What a hung Parliament means for the tech community

The UK General Election has left the country in a spin, with the first hung Parliament in decades. The Conservatives took more votes than any other party with a total of 306 seats, whilst Labour took 258 and the Liberal Democrats took 57 - trying to get the best deal from a coalition with one of the parties.

A hung Parliament has significant ramifications for the technology sector. First, let’s look at what former Department of Health CIO Matthew Swindells said yesterday. Speaking at the BCS HC2010 conference, Swindells said that only a government with a strong majority will have what it takes to use IT to cut costs and drive efficiency in public sector.

(Unfortunately named) Swindells provided a handy example to the conference too in making hospital performance information available to the public online. He claims that this will drive NHS efficiency, as if hospitals can be clearly seen to be failing, there will be more pressure to merge it with another hospital to bring its standards up He said:

“There is a paternalistic attitude within some parts of the NHS that the public will not understand information if they are presented with it, this has got to change.” With that in mind, only a government with real muscle can tackle the old-school attitudes within the NHS. A minority government, or an unstable coalition with differing views on the NHS, would not have the necessary oomph to implement the use of IT in such a way.

Aside from the use of IT in the NHS, there is general uncertainty over the use of IT contracts in the public sector due to the hung Parliament. Which party ends up forming government, and with whom, will determine public sector spending on IT contracts.

Here’s what the three major parties would have done if they had come to power with a clear majority.

The Conservatives, for example, are all for cutting public spending as soon as possible. That includes freezing major public sector investment in IT, as well as changing the public sector procurement process to allow smaller suppliers a piece of the IT services pie.

The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, called for a greater use of cloud computing and open-source use in public sector IT to help drive costs down.

Meanwhile, Labour, whose leader Gordon Brown has been against public sector cuts this year for fear of creating a double-dip recession, actually promised support for the IT industry including start-ups, hoping to invest his way out of the recession. That investment included funding for 20,000 higher education places in science, technology, maths and engineering, more support for small businesses, and a national roll-out of high-speed broadband.

Within the public sector, Brown of course has put in place plans for cuts, but the Tories believe that they should cut by £12 billion more in this area.

As you would expect, Labour and the Lib Dems have been strong in their support for investment in new green technology, which would cut energy costs for businesses and homes, as well as providing thousands of green jobs; the Conservatives have been quiet on green technology throughout the past year’s campaigning.

So, it’s clear what would have happened if one of the major parties had swept in with a clear majority, but as of yet, there is no solution.

A Lib-Con coalition is likely if the Tories can offer a firm enough promise to the Lib Dems on electoral reform. In this case, the Lib Dems may be able to vote against some of the worst of the public sector IT spending cuts, instead favouring encouragement of cloud and open-source.

A Lib-Lab coalition, which may happen if the Tories fail to seal the deal with the Lib Dems, and if the Lib Dems are tempted enough by Brown’s resignation, could be more interesting. The coalition would be strong on green technology, which is great news for the industry. It’s hard to see much difficulty in providing those IT education places with a Lib-Lab coalition, but in this situation, the Lib Dems might push Labour for more spending cuts than Labour had planned.