HC Deb 19 March 1997 vol 292 cc877-8
14. Mr. Ian Bruce

To ask the President of the Board of Trade what steps he is taking to promote the wider use of information technology. [19454]

Mr. Ian Taylor

The information society initiative promotes the beneficial use of information and communications technologies across all areas of life, and includes the £35 million programme for business, and information technology for all, which aims to help all sections of the community get hands-on experience of the technology for the information society.

Mr. Bruce

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the keys to spreading information technology throughout our communities is to build up our telecommunications utilities network? Was he as surprised as I was yesterday that the shadow Chancellor threatened not only to take that investment money away from British Telecom as a utility but said that all companies which were regulated and licensed, but not necessarily privatised, without discrimination, would come under the windfall tax? We can see that the biggest threat to increasing information technology and telecommunications is a vote for Labour.

Mr. Taylor

Nothing surprises me about the way in which the shadow Chancellor tries to find money for his spending pledges—even from people who thought that they had cuddled up to him and done deals with him. It seems absurd that, at the very moment when we have had a breakthrough in the World Trade Organisation which will liberalise world telecommunications—we in the United Kingdom led that change by liberalising early in the 1980s—the shadow Chancellor believes it right to place an imposition on BT and worsen its competitive position.

Mr. Hoon

It has been said that the difference between government and opposition is that Governments do things and Oppositions talk about doing things. Is it not clear from the Government's information technology policy, which seems to consist mostly of press releases, consultation documents and Green Papers—largely talking about doing things—just how much the Conservative Government are preparing for opposition?

Mr. Taylor

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has forgotten that it is good to talk. The Government's programme for the information society initiative is the best managed anywhere in the world. We liberalised our telecommunications well before anyone else. We announced that we were liberalising even international telecommunications last summer. Before I gave away the licences at the end of December, British Telecom had reduced its international prices three times. Our success in telecommunications is often quoted as one of the top three reasons why inward investors want to come to Britain. Our content industries have been let loose to communicate with each other electronically and we have led the basis for the digital television revolution. That is not bad. There is more to do. I look forward to continuing these arguments and applying the policies after the election.

Mr. Clifton-Brown

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways of promoting information technology is through the market? Does he agree that the privatisation of such companies as British Telecom and AEA Technology has brought outstanding success in promoting information technology? Does he agree that they have promoted that technology and brought it to the benefit of the ordinary consumer, for example by installing fibre-optics throughout the land?

Mr. Taylor

British Telecom is, this year alone, investing more than £2 billion in upgrading its infrastructure at the kerbside simply to meet the competitive challenge the cable industry has brought about in what is called the local loop. That is the market working. The Government do not have to instruct companies to do those things. We do not have to do cosy deals at party conferences. If the Government regulate and let the market act, the consumer benefits. Schools are being linked up to the networks by the force of the market. The cable industry and BT have offered fixed-price ISDN packages to schools to allow them to make more use of the super-highways. Conservative policy is delivering in every corner of the country every aspect of the information society. More and more people realise how important that is and why it is attached to the continuance of Conservative government.