Cuts deepen digital divide, Scottish TUC told

Cuts deepen digital divide, Scottish TUC told

Prospect took its campaign against public spending cuts affecting the roll-out of high-speed broadband to this week's Scottish TUC conference in Ayr. The union moved a successful motion pointing out that many communities in Scotland are hard to reach and cannot rely on the market alone to provide a suitable network.

Prospect urged the Scottish TUC to campaign for public investment to prevent these communities from becoming second-class citizens in the digital world. The coalition government has allocated only £530m by 2015, which compares poorly with levels of public investment elsewhere in the developed world.

The last government's Digital Britain initiative proposed a duty on fixed telephone lines of 50p a month, which Prospect supported on the grounds of the sizable benefits households had gained in recent years as a result of price falls.

This levy would have raised up to £175m per year - about £1.3bn in total - to roll out high-speed broadband in uneconomic areas.But the plans were dropped in the run-up to the May election.

Instead, the coalition government will put money from the BBC licence fee at the disposal of Broadband Delivery UK, the vehicle charged with implementing the government's broadband strategy.

It is making £530m available in the current spending review period, plus a further £300m extending beyond this parliament to the point where the current BBC licence fee regime runs out (i.e. in 2017).

This is lower than would have been raised in the landline duty and is not new money.

Prospect deputy general secretary Leslie Manasseh said Prospect had grave doubts that the government ambition to have the ‘best superfast broadband network in Europe' by 2015 could be realised with such a low level of public financial support.

He said: "This government is strong on slogans but weak on delivery. It needs to come up with credible plans and real money, based on proper levels of public investment, if it is to be able to prevent a digital divide from opening up which will hamper this country's emergence from recession."

More background in the CutStop campaigns area.


  • 20 Apr 2011