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By Joey Gardiner, 8 March 2000 00:15

NEWS UK Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday pledged to provide the entire UK population with access to the Internet by 2005, and declared that improving IT skills are essential to the development of the "knowledge economy". Speaking at the Knowledge 2000 conference in London to an audience including CBI director general Digby Jones, TUC general secretary John Monks and other senior industry figures, Blair outlined his vision for the UK. He insisted that UK-wide Internet access it will improve the UK's competitiveness and reduce the effects of social exclusion. He said: "It's likely the Internet will in the future be as ubiquitous and as normal as electricity is today - we cannot accept a digital divide." The rhetoric was backed-up by David Blunkett, the Secretary for Education and Employment, with £68m initiative to give job seekers access to employment service information via the Internet. The project, called The Learning and Work Bank, will see 400,000 vacancies and information on training courses put on the Web, with public access kiosks set up in job centres, community centres, shopping centres and pubs up and down the country. A national information line - ES Direct - will also be set up to provide advice over the telephone. EDS has gained the contract to provide the kiosks and the call centres to support the project under a private finance initiative (PFI) deal. According to Blunkett, the first wave of learning centres will open in September, with 700 centres open by January 2001. Blunkett said the new service will be the most comprehensive "dot-com" jobs and skills Web site in the country. He will raise the possibility of making a Europe-wide service available at the European Council meeting in Lisbon in two weeks time. Response to the news from conference delegates was largely positive. One delegate said it was a move in the right direction from a government that still had a huge way to go to catch up with change. Perri 6, senior research fellow at the University of Strathclyde, said the move was to be welcomed, but warned it may be misdirected. He said: "The solutions to the digital divide don't rest in putting Internet kiosks in libraries, they're about providing cheap kit to people to allow them to use the Internet and use the new technology at home."