Digital Britain Fall Guy

posted on 4th August 2009 by Jon

Treasury Minister, Stephen Timms has just been given the brief of carrying through the proposals of the Govt’s Digital Britain report as he takes up the role about to be vacated by the outgoing Minister - Lord Carter.

The Guardian spells out the details in this report: http://tinyurl.com/digtimms

His main task will be to push through some very controversial plans including:

1. a £6-a-year levy on all phone lines to pay for the next generation of super-fast broadband networks
2. a Digital Economy bill to be brought before parliament in the autumn.

It will therefore be his ultimate responsibility to ensure that all British homes have access to fast broadband internet by 2012, before switching off the analogue radio signal three years later.

Things are far from on-track on this at the moment as the independent body supposed to ensure that fast broadband is available to all by 2012 was meant to be set up last month, but it will not have a chief executive until October. Consultation on the tax levy was due to be completed early next month but does not appear to have even started yet.

The report also pledged that the government will reduce online piracy by 70% through a system of warning letters to persistent offenders, backed up by the threat of reducing their broadband speeds but this has gone nowhere to date.

So, why has Timms been given this near impossible task? Is it because of his background as a former e-commerce Minister or perhaps his time spent as a technology analyst? Maybe its just because he looks geeky enough to blend in with technology elite? Perhaps. More likely however is that Timms has strong experience of apologising on behalf of the Government for broken promises and generally under-delivering.

In his previous role, Timms was also responsible for delivering another key Government pledge…

In 1997, the new Blair Government made a bold promise to halve child poverty by 2010 and then eradicate it completely by 2020. With more than 4 million children still under the poverty line and the economic climate blowing all chances of this pledge being met by next year totally out of the water, this is one promise that the Government has fallen way short on.  We have worked on the digital aspect of End Child Poverty’s campaign for the last 2 years and as part of this work I attended their AGM earlier this year where, to his credit, the Minister accepted an invitation to come and explain to a relatively hostile audience, why the Government had failed on this pledge and what they were planning on doing about it.

I suspect that in selecting Lord Carter’s replacement, the Prime Minister was not only looking for someone who understood the digital brief, but also, a Minister that has had the experience of saying sorry. If this is the case, Timms may therefore be a wise choice.