The Future of News (Communications and Digital Committee Report)
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
That this House takes note of the Report from the Communications and Digital Committee The future of news (1st Report, HL Paper 39).
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to open today’s debate on the future of news, which follows the report from the Communications and Digital Committee last autumn.
Like my noble friend Lord Bridges, I am no longer the chair of the committee, having been part of the rotation earlier this year, so I must take this opportunity—my first—to congratulate my esteemed successor, the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley; I look forward both to her contribution today and to following the work of the committee under her chairmanship. As I am sure she has already discovered, she has inherited a fantastic team from the Committee Office, which will provide great support to her and the whole committee; as always, my thanks go to the Committee Office for its work on this report and throughout my term.
I also thank the other members of the committee alongside whom I had the great pleasure of working. Even if I do say so myself, as a team, together with the committee staff, we created an effective operation; speaking for myself, this led to work that I found both enjoyable and rewarding. Finally, my thanks also go to everyone who contributed to both this inquiry and all the others that we conducted during my time in the chair.
The future of news matters. Access to professional news that supports a shared understanding of basic facts and helps us to understand each other is critical for a healthy democracy. However, as this report makes clear, we cannot take the future of news for granted. The economics of mass market journalism are worsening, trust is low and a growing number of people actively avoid mainstream reporting.
Let me paint a little detail into that picture. The Press Gazette reported just last week that digital ad spend with news brands has fallen by a third since 2019. Less than half of people surveyed in a recent Opinium poll said that they regularly watched television news, while only a quarter said that they visited news websites. In addition, the scaling back of local newspaper and radio journalism has led to worrying “news deserts” in many areas. I would say that the situation in local news is most serious: let us not forget that this deterioration is happening as more power is being devolved to mayors and unitary authorities, and power without scrutiny is dangerous.
When it comes to the impact of new technology on business models, the news industry is of course not alone. However, tech firms now have unprecedented influence over the type of news that we see and are competing with the news providers. The committee’s visit to San Francisco last year left us with no illusions about the fact that generative AI news summaries will continue to upend news publishers’ business models.
As to where all this is leading, our report concluded that a two-tier media environment was becoming increasingly likely. We warned that news aficionados would be well served with a variety of outlets, old and new—there are some great new offerings in news—but while us news junkies are okay, a growing demographic has limited engagement with professionally produced news. Sky News’s recent decision to create a premium paid content model is evidence that our prediction of fragmentation is already happening.
With all that said, a changing media environment should not be conflated with its imminent demise. Journalism has, thankfully, defied apocalyptic predictions over the past decade, but for news to survive and thrive into the future, some things need to change. It is critical that they do, because a two-tier news environment is bad news for democracy.
Clearly, the role of government must be limited; it cannot compel people to engage with news and must avoid doing anything that could undermine media independence. But the Government can and should establish the conditions that enable UK media to stand on its own feet. It is up to the news industry itself to ensure that audience needs and expectations are well served, to generate the demand and to rebuild trust.
The regulated broadcasters, especially the BBC, have work to do. They play an important anchor position in our media market, but this anchor role is earned, not ordained. In some areas they have failed to reflect the perspectives of large sections of their audience who feel criticised or caricatured, rather than authentically represented. Many are voting with their feet and turning to other providers, because they now have a choice. The public service broadcasters, and most importantly the BBC, will drift into irrelevance if they do not address urgently what is causing some people to feel they cannot be relied upon. As our report noted, the 2027 charter review provides
“an opportunity to re-examine the BBC’s future, including funding models and its strategic priorities”.
The Government have said that all options are still on the table for the future of BBC funding. But what assurances can the Minister provide today that the charter review process will engage critically with the purpose and performance of the BBC, and not just be an exercise in preserving the status quo?
Ofcom, too, must step up to the mark. Broadcasters will need to adopt innovative formats to compete in this attention economy while also respecting the rules. But these rules need to be clear, and I welcome Ofcom’s decision to review its Broadcasting Code following GB News’s successful judicial review, not least because the committee’s report raised concerns about ambiguity in broadcasting roles.
While the Government must not pick winners or prop up failing outlets, we identified two specific areas where the need for government intervention was clear. The first is support for local journalism. Local news has been hit hard by the changing advertising market and shift to online, leaving millions of UK citizens with no dedicated local news outlet. Some new models of local journalism have emerged, and that is very welcome, but the Government need to do more to champion innovation and investment in the sector. We recommended measures including tax incentives for hiring local journalists and changes to local government advertising rules. We also called for a review of the impacts of business rates relief on local newspaper offices introduced by the last Government, but the Chancellor simply allowed those reliefs to expire last month without committing to a review.
The Government told us that the financial health and sustainability of local journalism was an area of particular concern, but their actions to date seem to suggest otherwise, and details of a forthcoming local media strategy remain vague. Can the Minister shed any light on how this strategy is being developed and when we can expect it to be published?
Secondly, I remain disappointed by the Government’s inaction on strategic lawsuits against public participation, more commonly known as SLAPPs. These have a chilling effect on journalism and are a clear abuse of our legal system. The Government’s assertion that they are committed to upholding justice and tackling SLAPPs is undermined by their apparent determination not to legislate in this area. Can the Minister explain why this Government refuse to bring forward primary legislation—and they have an opportunity in the victims Bill that was promised in the King’s Speech—when they were vocal on SLAPPs in opposition?
The committee first considered the vital issue of AI and copyright in its 2021 report on the creative industries—long before it became the hot topic it is today. The committee has routinely examined this from different angles since. During our news inquiry, it became clear that up-to-date, high-quality news from reputable sources is valuable to AI companies, especially as they develop search products. We therefore must find a path forward that enables the tech and creative industries to reach mutually beneficial arrangements. Technical viability, transparency and enforcement will be key to any regime.
What must not happen—and, based on their actions so far, I worry it might—is for the Government to pursue rules that primarily benefit foreign big tech firms, which seem prepared to pay vast sums on energy, computing facilities and staff but not on data. Bearing in mind that the Data (Use and Access) Bill is actively passing through the other place, and that the amendments passed in this House have already been retabled, can the Minister tell us when the Government will set out their response to their recent consultation and provide clarity on the way forward?
This report also repeatedly highlighted the need for effective implementation of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act to allow the news industry to compete on a level playing field. We called on the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate allegations of anti-competitive practice by big tech firms acquiring AI training data, and were pleased to see this included in the scope of the CMA’s investigation into Google’s position in search.
It is worth emphasising that the strength of the UK’s new digital competition regime is its agility and nuance. It is not the blunt instrument deployed by the European Union. It is regrettable that I have to ask this, bearing in mind that the Government wholeheartedly supported the regime when in opposition, but their actions are making UK businesses, including news organisations, nervous, so can the Minister reassure me that the CMA has the Government’s full support in its implementation of the DMCC Act? On a more specific point, can the Minister provide an update on their consultation on updating the media mergers rules regime?
Before I conclude, I must raise the issue of foreign government ownership of British news organisations. This was not a feature of our inquiry, but the economic challenges and threats to business models facing the industry made it clear that, without action by Parliament, this serious risk to press freedom would not be limited to the Telegraph and the Spectator. I am pleased that the matter was put beyond doubt in the DMCC Act a year ago, but it is hugely disappointing that the Government have allowed the Telegraph sale process to drift, placing additional pressure on one of our national newspapers—particularly bearing in mind all the challenges the industry is facing, which I have just outlined. It is also disappointing that the Government have still not brought forward the relevant secondary legislation, which is vital to provide clarity to the whole news industry about future investment from sovereign wealth funds and foreign public sector pension funds.
Recent media reports suggest that there may, finally, be a resolution to the Telegraph’s ownership. If so, that is very welcome news, but it makes the secondary legislation even more urgent because regulators will need clarity. I have asked the Minister this several times in recent weeks and I ask her again: can she tell us, today, when the Government will bring forward that secondary legislation? I really hope she is able to answer that today.
The challenges faced by the news industry are immense, and the changes necessary to meet them must be led by the industry itself. But the industry needs government and legislators to provide a regulatory framework that creates a level playing field and provides clarity on ownership and foreign investment rules, so that it can compete and be financially sustainable. Fundamentally, our job is to support press freedom so that people can have confidence in the news they read, hear and see about what we are doing and deciding in their name.
I look forward to all the contributions in the debate, especially from the noble Lord, Lord Pack, who is giving his maiden speech, and I hope for an informative response from the Minister. Meanwhile, I beg to move.
Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I congratulate her on her sterling leadership in producing this report by the Communications and Digital Committee, on which I serve, and thank her for so eloquently outlining its wide-ranging recommendations.
