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Digital report cost £28k to print

Published Monday, June 29th, 2009   

Posted by Nick Eyriey
Editorial director Nick Eyriey is an experienced and respected journalist having spent some 20 years in the local and national press working with newspapers such as The Yorkshire Post, Today, The Sun, and the Mail on Sunday.

The Government spent £28,000 on printing and distributing paper copies of their strategy to take Britain into the digital age, research by North Cornwall MP Dan Rogerson has revealed.

3,500 copies were printed at a cost of £8 each, and most were distributed free to Parliament and to outside bodies. Citizens can buy a copy from The Stationery Office for £34.55, a £26 mark-up on the cost price.

The report is printed on thick, glossy paper, in full colour. Commenting, Dan Rogerson said: “Taxpayers are bound to ask why it’s necessary to spend so much printing a report that should be about having less paper in our lives, not more.

“It’s no surprise that Gordon Brown’s government should clunk into the digital age with another blunder. Why should members of the public pay £26 over the odds for information they deserve access to as a right?

What’s worse is that the report makes no promise of full broadband access for rural communities. Until Ministers guarantee that they will make it their priority to ensure remote areas to catch up with the urban centres, people are bound to conclude that the Digital Britain report was an expensive exercise in spin.”

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