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UK Newspapers: Foreign State Influence Regulations

I am repeating the following Written Ministerial Statement made today in the other place by my Rt Honourable Friend the Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts Ian Murray MP:

This Government is committed to a pluralistic media landscape, where citizens are able to access information from a range of sources in order to form opinions. The public’s ability to access a wide range of news, views and information about the world in which we live is central to the health of our democracy. It is vital that the UK has in place strong measures to protect this, including the foreign state influence regime, which ensures foreign states cannot control or influence UK newspapers or news periodicals.

In July 2025, the Government made affirmative regulations to allow foreign state-owned investors (SOIs) to hold up to 15% of shares and voting rights in a UK newspaper owner, provided they are passive investors with no right or ability to appoint directors or other company officers of the newspaper owner, or to control or influence the newspaper owner’s policy, directly or indirectly. We introduced this 15% cap to balance the need to protect the sector from foreign state influence with the need for newspapers to be able to access new investment from a range of sources if they are to remain sustainable and innovate for the future.

Today we are publishing the Government’s response to the public consultation on the draft Enterprise Act 2002 (Mergers Involving Newspaper Enterprises and Foreign Powers) (No. 2) Regulations 2025. This consultation ran from 16 July to 16 September 2025, and sought views on draft Regulations which proposed to apply a 15% cap on aggregate holdings of shares or voting rights in a newspaper owner by SOIs acting on behalf of foreign powers of different countries.

The consultation also proposed that SOIs acquiring more than 5% of shares or voting rights in a UK newspaper owner directly must give the Secretary of State a qualifying notification within 14 days of the acquisition being made.

This legislation responds to concerns heard in Parliament about the remote risk that multiple SOIs, acting on behalf of different states, could each be able to hold up to 15%, resulting in a significant percentage of a UK newspaper being owned by foreign states.

The consultation response confirms that the Regulations will introduce a 15% limit on the total shares or voting rights which may be held in a newspaper, directly or indirectly, by SOIs acting on behalf of any foreign power of any country or territory, and will introduce the notification requirement. In addition, they will also introduce a requirement for SOIs, which acquire a direct holding of more than 5% and must notify the Secretary of State of their investment, also to publish appropriate details about their investment on a website within the 14 day time frame. The DCMS Secretary of State commits to report to Parliament regularly on the details which SOIs have published about their investments pursuant to the Regulations. We will endeavour for this to be every 6 months.

The draft regulations making changes to the Foreign State Influence regime have been laid before Parliament today.