In the time available I will highlight only one, which is the importance of media literacy to build societal resilience—not only to handle misinformation and disinformation but to aid critical thinking when bombarded by opinion often masquerading as fact. In analysing the future of news, our report warns:
“There is a realistic possibility of the UK’s news environment fracturing irreparably along social, regional and economic lines within the next 5-10 years. The implications for our society and democracy would be grim”.
Of course, news provided by professional journalism will continue to be available. Those fortunate, like we in this House, will continue to access it with ease, whether in print, online or by subscription. However, there is a risk of a two-tier media environment becoming the norm, where many will have little engagement with professionally produced news. There is already a growing local news desert in parts of the UK. Trust in institutions, including the media, is declining, and there is a worrying if understandable trend in news avoidance.
Studies have shown that those under the age of 35 are turning away from authoritative, professional news sources, in favour of what they consider to be authentic opinion from social media sources that they find more relevant and entertaining. Meanwhile, the platforms providing the information are increasingly removing links to established news sites, reducing access to professional journalism. Artificial intelligence models can already produce news summaries and provide the all-powerful tech firms with influence over the type of news that we see. News organisations, both print and broadcast, are trying hard to innovate and adapt to this new age by providing product in more social media-friendly formats—video, podcasts and bitesize chunks of information—some requiring their journalists to act more like influencers than reporters.
What can be done to equip our society, especially the young, to critically understand the world in which we are living? Fostering informed scepticism would be a start. Knowledge and education are by far the best weapons against disinformation. Our report called on the Government to develop their own strategy for media literacy and not outsource this complex policy issue solely to Ofcom, especially given the need for cross-departmental action.
I therefore welcome the Government’s acknowledgement that Ofcom should not bear the entire burden, and that they are now considering how best to target the next phase of media literacy activity and complement what Ofcom will be doing under the updated Online Safety Act duties. Can my noble friend the Minister explain how media literacy will be given greater prominence across all subjects from a young age within the curriculum following the Francis review?
In their response to our report, the Government said:
“Media literacy is a crucial skill for everyone—especially in the digital age”.
It is therefore vital that our citizens are given the tools both to prosper from the opportunities offered and to withstand bad actors who seek to harm and disrupt society. Government and other public and private bodies, including tech and media companies, need to take responsibility for ensuring that media literacy becomes a tangible skill shared by all. As Ofcom has said,
“media literacy must be everyone’s business”.
Because this report has highlighted how important media literacy is, our committee has now embarked on a new inquiry into how it can be best achieved.
Lord Pack (LD) ( Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is both an honour and a privilege to be making my maiden speech. I give sincere thanks for the warm welcome I have had from noble Lords from all sides of the House, and from the attendants, doorkeepers, clerks and other staff, including those who put on the excellent induction programme for new Peers. In addition, both the clerks and my fellow Peers on the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee have been particularly kind in helping direct my interest in procedural detail in productive directions. I am grateful too to my noble friends Lady Featherstone and Lord Newby, who introduced me.
I know that, were it not for the dedicated efforts of thousands of volunteers from my party across the country to help it recover from previous setbacks, I would not have had the huge privilege and opportunity of joining this House. Many of those volunteers know me well from the email newsletters that I produce, with several million emails from me landing in inboxes each year. Stephen Bush of the Financial Times once said—and who am I to doubt him?—that I write the longest-running solo-authored political email newsletter in the UK. Whether or not he is correct, that is certainly a large part of how I became the first non-parliamentarian to be elected by members to be my party’s president—a record I have of course sullied a little since.
That long-running involvement in digital communications, and email in particular, is what also gives me a special interest in the role of email newsletters in the media landscape. As I am speaking about email newsletters, I should draw the House’s attention to my entry in the register of interests regarding the political email newsletters I write.
Credit should go to the Communications and Digital Committee for the excellent report we are considering today. As it rightly highlights, there are promising signs of the growth of email newsletters as a new form of local media. While traditional, local and even regional media has, as we know, often sadly been in decline, in recent years we have seen a wave of media innovation, with email newsletters springing up, often breaking important stories, with high-quality investigative journalism that is then even followed up by national and more traditional media.
Email has much to commend it as a method of directly conveying news to citizens who are largely insulated from the algorithmic dramas that have seen the prominence of news rise and fall on other digital platforms. Indeed, the need to avoid spam filters drives up quality, while in so many other mediums the equivalent pressures pull it down. The low starting overheads and flexibility of email make it well suited to supporting innovation in news coverage.
Email also provides an important insurance for journalists: the ability to move their audience, if necessary, from one supplier to another, rather than being locked into dependence on any one digital firm whose priorities or preferences may take a sudden or unexpected turn. I therefore hope that, as the committee, this House and the Government continue to consider our news landscape, a particular focus will be given to how best to support the growth of these new forms of local journalism, especially as the committee’s report wisely highlights the question of where revenues from public notices advertising can flow, along with related issues such as the way basic information about our court system is often available only to those who can afford expensive legal logins, rather than to this new generation of email-based local journalists and start-ups.
I hope too that, having joined your Lordships here, I will be able to contribute to the House’s work on topics such as those we are discussing today. I look forward to listening carefully to, and undoubtedly learning much from, noble Lords across the House. It is and will remain an honour and a privilege to have the chance to do so.
Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords. I feel as if I am also making a maiden speech, in that it is some four months since I have been in this House while doctors have been testing me for various ailments. They have now come to the grand conclusion that I must have, or have had, some kind of Covid, but it will probably work its way out of my system. I must say that I belong to a generation where you went to Dr Wiley, he gave you a good bottle and that was the end of it—but I am grateful for the treatment I have had.
I am also grateful for the opportunity to thank my noble friend for that excellent maiden speech. It is interesting, and it might be a bit of encouragement to him, that I came into this House at the age of 52, and one of the great benefits of it was that, almost overnight, instead of being crippled by middle-aged angst, immediately I was “young Tom” again. My noble friend will have to accept that he will be thought of as “young Mark” for some time to come. It means that they forgive you quite a lot.
The other thing that my noble friend’s speech brought out, which I think is the real benefit to this House, is that he mentioned his blog, his newsletter and his mastery of the new communications. I think that is what he is. He is a communicator, and he has already passed the first test of anybody who takes the executive side of a political party in that under his chairmanship the Liberal Democrats achieved their best party representation, certainly since back in the old days of the pre-war Liberal Party. I worked for 10 years at the political headquarters. The rough rule is that the leader of the party wins elections and the head of the administration loses them. I think my noble friend has made a crack in that, in that I think everybody knows that the success of the Lib Dems in the last election was in no small measure due to the efficient machine that he created for the party. I suspect that that kind of eye to detail and delivery is going to benefit this House in the months to come.
Looking at the Opposition Front Bench, there is a familiar face, and of course there is the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, is in her place. I have had only one session under her chairmanship, so I am not sure yet whether she is in the strict disciplinarian role of her predecessor. I can tell the House that the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, used to frighten the life out of me.
I see that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is in his place. I want to use the time I have available to suggest that having groups which believe in a government-controlled press and of those who are fighting for a free press is really a waste of time and energy at a time when the future of news is under threat from far more powerful forces than suggested by that squabble. I think that an effort should be made by the press itself and by those of us who criticise it. I am a strong supporter of Hacked Off, and I think it has done a good job on the issue of press credibility. It is interesting that in the 20th century there were three royal commissions on the press, and all of them highlighted the problems of press behaviour.
I was brought up in the old Guardian view that
“comment is free, but facts are sacred”.
However, the truth is that part of the strategy now of certain sections of the political sphere is that they feel they can undermine that concept of facts being sacred. That is why we should be making common ground.
On the attacks on journalists, for a number of years in the 1980s and early 1990s, I used to be invited to the Press Awards dinner. During that dinner, there was always a pause to remember journalists who had been killed in active service in the previous year. The grimmest thing about that was that, long before I was left off the invitation list, that pause for the list of journalists who had given their lives in the cause of journalism grew longer and longer. In the last few years, we have seen journalism in danger in many places—in some cases from intimidation and in others from direct attacks on lives.
There is an opportunity here. We are in an age almost like that of the invention of the printing press. A whole new strategy will be needed. As the overlap between old print media and electronic media increases, I am not sure we will be able to keep those divisions.
I worry about Ofcom being the receptacle for all suggestions of new responsibilities. There is a bit of a threat of overburden.
Lastly, I am in favour of SLAPPs being dealt with, but it is an amazing piece of barefaced cheek that the press barons should squeal at economic power being used to intimidate them when that has often been their stock in trade over the years. We must, if we are to deal with SLAPPs, also deal with press abuse and intimidation of the ordinary citizen, who quite often finds it impossible to deal with.
Before my Chief Whip hauls me down, I can say only that I have enjoyed my time. This committee will, I suspect, not have royal commissions in the future, but it is important that it continues to ask the right questions and push the right arguments. I have every confidence that we will, and it is nice to be back.
Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)
My Lords, I begin by welcoming back the noble Lord, Lord McNally, both to this House and to the committee. Having heard what he had to say about journalists, I must declare my interests as chairman of the Financial Times complaints committee and a long-time journalist.
Yesterday’s front pages provided a typical snapshot of the variety on offer in UK newspapers. Stories ranged from the latest skirmishes in the trade wars to those in the real war in Ukraine. There were selections of photographs of the royals—largely, the young ones—and, on the front page of one national paper, a snapshot of a grinning MP for Clacton proclaiming:
“I’ve got a … chance to be PM”.
That was the Daily Telegraph. We should still be concerned about who might own that newspaper in the future.
For those who are still consumers of traditional national media, there is still plenty of variety on offer. There are reasons to be concerned about its prospects—not merely financial but what changes in ownership might mean for its political leanings—but at least it is there.
In her introduction, the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, explained some of the reasons why we should be fearful. Government intervention may be able to help, most notably on the issue of copyright. As AI becomes ever more prevalent, protecting the rights of those who generate original content is essential. Could the Minister assure the House that the Government will do this and will not be cowed by the power of the big tech companies? We heard chilling evidence in our committee of how the big companies can direct advertisers away from new and upstart news media because of their sheer power. Their power to intimidate government is something the Government must stand up to.
The independence of news is another issue in which the Government have a role. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, was absolutely right to stress the weight of the task now landing on Ofcom and the need for it to have all the resources it possibly can to deal with that. Independence is crucial.
I therefore stress the importance of the work the committee did and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, for her indefatigable and strong leadership. It got us to the place we needed to be. The staff were fantastically helpful, and I congratulate them too. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pack, on a very interesting maiden speech. However, with only four minutes, I better get moving.
The area I really want to concentrate on is local news, because that is the area in which there is already a real desert. As many voters prepare to go to the polls on 1 May, they have no idea of what is going on in local politics because it simply is not covered any more. The news deserts mean that, according to the Media Reform Coalition, in 2023 over 2.5 million UK citizens lived in local authority areas without a single local newspaper. The situation is going to get worse.
While online publishing will fill a bit of the gap, we need strong, physical journalism. Local politics has to be reported. The reason a physical paper is essential is that it has longevity and is something that everybody can have access to. The importance of strong local news coverage was recognised by our committee, and we made several recommendations to the Government. Could the Government tell us whether they will do anything, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, asked, to reinstate some sort of business rates incentive for local news offices? Could they also, while not putting too much obligation on the BBC, extend what it already does with the local reporting service to have an obligation towards local news? I ask the Minister if she will consider that.
The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, I welcome this timely report and this debate. The themes of the report—ethics, truth, access and trust—are of vital importance to the Lords spiritual, as I know they are to all Members of your Lordships’ House. My right reverend friend the Bishop of Leeds was part of the committee that produced this report, and he sends his apologies that he is unable to be in the Chamber today. I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pack, on his fascinating maiden speech on email newsletters and new forms of communication, and I welcome him very warmly from these Benches to this House.
I have had an interesting response to the report, as I have read it today, and it has really been appreciative of the wonder of living in an age in which, at any hour of the day or night, it is possible to learn what is happening anywhere in the world. I think that is amazing. We are able to access unfolding events, combined with thoughtful commentary and analysis. This week, the world has rightly been paying tribute to Pope Francis, following his death on Monday, for his humility, humanity and courage. Within minutes of the Pope’s death on Monday, we had not only the news that he had, sadly, died but appreciations of his life, comments from world leaders, analysis of his many achievements and a sense of one single news story across the world. The same is true day by day, minute by minute. This report has helped me see afresh the living miracle of the 21st century news environment. So I join others in paying tribute to the media reporters and technicians who devote their lives to public service and good journalism.
The report is, of course, right that the news ecology is evolving and needs tending carefully by government and others. I will stress three of the recommendations as particularly vital and important. The first is the importance, as others have said, of nurturing and supporting the local alongside the global—essential for building resilience, participation and cohesion in communities. I particularly draw attention to the importance of local radio. I welcome the Government’s response and the news of the forthcoming local media strategy, and I too ask the Minister when that strategy might be available. Will it help in particular to arrest the decline in BBC local services that we have seen in recent years?
The second is to highlight recommendation 14: the suggested development by the BBC of a public interest generative AI tool, in partnership with others, to access reliable and authoritative information. This would be a really historic and strategic development to ensure a trusted source for the deployment of generative AI as a complement to commercial and multinational services. It has been suggested by other bodies that this recommendation does not feature in the Government’s response, and I wonder whether the Minister can offer a comment.
The third is to underscore the vital importance of building media literacy among every section of the population, not only the young, as the news media changes and evolves—that is recommendation 37(4). It was good to see the Government’s very full response to this recommendation through a number of different strands. Can the Minister offer an update on the progress of the media literacy review and the place of media literacy in the schools curriculum and assessment review?
We are privileged to live in an information age, which will continue to evolve. We need government to remain vigilant in cultivating this news ecology and diligent in equipping all citizens to navigate this world well. I welcome this report.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am glad to follow the right reverend Prelate and to contribute to the debate on this excellent report. I was also glad to listen to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Pack, the author of 101 Ways to Win an Election, which sadly was published after I had finished fighting elections—that is perhaps 100 more than I ever discovered. I will come back to that point in a minute.
I want to talk about how the media merger regime is to be amended to reflect the substantial changes in how the public access news, which is very well illustrated both in this report and in Ofcom’s report published last year. With colleagues on a cross-party basis—this did in fact include the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in the past—we have for several years argued that the public interest test for media mergers was out of date and needed to be updated. It was therefore very welcome that, in response to Ofcom’s 2021 review, the Government published last November a consultation proposing that the media merger rules should be updated.
A key proposal in the Government’s consultation is to change the definition of “newspapers” in Section 58 of the Enterprise Act to read:
“a publication which … consists of or includes news-related material which is subject to editorial control”.
“Published” would include online publication and “news-related material” would mean
“news or information about current affairs, and … opinion about … news or current affairs”.
Being “subject to editorial control” is defined as being
“if the publisher has editorial or equivalent responsibility for … its content (which may include commissioning it), … how it is presented, and … the decision to first publish it”.
The DCMS consultation states that
“online news aggregators (for example, Apple News or Google News) will not be treated as newspapers”
as they
“do not have ‘editorial control.’ In particular, they are not responsible for the commissioning of the news that they republish nor the decision to first publish the news”.
The committee had only a few days to consider this, but in paragraph 101 it recommended that
“the Government works with Ofcom to set out plans and timelines for capturing online news intermediaries within the scope of the media ownership rules”.
That was clearly justified by reference to the evidence it received. For example, it reported that Apple News top stories were
“chosen by human editorial teams based in each global region where the service was offered”.
That is a clear example of editorial control over news and, indeed, the algorithms driving news content online. We know that four in 10 adults who use online sources for news report using these news aggregators.
In response to the report, the Government said:
“Capturing news intermediaries, including social media platforms such as Facebook or X … could bring … a very large number of enterprises”
into the scope of the media merger regime.
At a very helpful meeting that we had with Minister Peacock at the department in December, a group of colleagues and I explained that focusing only on news aggregators that have editorial control functions, as compared with those that simply offer user-generated or moderated content, would narrow the scope of that test dramatically. News aggregators such as Google News or Apple News play an increasingly important role: they attract higher trust rating than other online sources, enable users to access the news of the day from a range of sources, and regularly decide what is the most significant news of the day.
Agenda setting, as I know very well from running past national election campaigns—as the noble Lord, Lord Pack, will recall—is no doubt one, or perhaps many, of his 101 reasons why you win an election, because you control the agenda of the election. Determining the agenda of the day is a significant news matter. In future, news aggregators will increasingly be making that crucial decision: what are the top stories today? I argue that the control of such enterprises should be brought in the scope of the public interest test on media mergers, and I hope the Minister can tell us that the Government will be willing to reconsider that when she updates us on the media merger regime.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, not only for the excellent way in which she introduced this debate but for the tremendous job she did in chairing the Communications and Digital Committee. She led with energy and purpose, which was much appreciated by us all.
This is a critically important debate that goes to the heart of the future of democracy. A healthy democracy needs voters to be informed and engaged; instead, we are seeing a significant rise in news avoidance, significant disengagement with news among some demographics, and lowering levels of voter turnout.
During the work on this report I was most struck by the decline in local news, which others have mentioned, and the committee makes a series of important recommendations to tackle this. The growth of local news deserts is alarming. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, said, in too many areas voters next week will be going to the ballots almost blindfold. The absence of local professional journalism means local politicians not being held to account, a lack of transparency and an absence of channels for candidates to promote their policies. Instead, voters are reliant on social media. We know that these are the platforms for echo chambers and pile-ons, not reasoned debate. Voters are vulnerable there to simplistic populist policies that do not bear scrutiny. I therefore welcome the DCMS local news strategy and urge it to act robustly and with urgency.
