PM backs Race Online 2012 Campaign

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Created on Tuesday, 13 July 2010

At 4.50pm yesterday, the Prime Minister strode into the Cabinet Office to be greeted by an unfamiliar sight. Our Race Online 2012 People’s Taskforce were sitting excitedly in the seats ordinarily reserved for Secretaries of State and Ministers.  They told the Prime Minister, Secretary of State for DCMS Jeremy Hunt and Cabinet Office Minister and Paymaster General Francis Maude, their personal stories of how technology had helped them triumph over extraordinary difficulties.

Warda Mohammed spoke first. She told the Prime Minister how within five days of qualifying for a computer and internet connection she had started her own business. ‘I realized I could trade on my language skills, and am now a translator, employing two people. I wouldn’t have been able to do this and be a full-time single-mum without the internet,’ she said.  Heather Hawkswood described how important the net had been in letting her, when she was age 19, search for tips on how to handle teenagers when she got custody of her younger teenage sister.  And Alan Thomas talked about how significant it was in helping him find other people who shared his rare degenerative condition, Ataxia.

After chatting with the Taskforce, David Cameron then addressed the Race Online 2012 private-sector partners, ministers, civil servants, community organizers and charity CEOs gathered in Number 10’s garden, all there to celebrate the publication of our manifesto for a Networked Nation.  He gave his enthusiastic backing for our plan to use all the skilled people, plentiful community access points and good broadband infrastructure to bring as many people online by 2012 so we can make the UK a truly networked nation.

He said: ‘We need to ensure that people aren’t being left behind as more and more services and businesses move online.’

Read the manifesto here: http://www.raceonline2012.org/manifesto