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Media Ownership (Radio and Cross-media) Order 2011

My Lords, I declare a past interest as chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee to which the Minister has referred, and also a past interest as chairman of two regional newspaper groups, the Birmingham Post group and the Yorkshire Post group. It always seemed strange to us in the regional press that intricately detailed regulations were set in place for local and regional press, compared with the position nationally where not only has one owner been able to control almost 40 per cent of national newspaper circulation but where the last Government suddenly changed the rules on the purchase of media companies in this country. For years the policy had been that United States companies were prevented from taking over television companies here until proper reciprocal arrangements were in place. Overnight that position was changed, and although there are no reciprocal arrangements and we are prevented from taking no more than 25 per cent of a company in the United States, a company in the United States can take control of a television company here. The last Government would have done much better to have looked at the position of the regional and local press, which were then under very considerable pressure—and indeed still are. Its advertising has been hit by the internet, its readership has been impacted by the fact that young people are looking for their news elsewhere; and its circulations have been damaged by changes in social habits. Whereas once people brought back their evening newspaper almost automatically after work, now the regular hours of work have changed and habits have changed. Exactly the same thing has taken place in the United States, not only with their newspapers, which face exactly the same pressures, but with their once-dominant evening television programmes. As far as this country is concerned, all this has been very much to the public harm. Regional newspapers have had to cut back and in my view the public have suffered as a result. I emphasise that regional newspapers have not been the phone hackers employing private detectives to pry illegally into private lives. The regional press has had a very different tradition; it has stood up for local communities and has guarded the public interest against councils and others who have abused their power. It is for that reason that all the opinion polls show that the regional press is in fact much more trusted than the national press. The irony of all this has been that the regional press has had to fight the commercial battle for survival with one arm tied behind its back. We have all talked about the multimedia world and the fast-changing media, but regional newspapers have been prevented from adapting to that world. This is what this order allows now to happen, and it is for that reason that I strongly support what the Government are doing and what my noble friend Lady Rawlings has said. My noble friend referred to the argument of no organisation having no more than 50 per cent of local share. No one wants to see local monopolies any more than national monopolies. My only question is whether that should be better ensured through what would be very complex ownership rules or in some other way. My Select Committee considered this very point and its recommendation was that the public interest test was a more flexible tool than blanket restrictions on local cross-media mergers. It proposed that Ofcom should monitor such mergers and that the competition authorities should examine each on a case-by-case basis. I am delighted that the Government have gone down that road and have accepted that. Indeed, there is a role of this kind in all media mergers: a role for an organisation like Ofcom or something similar to review not just mergers but also the existing position of ownership of media companies and to debundle those companies if that dominance has been too great. If we can do that for airports, we can also do it for media companies. Finally, this is an entirely sensible, first-class reform. It will be widely welcomed certainly in the industry and is very much to the benefit of the public generally. I congratulate the Government on it.