I strongly encourage your Lordships to watch the latest TED talk by Carole Cadwalladr. Her previous talk blew the lid on Cambridge Analytica and the massive, widespread harvesting of Facebook data that then allowed social media to be used to influence voters in the Brexit referendum and other elections. As a result of that talk, she suffered a SLAPP at the hands of Arron Banks. I strongly support what our report said on SLAPPs and urge the Government to reconsider their position on a legislative solution during this Parliament.
Cadwalladr’s latest TED talk is brave and names the “coup” by the “broligarchy” in Silicon Valley. The tech bros have been given the freedom to make untold riches out of harvesting our data in exchange for loyalty to a President who has said that the press are the enemy of the people.
When the committee visited Silicon Valley, Meta was clear: news is too much trouble for it, so it is not servicing it to avoid paying for it. Now Meta in the US has abandoned fact-checking. X would not see us. Google is doing deals with news providers, as is OpenAI. I support what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said about news aggregators.
Cadwalladr reminds us in her talk that all these businesses are based on data harvesting. Their surveillance is extreme and they undermine our privacy. They have the infrastructure of totalitarianism, and the White House is freeing them up to do as they see fit. These are also the platforms that, yet again, are destroying the business models of news—this time through scraping their content, training their AIs and then generating news algorithmically.
The committee is right to push the Government to do better on the vexed issue of copyright and AI. I wish Ministers well in negotiating a crucial trade deal with the US, but this must not be at the expense of children’s online safety, our vibrant creative sector or the viability of news organisations, both large and small.
We are at a moment in history when I genuinely believe that democracy is at threat through the erosion of professional journalism. We are not powerless. We must prioritise protecting the viability of news and ensure that informed, diverse debate is unmediated by unaccountable algorithms.
Lord Birt (CB)
My Lords, journalism takes many forms, but its solemn democratic roles are to investigate and surface hidden matters of consequence, to inform public debate on critical issues and to hold to account people and organisations exercising power. Here’s the rub: the most valuable journalism—real journalism—requires expertise, time and money.
I spent my whole career as a journalist on the front line, as an editor or, latterly, as the supervising executive of the most powerful and respected news organisation in the whole world. In my early career, I was editor of two of ITV’s major current affairs programmes, “World in Action” and “Weekend World”. “World in Action” had a formidable record in investigative journalism, and we were not alone; we looked across in admiration at our colleagues on the Sunday Times Insight team lifting the lid on the thalidomide scandal and many other stories. “Weekend World” assembled the best policy minds to provide searching analysis of the major issues of the day: Peter Jay, then Brian Walden, then Matthew Parris courteously interrogated the leading politicians of the day about those issues, often for 30 to 45 minutes and often with highly revealing results. Which of today’s politicians could withstand that?
Later in my career, painstakingly skilful “Panorama” journalists, such as Peter Taylor and John Ware, carried the investigative baton revealing unpalatable truths, often about sensitive events in Northern Ireland. All these well-funded ventures had in common large, talented and dedicated teams, and the luxury of time. As a senior executive in ITV, I led a study that showed that, at the time, ITV spent more in total on its regional news and current affairs programmes than on all its network programmes.
At LWT we had a local current affairs programme, “The London Programme”, devoted only to London issues, on which young journalists such as Greg Dyke and the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, cut their teeth. Its signature achievement was to expose rampant corruption in the Met.
The network and local broadcast journalism of today is a shadow of the world that I once inhabited. The BBC has been brutally cut back and the consequence is particularly painful for me to witness. The finances of ITV and Channel 4 are manifestly challenged, as are those of our leading broadsheet papers. As a result, we no longer have a sufficiency of penetrating, original journalism about the whole slate of issues and challenges that beset us and the wider world so starkly. In place of a sufficiency of rational, civilised dialogue, we have bedlam—the jabs, insults and fakery of social media. There are no easy answers to these problems, but one course of action is clear: the Government must do all they can to reinvigorate not just the BBC but all our public service broadcasters. And we have to consider an uncomfortable option. We invest public money in public goods—science, academic research, the arts and culture, defence, health and education. It is time, I fear, to think of investing public money, with appropriate safeguards, in supporting democracy with journalism of quality at national and local level, in print, broadcast and online media. We need to act before it is too late.
Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pack, on his excellent maiden speech. As well as having considerable content, it also had the merit of brevity, a quality much admired in your Lordships’ House. I declare an interest as the chair of IPSO, which regulates 95%, by circulation, of the printed press and its online manifestations. I also declare an interest as a lifelong news addict and an admirer of journalists. I welcome the attention that journalists and news are obtaining in your Lordships’ House today in this debate, as they did yesterday, when we were concerned with the danger that so many journalists run in doing their job. Last week, I visited Germany with my brother, a former journalist, to see the grave of my grandfather, a war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. He was killed on the, in the last months of the war.
The importance of news has never been greater and its reliability never more in doubt. I very much agree with the conclusions of this excellent report that we are in danger of moving towards a two-tier news environment. The intrusion of tech platforms, the drop in circulation of traditional newspapers, with the consequent fall in advertising revenue, and the often chaotic nature of the 24-hour news agenda have all played their part.
Regional news has been a particular loser. I and others at IPSO visit different parts of the United Kingdom where there are regulated entities, and the picture we have obtained is discouraging. A couple of weeks ago, while visiting the south-west, I spoke to a senior local journalist who has been working on various papers there for the last 30 years. When he started, 70 people were employed by his newspaper. There are now seven. There are virtually no subeditors and papers are put together by two or three journalists. Coverage of court proceedings, of local government affairs and of local elections inevitably suffers. These are matters of constitutional significance. There is nevertheless a considerable appetite for local news, as the emergence of hyperlocals illustrates. I welcome the suggestions in this excellent report for support for the regional press. The recent endorsement of their value by the Prime Minister, His Majesty the King and the Speaker were welcome. The latter spoke of the importance of NCTJ training, knowledge of the law and of the editors’ code, which governs complaints against the press and is the standard against which IPSO regulates.
As noble Lords might imagine, I should like to say a word about regulation. The first decade of IPSO has, I believe, shown that the model of independent regulation can contribute to accountable news content. Two separate independent reviews by respected former civil servants have confirmed this.
I do not pretend that we please all the people all the time. Some complainants think we are in the pocket of the press. The newspapers take a very different view. We have been accused of being captured by the transgender lobby by one, and another has said that we are providing ground-breaking guidance on the issue.
What we do is certainly transparent. I invite a visit to our website by the curious. It may be of interest if I tell your Lordships that the majority of the complaints that we receive that are within remit are resolved in the complainant’s favour, by an upheld complaint, a mediated resolution or an acceptable correction being published.
We have, however, come across a concerning trend: something called pink slime. IPSO was approached by a network of websites that were effectively churning out Russia Today talking points while purporting to be local news sites.
I endorse what others have said about SLAPPs and about the threat of AI, but I conclude by stressing the vital importance of good journalism and good, accessible news.
Baroness Fleet (Con)
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and I congratulate him on the work that he does at IPSO, which is much appreciated by newspapers. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Stowell on the excellent The Future of News report and her speech today. I declare my interests as set out in the register.
I am proud to have been a journalist in Fleet Street—indeed, I took “Fleet” as my title—and now in this place am honoured to speak up for my trade. It is a trade. My contribution to this debate is not an appeal for the nostalgic days of Fleet Street’s power and influence, which older Members will recall. Instead, I am raising the alarm about the threat to freedom of the press: the threat from lawyers, who are blocking promised legislation to protect this freedom.
Newspapers and the general media are the principal source of information to hold to account the Government, industry, the City and the powerful in general. Without a vibrant newspaper industry, there is no democracy. Everyone in this House will pay lip service to freedom of the press. I know they mean well, but it seems remarkably difficult to hold this Government to account when it comes to implementing protections vital for the freedom of the press.
I go further: it is Members of this House, the noble and learned Lords who sit in the Supreme Court and the lawyers and activist judges in the lower courts, who have consistently failed—with a few exceptions—to protect the freedom of the press, by allowing unscrupulous lawyers to use so-called SLAPPs, already referred to today, to defeat the exposure of their clients’ alleged crimes.
We are faced with a Government who, in opposition, supported legislation to remove the scourge of SLAPPs. They have reneged on that promise. Proposed changes to civil behaviour are simply not good enough. It is remarkable that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hermer, the Attorney-General, prides himself as a champion of human rights but apparently resists being a champion of journalists’ rights. Many journalists ask themselves why the Attorney-General took the brief to assert the rights of Gerry Adams to claim compensation, but throughout his career was never seen in court fighting for a free press. Human rights depend on a free press.
