Hung Parliaments

MAY 9, 2010
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Given the contribution that the creative industries make to our national wealth, plans to maintain the UK as a centre of excellence in creative innovation might expect to be high on the agenda of the three largest parties. Yet of the 75,000 words contained in the Conservative, Labour and Lib-Dem manifestos, barely 1,000 are devoted to the digital economy. If the sector’s voice is to be heard above the background noise from other lobby groups in the months to come, it must press its case loudly and clearly, whatever the composition of the next government.

Most politicians acknowledge the UK’s outstanding record in film and TV production, video game design and digital media innovation but their grasp of what is needed to deal with piracy, how high-speed broadband should be funded and the provision of adequate educational resources for the next generation of digital media professionals is fuzzy at best.

Companies in the creative sector employ nearly 2 million people and generate 10% of the UK’s GDP, which makes the lack of detail in all three manifestos remarkable. Even though the fruits of online digital technology are happily accepted by consumers, the parties appear to have concluded that there are few votes to be had in new media.

The 25,000-word Conservative document, for example, identifies 600,000 additional jobs and £18 billion of additional revenues that would result from having the right broadband infrastructure in place. If implemented, this would make a significant contribution to resolving the country’s economic woes. Surprisingly, the Tories provide no further detail on how they plan to deliver a connected Britain.

In the following paragraph, alongside a commitment to scrap the 50p “phone tax”, the manifesto continues, “If necessary, we will consider using the part of the licence fee that is supporting the digital switchover to fund broadband in areas that the market alone will not reach.” And, that is all.

Just these two paragraphs, totalling 105 words, is the sum of the commitment from the UK’s largest single party to bring digital technology to the workplace and the home. Not a word on piracy and no encouragement for creative industries or for businesses in rural areas. Very little either about the source of the funding needed to enable the UK broadband infrastructure to match that available elsewhere in the world.

Turning to the smallest of the three parties, the Liberal Democrats are also reluctant to discuss how high-speed internet and associated technologies could be developed to benefit the economy. The subject comes up just once in the 20,000 words of their manifesto, when they claim they would: “Support public investment in the roll-out of superfast broadband, targeted first at those areas which are least likely to be provided for by the market.” Again, no indication of when or how this funding would become available, nor how the market could be induced to step in and finance those areas not publicly funded.

In fact, the 25 words reproduced above are the only reference to broadband in the entire document. Elsewhere they say that, “The creative industries are one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy,” without any evidence that they understand the importance of sustaining that growth, though they do say they have plans for a “Creative Enterprise Fund offering training, mentoring and small grants or loans to help creative businesses get off the ground.” The word digital doesn’t appear once in the Liberal Democrat document.

Based on their pre-election promises, a coalition manifesto from these two parties would contain barely enough words on our digital and creative industries to fill a postcard, even though 10% of the national income is derived from these sources.

So does the previous ruling party do any better? The 76-page Labour Party manifesto devotes nearly three times the combined space of the other two parties to the subject of broadband Britain. In around 600 words the party provides a strangely familiar summary of its plans.

This is perhaps not surprising, since the rushed passage through the House of Commons of the Digital Economy Act was one of the last tasks of the old régime. Labour probably feels that the digital genie is back in the bottle for the moment and its manifesto reads like a commitment to do more of the same. There is a promise to deliver a universal broadband service of “At least two Megabytes per second” by 2012. The writer obviously had difficulty telling bits from bytes, since the data rate equates to 16 Megabits per second (Mbps), which is eight times faster than the 2 Mbps average that most people receive today. Technology can be so confusing!

State funding of £1 billion would encourage private operators to bring superfast broadband to 90% of the population, the Labour manifesto claims. This generous offer, spread over seven years, equates to an annual spend of about £145 million, a sum of money that is insufficient to dent the digital divide that separates the UK from continental Europe. Even with this minimal commitment, finding the public-sector funding in a depression could be problematic.

The Conservative manifesto acknowledges the major contribution that the creative sector makes to the British economy. The financial benefits that would arise from investment in infrastructure are common ground in the policies of all three parties. There is, however, no sense of urgency in any of the documents, whether confronting piracy, eliminating broadband “not-spots” or encouraging the creative industries as wealth generators.

Whether the country is to be governed by a single party or a coalition of any two out of three, the clamour for lower taxes, better schools, action on globalisation and many other policies deemed “vote winners” could overshadow policies on digital media. It is not enough for our rulers to assume that recent legislation will allow decisions on this key sector to be postponed. Industry leaders and organisations representing companies in the digital economy need to start lobbying now to ensure that politicians implement the sparse policies already in their manifestos and articulate new and better ways of delivering their broadband promises.

Perhaps even more important than convincing the politicians, however, is the need to involve the public in the debate on how our digital infrastructure is to be built and paid for. If the average voter doesn’t care about issues like the universal broadband commitment, it is unlikely that their elected representative will do so either.