Bridging the Distance Between Aspiration and Opportunity

I recently helped launch  the Digital Poverty Alliance’s  Aspiration Report The Distance Between Aspiration and Opportunity at the  House of Lords. This is what I said:

Ladies, and gentlemen, it is a tremendous pleasure to welcome you all to the House of Lords this afternoon. Let me begin by thanking Elizabeth Anderson and the tireless team at the Digital Poverty Alliance for organising today’s event and producing this timely, vital report. I also want to pay tribute to Currys and Pennies, whose support through the Tech4Families programme has demonstrated exactly what can be achieved when purposeful corporate citizenship meets community delivery on the ground. We are gathered here today to launch The Distance Between Aspiration and Opportunity . But we are not here merely to celebrate a publication or to applaud well-meaning corporate charity. We are here to confront an urgent, structural question of social justice and economic survival: why, in modern Britain, are we still allowing a lack of basic digital equipment to dictate the life chances of our children? For years in Parliament, during the pandemic, across committees, in the Chamber, and through the All-Party Parliamentary Group, many of us have argued that digital inclusion cannot be treated as an optional luxury or an afterthought. It is the foundational infrastructure of the 21st century. If you do not have adequate access to connectivity, digital literacy, and the hardware to engage, you are not simply missing out on convenience – you are systematically locked out of education, healthcare, the labour market, and democratic participation. Yet when we look across our country today, the gap between what young people aspire to achieve and the opportunities actually open to them remains stubbornly wide. This report shows us with absolute clarity both the true cost of that divide and the tangible, life-changing power of bridging it. I want to dismantle one persistent myth at the outset: the comfortable assumption that every young person growing up today is a “digital native”. Because almost every teenager has access to a smartphone, policymakers and commentators frequently make the lazy assumption that young people are fully equipped for the digital age. That is a dangerous fallacy. Having a mobile phone to scroll through short-form social media or play mobile games does not equip a young person to write an extended essay, complete complex homework assignments, code, research a university degree, or draft a professional curriculum vitae. 1

As the research in this report highlights, 4 in 10 households with children do not meet the Minimum Digital Living Standard. A smartphone is simply not an adequate educational tool. When Teach First surveyed schools, they found that thousands of students were trying to keep pace with homework on shared mobile handsets, or had no device at all. During the pandemic, we saw children sitting on freezing kerbs outside fast-food restaurants or huddled in stairwells just to borrow open Wi-Fi so they could submit school tasks. The emergency of the pandemic may have receded, but the structural crisis of digital poverty has not. Look at the extraordinary baseline findings in the DPA’s survey: before receiving a dedicated laptop through Tech4Families, only 27% of the children surveyed were able to set up an email account or attach a document to an email. Think about that for a moment. In an economy where virtually every professional, technical, and educational interaction requires basic digital correspondence, nearly three-quarters of these children could not perform the very foundational steps of online communication. Once they were given a device of their own, that figure surged to 61%. Motivation toward schoolwork jumped to 65%. Confidence grew in 68% of these young people. And nearly a third reported a direct positive change in their attitude toward entering further education.

A laptop in the home is not just a collection of silicon chips and a keyboard; it is an engine of confidence. It is the quiet reassurance that a child can sit down, learn without embarrassment, explore their passions, and believe that the world of higher learning and good jobs belongs to them too. Crucially, the findings in The Distance Between Aspiration and Opportunity reveal what many of us have long witnessed in our communities: the transformative ripple effect of digital intervention. A laptop provided to a disadvantaged child rarely stays with just that child. In 67% of the households surveyed, other family members used the device – to search for employment, apply for jobs, retrain, or manage essential household finances. In 69% of families, the device fundamentally changed how parents and siblings viewed their own future opportunities. When we give a child a laptop, we are transforming the economic prospects of the entire household. We see this mirrored across the UK wherever joined-up, community-based models are allowed to thrive. In Leeds, through the exemplary 100% Digital Leeds blueprint, the local authority and health partners did not treat digital access in a silo. They recognised that community organisations on the ground are the trusted entry points. By investing in digital champions, equipment, and third-sector capacity, they showed that embedding digital access within community and healthcare pathways elevates the whole locality. 2

