to examine what initiatives already work and what areas require improvement.   

Helen Milner, CEO of the Good Things Foundation, asked the Minister how the Government makes other departments prioritise digital skills and will.  

Minister Bryant said this was a top priority in government and that he had recently chaired his first cross-departmental meeting on the issue of digital skills. He added that there were huge areas of overlap between the Department for Work and Pensions and DSIT and suggested all Ministers shared the philosophy that this should be a cross-governmental issue. Finishing up his answer, he said that he hoped that the “First Steps” document would lead to a second plan published later in the year.   

Dominic Collier, Senior Public Affairs and Events Strategy Manager at City and Guilds, asked the Minister what he was doing to ensure that different bodies feed into other departments and increase online skills.   

Minister Bryant said the newly formed Action Committee is in the process of bringing together a body of people from across industry and the third sector to provide solutions to this.   

Hannah Whelan, Advocacy Manager at Good Things Foundation, asked what timelines had been integrated into the next steps document.  

Minister Bryant said timelines would ultimately be dictated by the funds available in the spending review but added he hoped that there would be results seen by the end of the year. He noted that the £2m allocated to regional mayors for inclusion initiatives had been incredibly effective already.   

Helen Burrows, Controller for Distribution at the BBC, asked the Minister what initiatives were in place to make online usage easier for people and more accessible. Similarly, speaking to issues around Will, she asked if the Minister was talking to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) about the role TV could have in getting people online – especially for older cohorts.   

Minister Bryant said he has regular catchups with DCMS Minister, Steph Peacock MP, about the TV transition. On accessibility, he said making online banking accessible was at the forefront of the Government’s priorities in this area. Similarly, he also noted his intention for a dementia or disability-friendly app to be created for vulnerable people so they could more easily contact family members.   

Viscount Camrose then opened his speaking slot noting that his time both in Government and now in opposition had shown that the scale of technological change was evolving rapidly – which had made it extremely difficult for policy to catch up. He added that, come the time of the next election, there would be an even bigger gap between technological advancement and online skills. He suggested that this time in five years, the online space would likely be unrecognisable compared to what it is now.    

Viscount Camrose then argued that he supported the Government’s Action Plan but wanted to provide four areas where there was room for improvement.  

Firstly, in terms of measurement, Viscount Camrose said it was vital that the Government doesn’t conflate targets and measures as they are very different and always evolving. Building off this, he suggested that the Action Plan should have flexibility built into its goals so it could accommodate rapid changes in technology.  

Secondly, he said that it was vital that the Action Plan didn’t ignore the role of existing bodies within DSIT. For example, he noted that the Digital Skills Council, the Cyber Explorers Council, and the Computing Skills Taskforce all do vital work in the space and should be empowered to continue their work – rather than be ignored in the new plan.   

Thirdly, he said that the issue of will is a function of trust. One barrier to breaking down mistrust, he argued, was the perception that big tech is hoovering up intellectual property and private data. To overcome this, he said, the Government should pioneer agile and quick wins in the field to win back trust and provide clear signals of a direction of travel.  

Finally, he also said that the people who don’t want to be online had to be prioritised in the Plan and that they had to be supported, not forced into the online transition.  

Helen Milner started her speaking contribution by saying that skills and will are totally separate issues. On the former, she noted that while public bodies such as Skills England are workplace-focused, skills also overlap with problems around confidence and poverty. To overcome the holistic nature of the skills deficit in the UK, she argued that the Action Plan’s delivery had to be hyper-local. To do this, she argued, the Government shouldn’t demonise skills suppliers but instead create a better funding and allocation system for the sector. For example, she argued that the Department for Education should look at long-term future funding for those people who aren’t online to make their remit more ‘complete’.   

On the issue of will, she argued that decision-makers need to get away from the idea that people somehow “choose” to be offline and disconnected. Agreeing with Viscount Camrose, she said that the Government shouldn’t tell people to just “try harder” to be online but instead rethink the wider tech ecosystem and how it relates to online trust. To overcome this, she said the Good Things Foundation had identified five areas for improvement for the Government. These were: a better vision, more effective public service provision, equal provision across all areas (i.e. no postcode lottery), policies that had actual felt impacts by people, and new Government innovations. Speaking to the last point on new Government initiatives, she suggested that the current administration could look at de-siloing existing funds across Government departments and instead introduce a single pool of digital inclusion funds which departments could each dip into. This would, in turn, increase accountability, she posited.    

Gill German MP said that integrating local perspectives into digital inclusion solutions was vital. For example, in Wales, the Government had funded Compass – a local community charity – to lead the “Digital Communities Wales” work across the country to great effect. 