The same lawyers obsessed with protecting the rights of, say, Albanian rapists threatened with deportation, are not prepared to protect the freedom of the press. Lawyers have been all too willing to pocket the roubles of billionaire oligarchs often linked to organised crime. Exactly what is happening to the rule of law in this country, when the Government are so passionate about advocating human rights and the rule of Strasbourg but ignore in our domestic courts the rights of journalists and newspapers?
At their best, newspapers hold the powerful to account. When I was editor of the Evening Standard, we exposed corruption in Ken Livingstone’s City Hall. Ken was enraged that anyone should challenge him. He went on television to call for me to be fired. We published; we were damned, but we won that battle. I doubt that newspapers could afford to take that risk today.
Outstanding investigations resonate for years; the wrongdoers are held to account, policy is influenced and politicians—when brave—change laws to protect the innocent. Fighting off complaints has become so financially onerous for newspapers that they prefer not to challenge wrongdoers. Courts have been repeatedly told to make it easier and cheaper for litigants to bring cases, but courts and the legal profession have resisted. Newspapers play a vital role in our democracy and must have the freedom to do so. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the committee and the chair on this important report, and my noble and very dear friend Lord Pack on his excellent maiden speech—I look forward to many more.
With the growth of social media, everyone is a pundit: individuals, Governments and terrorist groups. The challenges in news collection and delivery are manifold, and now bear an unbearable burden of a 24/7 news cycle, political and ideological bias, fast reporting with poor verification, and pundits or guests spreading unverified claims. For me, the most important issue is to ensure that there is a go-to, unimpeachable source, or sources, where we and the world can be sure that we are getting the dissemination of truth and facts rather than opinions and pundits. This is becoming an ever more challenging ambition, as budgets are cut and organisations bend towards popularity, “gotchas” and feelings.
Messages are now put out by so many bad-faith actors, or if not actually bad, just “My way is the right way”. As the report terrifyingly says in relation to young people, within the USA—and I am sure here too—some news outlets are
“increasingly preoccupied with younger audiences and their preference for ‘authentic’ content rather than ‘authoritative’ sources”.
I loved what the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said. I could weep for the reduction in funding for proper journalism. “Newsnight”, as brilliant as Victoria Derbyshire is—and she is brilliant—is a shadow of its former self. Discussion is not news, and it should be renamed “Discussionnight”.
We are seeing public discourse driven by heat, not light, and the media feeding a frenzy of the negative and the nasty, amplified by the Twittersphere. So much is fuelled by political posturing and shouting, echoed but often led by a disgraceful print media whose sole purpose appears to be to spread hate in order to sell newspapers—because, of course, hate sells.
Of course, I turn to the BBC. The world needs the BBC to be the truth sayer. Its strength is in the very fact that it is publicly funded. It has strong editorial standards and global reach, and it is often a beacon in the darkest corners of this earth. But even the BBC stands accused of bias, reporting errors and breaking news inaccuracies, and it needs to do better. We need to make sure it can and does continue to be that beacon and trusted source, because the importance of that cannot be exaggerated. The danger of the BBC becoming untrustworthy is that there will be a loss of baseline truth. It will be harder, if not impossible, to agree on facts. There will be a global fallout. The BBC is trusted worldwide and if it fails, others will fill the void, including hostile state media. Conspiracy culture would be fuelled, as would anti-media sentiment. Democracy itself becomes undermined as voters are less informed on reality and facts, and polarisation arises. We would lose one of the only powerful watchdogs we have, leaving powerful figures to be held to account less often.
On those powerful figures—and this is intended more for the Government or Governments and political parties than news outlets—I am worried about government and political control of the media, even in sending out whichever Minister to do the rounds according to the No.10 grid, let alone the “lines to take” methodology of saying nothing. It is a conformity and control that diminish our politics and access to real news, and it is this impoverished discipline that makes people turn away from real news to feelings—and that way lies madness.
Lord Gilbert of Panteg (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Stowell both on introducing this excellent report and on her very successful tenure as chair of the Communications and Digital Committee. Under her leadership, the committee has produced several significant reports on the creative industries, the media, and digital technologies and their regulation. I declare a former interest in that I professionally advised Daily Mail and General Trust—a role that ceased last year.
It was a privilege to precede my noble friend as chair of this committee. In reading this report, I was struck by some consistent themes of its work over the past decade. The committee is right to worry about how our news media will survive, let alone thrive, in a polarised world where we have allowed a small number of platforms to be dominant and to develop addictive, monopolistic business models. However, the report is also right to be cautious in its recommendations; in particular, it is right to be hesitant about the role of government and the extent to which it can intervene in the industry.
I want to focus on just two areas: first, platform dominance and product design; and, secondly, the related issues of our polarised society and trust in the media and institutions. It is clear that our news media organisations have faced powerful headwinds and have struggled to adapt to change. In many ways, the Conservative in me would say, “Well, what’s the problem? If an industry is out-innovated and better products emerge, and businesses fail to adapt, then they will die and something better will take their place”. However, that is not what is happening, because, for free markets to work, we must be sure that dominant players do not abuse their position and stifle competition, whether that is through the behaviour of a small number of platforms gatekeeping access to the internet, which keeps news organisation from building direct relationships with their readers; through opaque, changing algorithms that leave publishers unable to see how their content has been ranked and served; through lack of a complaints process, which leaves small and local publishers in particular unable to seek redress if they think their content has been unfairly treated; or through Google’s dominance of online advertising on both the supply and demand sides, which we have allowed to happen and which is at last being called out in the United States, where, in a landmark judgment, Google was found to have
“engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts to acquire and maintain monopoly”.
Now, it is in the debate about AI and copyright law, where, again, we are failing to address the issue of dominance. What is happening in reality, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out, is that AI summaries head search results. They are based on content scraped—some might say stolen—from copyrighted material. Creators—in this case, professional journalists and news publishers—are neither remunerated nor even credited on the face of the summary. The creator does not get any credit or reward for their effort and investment. How can content creators possibly survive this? Can the Minister give an example of any other industry where this kind of exploitation is lawful?
However, it is not the fault of Google, Meta or any of the other big tech companies that these issues have not been addressed; it is our fault. Where we should have been focused on how these huge businesses stifled competition and created dominant business models and addictive products, we were focused on content and speech and how to regulate them. That is not, and never will be, the answer. We must focus now on dominance and design; the report is right to call for competition to be taken seriously. I hope that remedies such as interoperability, which was a key feature of liberating telecoms, and open banking, which has allowed new entrants to challenge in markets that were dominated, can be part of the set of interventions in this dominated market.
It is by tackling design and dominance that we will address the online harms we worry about. Tackling addictive products and abusive algorithms, with a real, muscular focus on digital literacy, will do a great deal more to deal with online harms than content regulation, kitemarking, ranking or trying to regulate speech.
One of the harms about which we worry most is increasing polarisation and intolerance, leading to online abuse. Polarised debate; accusing those we disagree with of peddling fake news or spreading misinformation; highlighting only differences while not acknowledging that, often, we seek the same ends and differ on only the means; wrongly labelling our opponents as extreme and delegitimising them; and calling out people with whom we disagree as, for example, far right—these are all behaviours that have contributed to polarisation and a breakdown in trust for which we cannot entirely blame the media. Indeed, a thriving and diverse news media, as well as free and vigorous but respectful debate, with a media literacy approach that skills young people to be sceptical and inquiring rather than cynical and untrusting, is the way forward and something for which we all have a responsibility.
Baroness Keeley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pack, on his maiden speech and on promoting the value of email newsletters. We certainly benefit from the Manchester Mill newsletter in Greater Manchester, which is delivered to 57,000 people, after being developed by independent journalists.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, the committee and the staff team working with them on all the work they have done, on selecting the future of news as an inquiry topic and on the report that has been produced. As the committee’s report points out, the stakes are high because having informed citizens with a shared understanding of facts is vital to democratic participation, but we know that that is under threat.
I agree with the comments by the noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell and Lady Fleet, and my noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth about the importance of legislating on SLAPPs. I know that the committee agrees on the importance of that happening—and I understand that we will return to it—but we hope to see movement from the Government on that.
Many indicators for the news sector are not encouraging, as we have heard in this debate. Trust in the news has fallen, and that fall continues; news avoidance is rising substantially; and there are news deserts where no local news is published. The committee’s report on the future of news provides a backdrop to our committee’s new inquiry on media literacy. It explored the topic of misinformation and disinformation, which is now being explored further by the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee in its current inquiry on social media, misinformation and harmful algorithms. It is vital that we hear what measures might be needed to prevent new technologies from driving social harms, such as the summer riots of 2024.
We know that enhancing media literacy is key to improving societal resilience to misinformation and disinformation. During the inquiry on the future of news, the committee raised issues with Ministers, including a 2023 report by the LSE that found the previous Government’s media literacy plans were characterised by
“fragmentation, duplication, administrative burdens and limited co-ordination”.
