Efforts to boost the woeful progress of high-speed internet services in Britain are snagging on Chancellor Gordon Brown's reluctance, the government's internet supremo has said.

Andrew Pinder, the "e-Envoy", urged delegates at the Confederation of British Industry conference to back a campaign to persuade Mr Brown of the importance of broadband services.

Acknowledging criticism over the slow spread of broadband, and talking of the "need to intervene" to support it, Mr Pinder said the chancellor remained sceptical of the importance of the technology.

Mr Brown, referred to as "last night's speaker", has objected that in areas where broadband is accessible, "among smaller firms, hardly anyone is using it", Mr Pinder said.

"We need you and your supply companies to get on line and use [broadband]... to convince people it really is needed," Mr Pinder told a delegates' breakfast.

"I need people... to say that this is crucial to our future."

The comments follow longstanding concerns, expressed at national and European level, over the slow roll-out and take up of broadband internet services in Britain.

Apolitical surfers

Mr Pinder also admitted surprise that 6% of UK firms employing more than 1,000 people had yet to embrace the internet.

"Six per cent of companies have still not worked out that the internet is the future."

And he urged politicians to take to the web to prevent the creation of a generation of net-using political agnostics.

"At the last election, the majority of young people did not vote," Mr Pinder said.

"But the vast majority use the internet... have taken to it like a duck to water.

"Politicians need to get in there after them, otherwise they are going to lose them."

Half way there

The government itself was half way to achieving a target of getting all services online by 2005.

And, with other countries keen to learn from the UK's internet initiatives, he stressed the importance of maintaining a lead in the race for online prominence.

"If we do not seize this moment, we take great risk of letting other people get ahead of us," he said.