Blair pledges that UK will be a leader in ecommerce

The UK government today pledged its commitment to ensuring that the country becomes an ecommerce world leader.

At the launch of a new report, Ecommerce@its.best.uk, published by the Cabinet Office's Performance and Innovation Unit, Tony Blair said the UK's goal must be in, "setting not following trends."

He added: "We have made a good start in ecommerce, but must transform that into a permanent industrial success."

The report's three priorities are to overcome business inertia, to ensure the government's actions push ecommerce and ensure better co-ordination between government and industry.

The prime minister announced the appointment of Alex Allan, former high commissioner to Australia, as the UK's envoy whose task is to oversee the report's recommendations.

Allan commented: "One of the disturbing facts highlighted in the report is that two thirds of US companies have an IT director compared to less than 10 per cent of British companies and that only 20 per cent of companies have developed an ebusiness strategy."

Blair said key government priorities include getting all schools connected to the Internet by 2002, providing discounted training for basic computing courses for people in and out of work and "to get the basic infrastructure right and lower costs."

The prime minister promised that the government would "lead by example" and provide a "stable framework of economic management to get the foundations right and build the knowledge economy."

He said a, "sense of national purpose is needed to get this done," and personally committed to, "enrolling in one of the courses the government has set up to learn basic IT skills."

He admitted, "mandatory key escrow plans won't work" and promised that "no company or individual will be forced to use escrow keys."

Blair backed the report's stance of a light regulatory touch and that opening up markets is vital to ecommerce success.

Oftel and the Office of Fair Trading should look at removing barriers to competition by March and Oftel is urged to ensure that BT's rollout plans for high bandwidth services do not give it unfair competitive advantage.

Allan will work closely with eMinister Patricia Hewitt. Both will report every quarter on the progress of implementing the report's recommendations.