Iqbal Mohamed MP said that he experienced the necessity for digital inclusion first when he became an MP in July 2024. He said that he found that most constituents weren’t reading his online weekly newsletters and it was only then that he realised most of them read his updates in physical form in the local library. This, he argued, made him realise that ordinary people are far more disconnected in their day-to-day lives than he realised. Given this, he called on MPs to do far more to connect with their constituents.  

He then posited that since his Mum lives with him and his wife; he sees the issues older people go through with technology – and argued that ease of use was the primary issue facing them. For example, he noted that accessing GPs, the bank, or the dentists had become too complicated. To overcome this, while embracing technology, he said that the Government should have a bite-sized approach to delivering public services which prioritised local delivery. A one-size-fits-all approach within this wouldn't work, he argued. He also noted that half of his constituents were non-native English speaking meaning they struggled to access state-ran resources even more.   

William Black, Policy and Public Affairs Lead at BT, said that the “First Steps” document is incredibly useful but on its own cannot be a final answer to the issue of digital exclusion. He said that to build on February’s announcement, a fully funded sectoral strategy was needed. This strategy, he said, had to look at more nebulous issues like motivation and confidence. He noted that for a large number of people in the UK, a lack of motivation is a bigger barrier than a lack of confidence. For example, he referenced a Lloyds study which found that 87% of those not online said it was a personal choice. Adding to this, he also said that within a BT focus group of offline 55-75-year-olds, people unanimously agreed that they knew being online was a positive for them. He therefore suggested that the group – and government more widely – should look to pioneer messages around digital inclusion that are positive. To do this, he agreed that the strategy’s rollout must prioritise third sector and local services partnerships.   

Viscount Camrose agreed with William Black’s suggestion of a change in messaging but also asked him why it was a problem that people wilfully stayed offline, despite knowing the benefits.   

William Black noted that it is not an innate problem but suggested that it could be masking other issues around online safety and confidence. He also said it could pose significant concerns in the future, for example, with the TV transition.   

Helen Burrows noted that the economics of broadcast TV were no longer sustainable. She suggested that the TV transition could be workable if, for example, companies made non-analogue TVs without open access to the internet – thereby retaining an element of trust, whilst ensuring people are in some way at least connected.   

Nancy Doyle-Hall, Executive Director at the Virgin Money Foundation, praised the Action Plan but said for it to be successful, it needed to have funding behind it. She said that through Virgin Money’s work, they had acted as a grant maker and had funded £2.5m worth of support to organisations helping with digital inclusion initiatives.   

She also said that empowering relationships built on trust was vital. For example, she said that studies show that if you advertise a digital skills session, there will be limited take-up from the public. However, if you frame the digital skills class within a wider cooking class run by a trusted local individual, people will be more willing to learn. The Government should consider these kind of “by stealth” initiatives, as part of the plan to improve confidence, she said. Using Hartlepool as an example – where the Foundation supports people to get the welfare they deserve and get them online – she finished her section saying the Action Plan needed to recognise the work local community leaders had in increasing confidence.   

Josephine Parmee, Head of Social Equity, Value and Impact at Virgin Media 02 (VM02), said that through their work with Good Things Foundation, VM02 was currently working out their own internal strategy for digital inclusion. She said that the next strategy would focus on helping parents keep their children safe online and look to build on the Action Plan.   

Speaking to the Action Plan itself, Josephine Parmee suggested that it would make sense for it to combine the existing but separate strategies around media and digital literacy. She said that these should go hand in hand and reduce duplication across the Governmental system. Moreover, she said that the plan had to empower people on the ground by delivering digital inclusion initiatives. Even if the fully worked out plan could signpost local initiatives or provide peer-to-peer recommendations, it would be a success, she said.  

Dan Aldridge MP thanked those who spoke for contributing and opened the floor up for questions.   

Natasha Armstrong, Head of Impact Strategy at the National Foundation for Educational Research, said that the Action Plan should recognise long-run educational trends in the UK. She said for example, that humanities are declining in popularity post 16. This wasn’t about popularity or will but about market dynamics and the growing need for more scientific knowledge. She said that the Action Plan should be holistic enough to cover the gaps appearing with these changing trends. This would mean that it could tackle issues around will, confidence, safety, and skills from an early stage, she said.  

Tom Collins MP said that trust remained a hugely important part of the debate. He noted that the growing use of algorithms by social media companies had a huge role in distorting trust and making the new Action Plan less effective.    

Speaking to Natasha Armstrong’s point, Gill German MP also added that the Get Britain Working Plan recognises a lot of the issues around skills preferences and added that it was imperative that incentives remained in place to keep entry-level jobs in place for people, rather than being replaced by AI.  

Dan Aldridge MP then closed the session and thanked attendees for their contributions.