In response, the Minister, my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch, agreed that lessons needed to be learned by the Government about their funding initiatives for media literacy that were not universal, and she agreed that we need a comprehensive strategy.
The Minister also made clear that part of that comprehensive strategy is about making sure both that education takes place in schools and that we educate adults to distinguish between respected news providers and those trying to imitate them and distort the news. The committee feels that we need action on that and, given the high stakes, we need to act quickly. Our media literacy inquiry seeks to address the question posed by the Government in their response to the Future of News report: how can the Government best target the next phase of media literacy activity? Our aims are to establish a clear vision for achieving good levels of media literacy across the UK population; to clarify the roles and responsibilities of the Government, regulators and the industry; and to identify and prioritise key actions from each of those to enhance media literacy skills across the UK.
The committee’s report, The Future of News, also highlighted the fact that the ongoing curriculum and assessment review creates an opportunity to ensure that media literacy is given the time and prominence in schools that it needs. I hope that our current inquiry will build on that point and assist Professor Becky Francis as she completes the next stage of her review.
I ask the Minister today whether she will support the call for changes that embed media literacy across the curriculum. There is clearly substantial room for improvement in media literacy levels in the UK. We find ourselves ranked 13th in the Open Society Foundations’ 2023 media literacy index, a drop from 11th and 10th in the indexes of the previous two years. Only 45% of UK adults are now confident that they can judge whether sources of information are truthful, and only 30% feel confident judging whether the content they see is AI generated.
The evidence we have received so far, as was identified in The Future of News, has emphasised the importance of media literacy in building the resilience of the population to the risks posed by the online media environment. I look forward to updating the House on the committee’s findings once our inquiry concludes later this year.
Baroness Cash (Con)
My Lords, I, too, welcome the report and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, on her chairmanship of the committee and the members who have done a lot of hard and meaningful work to deliver it. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pack, on his maiden speech and look forward to hearing many more.
It is timely that we are having this debate, particularly as the Government’s consultation on a significant section of it—the scraping of data by AI—closed in February. There are not too many issues on which the BBC and the Daily Mail agree, but this is one, and I am pleased to welcome the considerable cross-party consensus on this issue. The noble Lord referred to the fact that copyright should not be any less meaningful in the context of these industries than it is in others.
A few weeks ago, the Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine used her column to talk about the AI scraping issue. Like all good writers, she chose to show rather than tell, and quoted a conversation that she had had with a friend, who had been playing around with ChatGPT and asked it to give Sarah Vine’s views on a series of subjects. The ensuing column was highly entertaining, as her pieces so often are, and she used the point well to illustrate how vulnerable she and all other journalists and news organisations now are as their original material—their hard work, their unique creativity and their livelihood—is being hoovered up to train machines without any credit or compensation.
While we debate, that continues to happen every second. AI companies are scraping the web for millions of words, images and music beyond the news industries, often without permission and to the increasing alarm and detriment of the UK’s phenomenal £125 billion creative industries. We absolutely need to have stronger copyright laws. While we do not yet know what the outcome of the Government’s consultation will be, it is important that we make sure that the right legal protections exist going forward and that they can be enforced.
The initial proposal for an opt-out rather than an opt-in system is simply not fair. As Justine Roberts at Mumsnet said, it is like asking homeowners to defend against burglars. It is not the right way round; the law exists to protect and should do so in this context. We also need to see the licensing agreements between entities, such as Mumsnet and the AI companies that are scraping their data, to protect them. At this moment, Justine Roberts, on behalf of Mumsnet, is suing Open AI in a David and Goliath piece of litigation that she should not have to be doing. I am pro-business and pro-AI, but I am not pro-theft, and we have to put in place the right legislation to stop this.
To be honest, I thought that Sarah Vine might be exaggerating in her column, so I thought that I would play around a little with ChatGPT. I said this morning, “ChatGPT: tell me what Sarah Vine would say about the House of Lords”. This is the answer I got in the voice of AI Sarah: “Yes, it’s a bit mad. Yes, some of them looked like they were embalmed in the Blair years, but I’ll take a sleepy old Lord with a copy of Erskine May over a gobby Back-Bencher on GB News any day. The House of Lords isn’t perfect, but it is our last line of defence against the political toddler tantrum that is modern democracy”. Long may your Lordships grumble, and please let us ensure that we protect this industry.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is hard to follow a speech that mentions “gobby Back-Benchers” without taking it personally. First, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and the committee for such a thought-provoking report. The variety of new material and the wide array of witnesses and opinion show a recognition that the evolving news media landscape requires a certain openness, even humility. None of us has ready-made solutions to present challenges. I have made copious notes about the report, but in just a few minutes I will raise some issues that might need further exploration.
In chapter 7, on dis- and misinformation, many witnesses raised unease about mission creep and how these elastic terms are often weaponised to denigrate viewpoints subjectively judged as wrongthink or harmful. This has led to accusations of partisan one-sidedness. Official fact checkers have not helped. BBC Verify has had, to say the least, a chequered career, and it certainly has ideological blind spots.
Since the report was written, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that the company’s third-party fact checkers were politically biased. The leaked Facebook papers and X files have showed that politicians pressurised new media outlets to label factual, if inconvenient, truths as misinformation as a precursor to censorship. No wonder Spiked’s editor Tom Slater was so forthright with the committee, calling the new anti-disinformation industry a new “anti-dissent industry”. Do not get me wrong: I am not complacent about allowing untruths to go unchallenged, but I am not sure that fact checkers or indeed media literacy is the answer.
Ironically, the perceived inconsistency of the mainstream media’s factual gatekeepers has fuelled a broader cynicism about whom to believe and expertise of any sort. Interestingly, some of the more effective counters to this are coming from within alt media’s ranks. What does the Minister think of community notes on X or Meta, for example? What does she think of author Douglas Murray’s intervention when he went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to challenge him directly for a disregard of due diligence on guests on Israel and Ukraine? This has led to the “Podcastistan” pushback and debate on the dangers of ill-informed opinion presented as fact, led by fellow podcasters such as Konstantin Kisin and Winston Marshall. There are hopeful signs of self-correction here.
Young people especially tune in to news-adjacent podcasts, as they feel ill served by mainstream news. So chapter 6, on serving a diverse range of audiences, was key for me. I have one concern: a call for more diversity in the media can be confusing, as the term has become politicised and interpreted through the prism of identity politics. It hardly ever considers class, and diversity of viewpoints is even rarer. It is one reason why new market entrants such as TalkTV and especially GB News are snobbishly dismissed and subject to some frankly hysterical attacks from journalists within the news industry. I recently read one criticism of GB News for its lack of diversity because it had given double the coverage to the rape grooming gangs than all the five news channels combined. This was used as an accusation, but perhaps it shows underreporting of a story that tens of thousands feel passionately about, and that their concerns about it are being ignored.
The report tells us that complaints to Ofcom have risen by 600% since the launch of GB News and TalkTV, and no doubt some of that is merited. But, although some will assume that that immediately equates to guilt, I have a warning: a new brand of anti-free speech activism is skewing perception. In February, the infamous NGO the Good Law Project delivered nearly 72,000 complaints it had collected to Ofcom about an alleged transphobic and Islamophobic joke made by GB News’ “Free Speech Nation” presenter Josh Howie. Without commenting on the specifics myself, I note that that complaint has been refuted by many leading lesbian and gay campaigners.
Yet another tranche of complaints about Howie’s comments were made directly to Ofcom, but, after an orchestrated online campaign featuring a misleading edited clip—misinformation—some media commentators gleefully reported and suggested that this means that it being the most complained about programme in Ofcom’s history is proof that GB News should be closed down. But the incident occurred on a comedy show, “Headliners”, where three comedians, including Howie, made jokes as they reviewed the papers—
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
I remind the noble Baroness that the advisory speaking time is four minutes. Can she please wind up?
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
I am sorry; this is my last sentence.
It was no riskier, though funnier, than “Have I Got News for You”, which is often offensive but does not offend the metropolitan elite. We should not have two-tier regulation.
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox; I never know when I will be standing up. I too welcome and congratulate the Communications and Digital Committee and the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—the former chair of the committee—on their thorough and broad-ranging report. Fearing the time limit, I shall do it no justice in covering the challenges and opportunities it highlights for the future of news and the media more widely. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pack, on his maiden newsletter—sorry, speech.
I aim to summarise three areas in line with the report: my personal experience in the area of news digitisation; current challenges; and public sector broadcasting—which is a theme that has been recurring in the debate—namely, the BBC.
