---

Local and Regional News

I welcome the selection of this subject for today's topical debate, because it is clear from what has been said that we face a crisis in our local and regional news journalism. Every hon. Member has local stories to tell to highlight that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) has said, the National Union of Journalists estimates that at least 1,000 editorial jobs have been lost since last June, and many other jobs will have been lost as local newspapers and offices have been closed. We understand that at least 60 titles have closed in the past six months; indeed, only last week a group of 18 local newspapers went into administration. The estimates are that we could lose a third of all local newspaper jobs by 2011. It is clear that we face a crisis in this industry, and that has many implications for local communities. We talk a lot in this place about community identity and community cohesion. One of the most powerful ways in which communities achieve cohesion is through an identity that is reflected in the sharing of information about what is going on locally. If we were to see the end of local and regional press, that would have huge implications for all of us. What we are seeing is an intensification of a process that has been going on for some time. The current difficult economic times have meant that over the past few months there has been a large decrease in the amount of advertising revenue on which local newspapers are able to rely, but in reality that trend has been going on for some time. Some newspaper groups are perhaps taking advantage of the fact that we are in such difficult economic times to go ahead with proposals that they were intending to implement anyway. The reality is that our local newspapers are owned by a number of large organisations, which, in general, are still making heavy profits. Mention has already been made of the fact that profits for local media organisations of 20 to 30 per cent. were normal, and now that profits have fallen to single figures, the organisations are not used to that. In my constituency, for example, the Largs office of the Largs and Millport News—a historic newspaper that has been around for generations—has closed, and it now operates out of Ardrossan, which is outwith the circulation area of the paper. That story is being repeated nationally. Local offices are closing and newspapers are moving to other areas of the country with which they have traditionally had no connection. We are also seeing more common pages produced to be published in several newspapers in different areas. We have heard calls this afternoon for the relaxation of media ownership laws and deregulation, but that is not the approach that the Government should take. Several suggestions have been made about how the Government could assist local media, including providing guaranteed advertising, but simply putting extra funding from Government into failed models is not the way forward. Local media face a huge challenge from the digital age and web-based technologies, and the answer is not international companies coming in to run local newspapers. We need local newspapers that are genuinely responsive to, and reflective of, the communities that they serve. I welcome the comments made by the Minister this afternoon about bringing together all the partners in the sector—the trade unions, including the National Union of Journalists, and the enterprise organisations and regional development bodies in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland—to look at ways to put local journalism at the heart of the local media. We need quality media, and by bringing everyone together, I hope that we will be able to find creative solutions for the future.