Similarly, when Stockport Homes surveyed their tenants in Greater Manchester, they found that digital exclusion hit the most vulnerable hardest: older residents, single parents, and those with long-term health conditions, where 30% had no home device whatsoever and two-thirds had only a mobile handset. But when connectivity and hardware were systematically addressed at an affordable level, the barrier melted away. The lesson is plain: community interventions lift the entire family unit. But the tragedy is that, at present, these efforts remain a patchwork – a postcode lottery dependent on where you live or which charitable partnership happens to be operating in your borough. This is an argument that must be won not just in the Department for Education or DSIT, but in HM Treasury. Right now, across the United Kingdom, nearly one million young people aged 16 to 24 are classed as NEET – not in education, employment, or training. Think of the staggering waste of human potential, the personal despair, and the billions lost to our Exchequer in welfare payments and unrealised tax revenues. Research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has demonstrated that every £1 invested in digital inclusion delivers a return of £9.48 to the UK economy. And the groundbreaking analysis produced by Deloitte and the Digital Poverty Alliance shows that closing the essential digital skills gap would deliver an estimated £17 billion increase in yearly earnings for our workforce, generate an additional £6 billion annually by enabling citizens to manage their personal finances effectively, and unlock nearly £1 billion in efficiency savings for public services. We are constantly debating how to boost the UK’s lagging productivity and revive economic growth. Here is a ready-made growth strategy.

So where do we go from here? What must Government, Parliament, and industry do to turn the insights of this report into systemic, lasting change? First, we must directly feed the evidence launched today into national policy. The ongoing Young People and Work Review , led by Alan Milburn, is examining why so many young people are drifting – not in the workforce or education. Digital poverty should be placed front and centre of Alan Milburn’s review. The review must recognise that digital exclusion is a key root cause of youth worklessness and educational underachievement. We cannot design 21st-century youth employment strategies on the assumption that everyone has a laptop at home. Second, we must move from ad-hoc initiatives to a statutory, national one-to-one device entitlement. During the pandemic, the Department for Education proved that the government can procure and distribute hardware at scale, delivering nearly two million devices in emergency circumstances. But when the emergency ended, the infrastructure vanished. We need a permanent, sustainable national scheme ensuring that every child eligible for Pupil Premium has access to a dedicated digital device for their education. Internet access and computing hardware must be treated as essential utilities, as vital to a child’s schooling as textbooks, desks, and electricity. Third, we must marry digital inclusion with environmental sustainability by tackling the scandal of e-waste. As studies have repeatedly shown, the UK is one of the worst generators of electronic waste in the developed world, with over 800 million unused tech items sitting forgotten in household “drawers of doom”.

At the same time, thousands of enterprise laptops are routinely discarded or shredded across government departments and corporate headquarters after two or three years of light office use. That is unacceptable. We need a mandatory, statutory national device donation and recycling framework. Decommissioned laptops from central government, local authorities, and the private sector should be refurbished, wiped, updated, and re-channelled directly to disadvantaged families through schemes like Tech4Families. This is circular economy in action: preventing landfill waste while closing the educational divide. Fourth, hardware alone is not enough; devices must be paired with comprehensive digital literacy and parental support. As this report highlights, parents and caregivers must be supported to develop digital confidence and navigate online learning alongside their children. And within formal education, as I have continually argued in our debates, digital literacy, online safety, and critical thinking must be woven into the fabric of the national curriculum – not treated as an after-school option. Fifth, and finally, we need a genuine cross-government driving mechanism.

For too long, digital inclusion has fallen into the cracks between departments: DDCMS (f ormerly it was DSIT ) assumes it belongs to Education; Education assumes it belongs to DWP; DWP assumes it belongs to local government. We need an explicit, ministerial-level lead on digital inclusion, a pooled cross-departmental budget, and an overarching strategy that treats digital citizenship as a fundamental right of every citizen in the United Kingdom. So the findings in The Distance Between Aspiration and Opportunity should inspire us, but they must also challenge us. What the Digital Poverty Alliance, Currys, and Pennies have achieved through Tech4Families proves beyond doubt that the digital divide is not an intractable law of nature. It is a solvable policy challenge. When you provide a child with a screen, a keyboard, and reliable connectivity, you do not just raise their test scores – you transform their horizons, spark their curiosity, and unlock the latent potential of an entire family. Catrin Hale will speak shortly about the remarkable impact Currys has seen on the ground through this initiative, and the private sector deserves immense credit for stepping up to lead the way. But charity can only show what is possible; it is for Government and Parliament to make it universal. 4

We cannot claim to be building a modern, high-tech economy powered by artificial intelligence and digital innovation while leaving hundreds of thousands of our young people stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide. Let us take the evidence from this report, take it directly into the corridors of Whitehall and into the Milburn Review, and commit ourselves to ensuring that no child’s aspiration is ever again limited by a lack of access to the digital world. Thank you very much.