October Panel meeting
13 October 2009
At this month's Panel meeting we discussed reports from each of our national members. I had asked them to tell us something about three things: the political context and issues for consumers in their nation and the way they fulfilled their role as a national Consumer Panel member. This was part of trying to ensure that the Panel are properly able to represent the interests of consumers and citizens in all four nations.
Perhaps the single most important thing to come out of this discussion was just how important rural, low income and small business issues to each of the three devolved nations. Intuitively we knew this already, but the reports made it much plainer. This is not to say that these issues are less important for parts of England, but they are generally significant for the devolved nations. This suggests that learning from Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland could help to give real substance to the Panel's responsibility for representing the interests of people on low incomes, in rural environments and running small businesses. We will be talking about how to make this a reality, but I hope it will result in our mainstreaming the work of the national Panel members.
We also had a presentation from a member of Martha Lane-Fox's digital inclusion team about today's launch of the race online to 2012 http://raceonline2012.org/. The Panel has been a strong supporter of the idea of a Digital Champion and has a long interest in digital inclusion. I am a member of the Task Force that was set up to advise Martha in her work as digital inclusion champion, but this is in a personal capacity and it is important for the Panel to make their own contribution to this work.
We also discussed a number of issues with Ofcom including: access and inclusion, digital participation, the review of universal service and some work to clear spectrum for newer services such as mobile broadband which will have the consequence that some consumers will need to retune their televisions after digital switchover.
Anna