Association feels an alternative scheme will boost UK IT industry

The Professional Computing Association has called upon the Chancellor to introduce an improved version of the Home Computing Initiative (HCI), following the scrapping of the scheme by the government last month.

PCA chairman, Derek Jones, said: "HCI was moving us in the right direction and helping many people to benefit from home computing. While it might perhaps have had some flaws, removing it without warning and with no replacement scheme is a backward step in our view.”

The PCA is calling on the Chancellor to put a replacement scheme in place that will deliver the same benefits to employees and also provide a boost to the UK IT industry.

“We believe that a programme similar to HCI can work and work well – both for the UK’s workers and for the thousands of people that work in the IT industry here," Jones said.

Jones felt that one of the problems with HCI was that it provided more business for foreign companies than it did for UK firms. “It’s quite probable that one of the largest corporate beneficiaries of HCI was a company that doesn’t manufacture in the UK, whose support services are largely based offshore, and whose ownership is based in the USA.”

Keith Warburton, PCA executive director added: “There are thousands of British businesses who assemble computers themselves. They provide expert local support to their customers, many of whom are large corporations, they provide employment in the UK and they contribute substantially to the UK exchequer. The USA seemingly has no problem in favouring American businesses - isn’t it about time that the man who would be prime minister of the country demonstrated, in a clear and unequivocal manner, his support for British enterprise.”