By Dr Emma Stone, Director of Evidence and Engagement at the Good Things Foundation
Last week’s Spring Statement, and the Government’s published assessment on the policy’s impact on poverty, highlight how closely disability, health, poverty, and access to support intersect. Alongside a projected 250,000 households falling into poverty, many already struggling will fall into deep poverty.
In a digital world, with rapidly digitalising public services, being able to exit deep poverty doesn’t happen without digital inclusion. At Good Things Foundation, the UK’s leading digital inclusion charity, we see the link between deep poverty and digital exclusion.
So many forms of financial support (statutory and discretionary) are digital-first. Bluntly, this means that people’s routes out of deep poverty are either enabled, or blocked, by digital – whether that’s about not being able to afford data or a device, and/or not having the skills, confidence or community support.
“People are coming to us and saying that through being unable to access the internet, they’re also missing out on getting better deals, being able to find out information about additional support that might be available, like local crisis support. And our data shows us that people without internet access have received less crisis support …. this is just terrible, compounding on top of the fact that people are facing financial hardship, is it compounds isolation and social exclusion.” – Emma Revie, CEO, Trussell (Digital Futures for Good May 2024)
Last year, Trussell and Good Things Foundation commissioned WPI Economics to review the evidence on links between digital exclusion and deep poverty, auditing 15 datasets. Their report, available here, found digital exclusion is clearly related to income poverty:
- No access at all to the internet was more prevalent amongst food bank users, at 16%, than the general population (2023 Hunger in the UK)
- Strong links were found between poverty risk factors and families living below a publicly-defined household benchmark – the Minimum Digital Living Standard.
And the impacts go beyond income:
- 44% of people without any internet access, and referred to food banks, reported being severely socially isolated (Trussell 2023)
- For children, digital exclusion risks leading to worse educational outcomes, which will increase their risks of poverty in adulthood.
“Without access to laptops, tablets, printers and the data and knowledge to use them, children can quickly fall behind with their work and the gap between what they and their peers can achieve grows ever wider… We must recognise that access to the internet is now an essential, not a luxury” – APLE Collective 2023
At a roundtable to discuss the report, we heard that:
- Many services to support people out of deep poverty, debt, homelessness, and unemployment now have a digital angle
- Local staff are escalating concerns about digital exclusion, and it becoming harder to support families and adults out of deep poverty if they are digitally excluded
- Digital exclusion can be a blind spot in service delivery and innovation – failing to ask and address how people who need digital services will be supported to find and use them
- Many services will already engage people who could face digital barriers, but their staff may not ask, or know how to ask, the questions to elicit this, or offer support
- Signposting to online support can leave people feeling fobbed off
- Food banks and local Databanks are a vital safety net, but not enough to exit poverty
- For people living in deep poverty, broadband social tariffs are out of reach
- Digital exclusion impacts every part of people’s lives, not only access to services.
We know the Government has tough financial decisions to make. We know the Government is ambitious for digital transformation of public services. We know from important DWP research published in 2024 on digital skills and preferences of DWP customers – and on digital skills of PIP customers – that DWP customers vary significantly in their digital access, skills, and confidence:
- 21% of Attendance Allowance customers said their internet use declined in the last year (DWP)
- 46% of Employment and Support Allowance customers said they would rely on help from others to apply for or manage benefits online (DWP)
- 36% of Pension Credit customers (and 16% of all DWP customers) were currently offline (DWP)
- 54% of Attendance Allowance customers felt able to apply for or manage benefits online alone or with someone helping, compared to 95% of Job Seekers Allowance customers (DWP).
We need to end deep poverty, enable people to manage their health, find good work, and live with dignity. As the Minimum Digital Living Standard shows, digital inclusion is now an essential part of what this means today.
The Government’s Digital Inclusion Action Plan: First Steps – published a few weeks ago – is clear that digital inclusion is a cross-government priority; and that low-income households and disabled people are two of the priority groups for support. If you’d like to feedback – the call for evidence is still open – it closes on 9th April 2025.
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This article is featured in our 2 April newsletter.
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