When I started to engage in mainstream politics 25 years ago, I was something of an outlier; I was a Sikh Conservative, and this brought me to the attention of the media, notably the BBC or, to be more accurate, the BBC Asian Network. I learned quickly that you have really only arrived if you have spoken to someone from the BBC. The respect for anyone, from an intern to a senior editor, who had a BBC pass was unsurpassed, for its history, standards and the trust placed in it by the public and the institutions reporting were unprecedented. It was the voice: Auntie.
However, the emergence of social media changed how and whose voices are heard, especially with the rise of Twitter, now sort of known as X. I started using Twitter in 2009. As the Mayor of London’s transport adviser, I had a myriad of policies, projects and initiatives to communicate, and the mayor had changes of mind quite regularly back then, so I had to make sure that I was on top of getting that message out. I saw Twitter as an ideal channel to broadcast on and to bypass the traditional media. In those very early days, I could consume some rather clear feedback, wanted or unwanted.
News digitisation has been turbocharged ever since then. News organisations and journalists face challenges from the pace of both technological and behavioural change, as society changes its wants and needs when it comes to news, and from the emergence of influencers. I refer to a new report, published this month by 5654 & Company and MessageSpace, titled Influence and Information, which dives into the media habits of Westminster. Unsurprisingly, it highlights that social media is the most popular media source among MPs. It concludes that 97% of MPs use social media every day—I wonder what the other 3% are doing—and highlights that more than three-quarters of MPs access digital news publications multiple times a day. That increases to 90% for MPs who were elected for the first time in 2024.
What does all this mean? Politicians are in a new era of digital news consumption and the news media will survive, but it has to evolve, and has evolved, in the digital era. Social media platforms will serve as the go-to aggregation services for daily news, but also for challenges to traditional news sources, such as influencers and new disruptive media outlets. We can see the application of AI, content aggregation or even generative AI, as further challenges, but news is now interwoven with market-driven content and clicks monetisation, as well as the type of editorial control exerted on news.
I return to the BBC. Apart from how we consume, we must consider our media’s influence and its soft power. The BBC, as has been mentioned, has generally been considered the global bearer of the gold standard for public sector broadcasting, but its position as a trusted news source seems to have become disputed. Internationally, the BBC News brand still holds the kind of respect and authority that aligns with institutions such as our monarchy, but it does not feel at home in a more modern Britain, as the BBC News source becomes diminished.
I would like to focus my ask of the Minister on the recommendation on the process leading to the next BBC charter review. The committee’s report highlights the struggles of the anchor institutions such as the BBC, but let us unleash the BBC into the future digital news world, understand the challenges that it faces from disruptors, platforms and global news markets and help it to find its footing in the new world of news media, to digitally evolve faster, to remain valued and trusted at home and internationally.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I was a board member of the BBC for five years, until 2022. I do occasional work in the media, am a member of the UK Soft Power Council and write a weekly unpaid column for the Evening Gazette in Middlesbrough, near where I live. I do that because it is important to connect the work that I do in London with local communities and vice versa. Over the years, I have seen huge cuts in local news, which is a great worry to me.
This is a timely report. The world of news, broadcasting and reporting seems to be changing so quickly, as is the world around us. When I was travelling around the world as an athlete, the BBC World Service was a bit of a gem. I used to spend a lot of time in the States, where there was a complete lack of news. It was an antidote to the rolling news that they had there. I have frequently been told how much it is valued in terms of accessing reliable information. We should think carefully about how it remains impartial and separate from governments. It should never be a political tool. However, building a sustainable model for news is important, as is having accurate, clear reporting and reliable information.
I understand that the role of government is complex. I was on the board of the BBC when we spent many months debating over-75s policy, and we are not far away from the next licence fee negotiation. Maybe it is time to have a reset of that relationship. We also need to keep up to date with how young people access news. I am really concerned about the drop in trust that the report discusses. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, for her work and agree with her that authentic representation is essential.
In an age of misinformation and rapidly evolving digital platforms, media literacy is no longer a luxury but a necessity. I am really looking forward to the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, and the plans for the future, because it is essential that the skills required to navigate and critically assess information are embedded within the school curriculum. We must actively promote independent thought and critical thinking, particularly in how young people interpret and respond to information. A survey commissioned by the Student View discovered that 90% of UK teachers want media literacy to be included in the curriculum. According to the National Literacy Trust, over half of them believe that the curriculum does not equip children with the literacy skills that they need to identify fake news.
I use social media. It gives me a view, unbalanced, of the world. However, 68% of teenagers say that they use social media for news, while research by Ofcom in 2022 found that only one in 10 were able to tell what is real or fake. It also found that more than a third of children aged eight to 17 said that they had seen something worrying or nasty online in the past 12 months. Teaching students media literacy from a young age would allow them the tools to critically evaluate harmful posts by social influencers such as Andrew Tate.
While I welcome many aspects of AI, it also brings challenges, as others have said. The Internet Watch Foundation recently said that child exploitation is rocketing. Predators are becoming increasingly crafty, and 97% of those victims are girls. This is why we must be very careful about the future. I strongly support the committee’s recommendation that Ofcom work swiftly with platforms to align modernisation policies with its codes and the Online Safety Act 2023.
At times of crisis, we turn to what we trust, and we must trust our news. Independent, accurate news is more vital than ever before in a complicated and fast-changing world where spin, the potential for misuse of AI and those who wish to manipulate, can gain more power. Never has the future of news been more important.
Lord Young of Acton (Con)
My Lords, I begin by praising the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and the work of my noble friend Lady Stowell and the members of the Communications and Digital Committee for this report. I declare my interests as the publisher of the Daily Sceptic, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union and an occasional contributor to the Daily Telegraph.
Last week, I wrote to the Secretary of State at DCMS, pointing out that her duty to issue a foreign state intervention notice regarding interference in a UK newspaper by a foreign state has been triggered—it was triggered more than three months ago—and asking why she still had not issued it. Under Section 70A of the Enterprise Act 2002, as amended by the DMCC Act 2024, the Secretary of State must give the CMA a foreign state intervention notice if they have reasonable grounds for suspecting that, among other things, arrangements are in progress that will create
“a foreign state newspaper merger situation”.
The Enterprise Act sets out the conditions under which a foreign state newspaper merger situation is in
“in progress or in contemplation”
and, if any of those conditions are met, the duty to issue an FSIN is triggered.
One of those conditions, condition 4, is if a
“foreign power has the right or ability to direct, control or influence to any extent, the … policy or activities (in whole or in part, and whether directly or indirectly)”
of a newspaper. On 17 January, the Telegraph reported that RedBird IMI had given directions seeking to influence the operational and financial management of the Telegraph. The headline on that story read:
“Telegraph Urged to Slash Jobs and ‘Forget’ Sale as Abu Dhabi Fund Applies Pressure”;
and the first paragraph read:
“The Abu Dhabi Fund which holds the fate of The Telegraph in its grip has urged executives to make more than 100 redundancies to deliver stretching profit targets”.
Plainly, condition 4 has been met.
Why, then, has the Secretary of State not adhered to her statutory duty to issue a foreign state intervention notice to the CMA? The purpose of the amendment to the Enterprise Act 2002, which was made last year by my noble friend Lord Parkinson after pressure was brought on the Government by my noble friends Lady Stowell and Lord Forsyth, was to prevent foreign states influencing or controlling UK newspapers. That is exactly what the Telegraph reported was happening last January. The IMI part of RedBird IMI is owned and controlled by the Vice-president and Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE, and RedBird IMI is the entity attempting to influence the operations and financial management of the Telegraph. Why is the Secretary of State allowing this to happen, contrary to the will of Parliament?
One of the recommendations of the report of the Communications and Digital Committee is that the news sector needs to innovate if it is to survive. The Telegraph would dearly love to innovate and develop its digital offering, but it cannot do that until RedBird IMI allows a sale to proceed—which, thanks to the inaction of the Secretary of State, it is under no pressure to do. Her failure to act means that the Telegraph has been kept in a state of suspended animation, with executives unable to make vital strategic decisions about its long-term future.
Another area in which the Secretary of State has been dragging her feet, as my noble friend Lady Stowell said, is in making the secondary legislation setting out, among other things, what percentage of the shares in a UK newspaper enterprise can be owned by a foreign state. If Redbird is indeed separating from IMI, as newspaper reports have said, with a view to putting together a new bid, possibly involving IMI, it cannot do that until these new regulations have been made. The last Government opened a consultation about this secondary legislation on 9 May last year, and it closed two months later. That is more than nine months ago, but the Secretary of State still has not made the secondary legislation. She has not even said when she is going to make it.
