Many of the issues facing the United Kingdom are underpinned by technology. Nicole Kobie reveals where the main three parties stand on key questions
Broadband, surveillance and online censorship are all important issues to the tech community - but they're unlikely to be the factors that any of us votes for in the General Election in May.
Instead, it will be the economy, immigration and the NHS that dominate, according to ComRes pollster Katharine Peacock, speaking at a meeting of the Parliamentary Internet, Communications and Technology Forum (PICTFOR). Yet this doesn't mean technology is an irrelevance. As Peacock explained: “These three are important for technology... It underpins a wide range of issues.”
Antony Walker, deputy CEO of industry body techUK, agrees. “Politicians will find it hard to connect on the doorstep on tech issues, and yet technology underpins the solution to every single issue that this electorate cares about: the economy, public services and, in particular, the NHS,” he said.
Look at immigration: to actually know who is in the country or who isn't would defuse much of the negativity around the discourse, and it's “eminently solvable from a tech point of view”, said Walker. PICTFOR speakers also noted how many public sector bodies and councils turn to technology to help cut budgets in the face of austerity measures. “Thank goodness we have the tech community saying it’s possible to do more - and better - with less, through smarter use of technology and data,” said Eddie Copeland, head of tech policy at Policy Exchange.
So while Britons will decide the next government on other issues, it will be technology that makes them a success. And this makes it all the more problematic that few politicians are actually technically minded. Copeland warned that policy needs to be led by politicians - not the IT department. “It’s a derogation of political responsibility for the public sector reform agenda to be relegated to the IT department,” he said. “We shouldn’t have the tail of the IT department wagging the tail of public sector reform - it doesn’t work that way.”
The speakers at the PICTFOR meeting noted that little distinguishes the three major parties on technology issues - Walker said their policies are like a Venn diagram with a lot of overlap. Here, we reveal a few key differences and how the parties have approached tech polices in the past few years.
Conservatives
It’s easy to judge the Tories on tech: we’ve had the past five years to watch the party’s successes and missteps, and in the most recent budget it announced further investment into technology.
David Cameron’s government has invested attention as well as funding into east London’s Tech City, kick-started driverless car pilots, and funded testbeds for robots and the Internet of Things. In addition, the party has pushed programming into the education curriculum and paved the way to build the UK’s first spaceport. The Tories are keen for Britain to become a leader in all things digital and tech, seeing it as a way to ensure our economy continues to grow.
On the flip side, the Broadband Delivery UK project - which the Tories inherited from Labour - has seen all the promised funds handed to ВТ, while the project has been pushed back by another two years. The Tories clearly see the value of broadband, pledging in March's Budget to roll out 100 Mbits/sec connections across the country, but didn’t set a deadline or provide other key details. ISPs have already started such work with their fibre rollouts, so it’s unclear what the government will add.
The government has been more hands-on in other areas - notably the effort by Cameron and Claire Perry MP to push ISPs to implement network-level parental control filters, despite the tech industry warning against such plans. A failure to heed expert opinion also saw the NHS Care.data plans held back after widespread criticism, and the controversial Digital Economy Act - another inheritance from the previous Labour government - has all but fallen by the wayside.
Finally we come to surveillance. The government’s defensive reaction to the Snowden revelations disappointed observers, while experts warned that its continued push to collect more communications data in response to every terror incident is as impractical as it is headline-friendly. The prime minister even suggested online communication should be readable by authorities, with many interpreting that as a vote against encryption.
Liberal Democrats
Many of these developments mentioned above took place in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, but there were a few sparks between the two parties. Nick Clegg’s party repeatedly stood up against the Communications Data Bill, refusing to let the so-called Snoopers’ Charter pass. They did eventually let through emergency surveillance legislation, but Lib Dem Julian Huppert MP - one of the more tech-savvy politicians in the Commons - has said this was only allowed thanks to the introduction of a sunset clause, meaning it will have to be renegotiated soon.
The Lib Dems have also called for a Digital Bill of Rights, to protect privacy and data rights online. “The Digital Bill of Rights we’re proposing will protect our fundamental liberties online. They mean that British residents will be protected from unwarranted state surveillance, while still maintaining the ability for our security services to deal with serious threats,” Huppert said at the time the proposal was announced. “Protecting people’s privacy is an essential part of building the society we want to live in, and when people violate that, there have to be proportionate powers available to hold those responsible to account.”
Labour
Labour has pledged to create more technical degrees and modernise the NHS, and started the broadband-improvement plan back when it was in power. In particular, one MP has done much to push the broadband agenda: Chi Onwurah has frequently called out the government and ВТ for perceived failures in the rollout. She also leads a review of digital services in government, and has warned against the government's attitude of “get online or lose out”.
“The Government Digital Service (GDS) is a hugely experienced and talented group within government,” she said, “but ministers have focused on headline-grabbing services that can only be used by 80% of the population, rather than building more valuable services that can be used by everyone and that help with some of this country’s biggest challenges such as economic growth, planning, housing or health and social care.”
In the last administration, Labour was responsible for introducing the Digital Economy Bill and has also pushed for ID cards. Alongside the Lib Dems, Labour too has backed the emergency surveillance bill. The party has called for more attention to be paid to surveillance, but like the Tories has stressed that police and security services need access to data. If it’s an overhaul of the surveillance state you want, the only party calling for it is the Greens.