Martha Lane Fox: get everyone online by 2015

The UK’s “digital champion”, Martha Lane Fox, is aiming to get the entire working population online by 2015.

Lane Fox, the co-founder of Lastminute.com, was appointed as the Government’s digital champion under the last administration, and is continuing her work under the new coalition.

She’ll visit the Prime Minister later today to lay out her vision for getting the 10 million Brits who’ve never used the internet online.

We must change our mindset from one that shields people from using the internet to one that helps empower them to get online

“By the end of this Parliament, everyone of working age should be online and no one should retire without web skills,” Lanes Fox’s Manifesto for a Networked Nation states. “Our vision is for the UK to be one of the first places in the world where everyone can use the web.”

“The 10 million people in the UK who have never been online are already missing out on big consumer savings, access to information and education,” she writes in the foreword of her manifesto. “They will be even more isolated and disadvantaged as government and industry expand ever faster into digital-only services. We must change our mindset from one that shields people from using the internet to one that helps empower them to get online and enjoy all the benefits.”

However, given the stringent budget cuts being imposed by the Government, it’s not clear whether Lane Fox will be given any financial assistance in her bid to make the entire workforce net savvy.

Indeed, the coalition Government axed the previous Government’s plans to introduce a landline levy to pay for nationwide high-speed broadband. The manifesto claims the north of England, urban areas of Scotland and South Wales have the highest concentrations of working-age people who don’t have access to the internet.

Confusingly, Martha Lane Fox is also behind a campaign called Race Online 2012, which states its “ambition is to make the UK the first nation in the world where everyone can use the web” and to achieve “near-universal web literacy by the time of the Olympics”.

A spokesperson for Lane Fox told PC Pro: “The ambition is to make it happen by 2012, but the absolute commitment/deadline is the end of this parliament.”