The Secretary of State replied to my letter yesterday, and I thank her for doing so, but it was wholly unsatisfactory, arguing that because Redbird IMI’s interference in the Telegraph was not significant, her duty to issue an FSIN had not been triggered. In fact, the interference reported means that the threshold has been met. The Secretary of State needs to act before it is too late. The committee’s report is entitled The Future of News, and I do not think I am the only member of this House who thinks that that future will be pretty bleak if it does not include the Telegraph.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston for her chairmanship of the Communications and Digital Committee, for the report that the committee has laid before us and for the way that she opened this debate. I understand that another report is still to come stemming from her time as chairman, so I shall save the encomium for then, but she does indeed deserve the praise that noble Lords have levelled at her again today, as I know from my short spell on the committee as a member under her chairmanship.
I have not yet had the opportunity to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, on succeeding her, and I look forward to the work and reports that she and her colleagues bring before us. I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord McNally, back in his place. We have missed him.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pack, on his excellent maiden speech. It is always a pleasure to welcome a fellow political historian to your Lordships’ House. Noble Lords have noted some of the many books he has written. I know him through his supportive work for the Journal of Liberal History, which certainly puts me and my colleagues at the Conservative History Journal to shame—theirs appears quarterly and ours is only an annual publication. He may be surprised to know that I am an admirer and occasional reader of his email newsletters, although I should confess that I used to subscribe to them when I was in the Conservative Research Department and responsible for monitoring the Liberal Democrats. I was looking to make mischief, but it is testament to his political shrewdness that I was rarely able to do so on the basis of what he had written.
This report, and indeed my noble friend Lady Stowell’s speech, began by stating that the future of news matters, and I wholeheartedly concur. We live in a world where myths and disinformation are rife. Increasingly brazen autocracies peddle propaganda to their populations and consumers of news around the world. Social media here in the United Kingdom is leading many to believe outright lies and fake news, and rogue actors across the world use our news media to propagate their poisonous ideologies and threaten their rivals. As the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, says, the problem is not just bad actors but intolerant and closed-minded ones who do not want to give any space to opposing views or scrutiny.
As my noble friend Lord Gilbert of Panteg reminded us, there is a role for us all in the way we conduct public discourse. There is a role, too, for the work of media literacy. I look forward to the work that the committee, under the noble Baroness, Lady Keeley, will do in this important area. For my part, media literacy can be delivered through traditional subjects such as history, English literature and history of art, which encourage young people to be sceptical of the sources that they see before them. I look forward to the committee’s views on all this.
Over recent years we have also seen the rise of state-sponsored disinformation campaigns, especially from the Russian Federation, with the intent of destabilising democracies and undermining the rule of law. Noble Lords are right to have highlighted the injurious effect of SLAPPs, strategic lawsuits against public participation. I echo calls for the Government to continue to close the legislative gaps in this area.
Importantly, the committee’s report highlights that trust in news is declining and that news avoidance is rising. More people are either no longer believing the news they read, even when it is factually accurate, or simply declining to engage with it altogether. That should concern us all. The importance of accurate and reliable news cannot be overstated. It is vital to the functioning of a vibrant and robust democracy, to free and fair elections and to countering the pernicious rise of extremism, so there is a lot at stake.
The root causes of these issues are numerous. Part of the problem lies in the failure of social media firms to regulate the content they put on their platforms—something that the previous Government committed to tackling through the Online Safety Act, which I had the pleasure of taking through your Lordships’ House. We watch carefully as the provisions of that Act start to come into force, and all recognise that there is continuous work to be done in this area, which I hope the Government will continue.
But the problem runs deeper. The report rightly highlights the inherent risks of the consolidation of the world’s major technology companies, and how this is already beginning to
“upend news media business models and change the way people find information”.
That is not necessarily bad, of course. Media habits and methods of consumption have changed enormously over the years, from the printing press to the telegraph—with a small t—to online news publications. Each has brought with it disruptions and challenges, but also opportunities. It is how we manage those disruptions and seize those opportunities that is important. As my noble friend Lady Stowell said,
“a changing media environment should not be conflated with its imminent demise”.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Birt: we should look at what we have lost, as well as what we want to see in the future. He was right to mention with pride the long-form interviews of “Weekend World”. I am sure other noble Lords have enjoyed the recent TV drama “Brian and Maggie”, the dramatisation by James Graham and Stephen Frears of Brian Walden’s 1989 interview with my late noble friend Lady Thatcher. It makes for compelling drama, but it is rather depressing that such interviews are the stuff of drama rather than current affairs. I think the responsibility for that lies with politicians as well as with broadcasters.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act. The News Media Association has highlighted the possibility that the Government may review the implementation of that Act. Can the Minister shed any light on that? The Act, passed in the last Parliament, gave the Competition and Markets Authority enhanced powers to regulate digital markets. As part of it, the CMA has established a new Digital Markets Unit to address some of the anti-competitive and market-skewing behaviour that my noble friend Lord Gilbert of Panteg outlined. We understand the Government’s desire to reach new international trade agreements, but I hope they will proceed with caution in this area. The legislation that we passed was done to address some of the issues that noble Lords have raised in their contributions today and need to be watched very carefully.
Like other noble Lords, particularly my noble friends Lady Stowell and Lord Young of Acton, I will be grateful if the Minister is able to give us an update on the sale of the Telegraph and the secondary legislation we are looking for following the debates we had just before the general election. I sympathise, as I have said before, with the position she is in; it is a quasi-judicial decision for the Secretary of State to make but, as noble Lords have raised repeatedly, the fact that this is now being discussed in other news publications adds to the uncertainty for the staff and readers of the Telegraph. There is great concern about the importance of this and other daily newspapers in our very important media market. I look forward to any update the Minister is able to give us today.
It may be important to end on a positive note and hopefully to disprove the adage that good news is no news. Actions taken by the previous Government have made inroads in protecting our news media. The BBC remains the world’s most trusted news source, reaching a weekly global audience of 450 million people. On average, 75% of adults in the UK use BBC news in some capacity every week; that is quite impressive for a corporation more than a century old. It remains one of our most trusted and valuable institutions and can act as a welcome antidote to the poison of misinformation and foreign interference. I agree with my noble friend Lady Stowell, an alumna of the corporation and a constructively critical friend to it. It is important that the BBC and all our public service broadcasters continue to earn their status as anchor organisations.
I commend all those who work in our news media on the work they do holding the powerful to account, reflecting the diverse views of our increasingly fractious world and upholding the robust, independent and respected news sector, which is so important not just to this country but to our place in the world.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, I am honoured to respond to this debate, initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, on the report from the Communications and Digital Committee into the future of news, which I enjoyed reading. I thank the committee for its work on this important matter and add my tributes to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, for her leadership of the committee. I look forward to the debate on the subsequent report in due course.
I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions today. It is clear that we have a wealth of experience and expertise, as well as a range of views, across your Lordships’ House. I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Pack, on his excellent maiden speech. It is clear that the noble Lord has already made a considerable contribution to UK politics, which will continue in your Lordships’ House, as well as a significant contribution to online political media. As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, the noble Lord, Lord Pack, is a communicator. Journalism and communication are clearly the lifeblood of our democracy. The Government unequivocally support a free, thriving and plural media underpinned by high-quality journalism and a sustainable press sector that helps democracy and communities to thrive.
The noble Lord, Lord Birt, reminded us of the importance of investigative journalism—intense resource as it is—in the media landscape. As the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, stressed, news matters. This is something all noble Lords can surely agree on, as is the need for the media to be strong enough to hold politicians to account. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, for his television recommendation.
Rapidly changing media consumption habits continue to transform our media landscape. These trends are well documented in the committee’s report. It paints a challenging picture of news avoidance, declining trust, falling revenues and increased competition for attention from alternative and less reliable sources. The industry is responding to these existential challenges. Acknowledging principles of media freedom and independence, the Government are working to enable the framework in which the industry can thrive.
We are implementing vital legislation, and I acknowledge the work of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and others in putting it on the statute book under the previous Government. The Media Act will future-proof our public service broadcasting system and encourage innovation, ensuring that the UK public continues to reap the benefits provided by broadcasters. The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act will help rebalance the relationship between news publishers and dominant online platforms, which has been at the root of many challenges the industry has faced in recent years.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, on digital markets and independence, the Competition and Markets Authority is independent of government and will prioritise who it investigates through the new digital markets regime, in line with its principles and statutory duty.
The final thing to say on legislation brought in in recent years is that the Online Safety Act has safeguards to protect the press against takedown and other editorialising by platforms that host their content.
We are now focused on what more needs to be done. The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, highlighted the importance of local media. My noble friend Lord Knight referenced concern over news deserts. I am fortunate that where I live there are both online and physical newspapers covering the local area. I am also the proud aunt of a trainee journalist on another local newspaper, so I agree and understand how vital a vibrant local media is.
The Culture Secretary’s commitment to a local media strategy reflects the particular challenges facing local journalism. The closure and merging of newspaper titles, redundancies among local journalists and falls in print circulation risk leaving a democratic deficit in local communities. We saw what is at stake during the August riots. Recent DCMS-commissioned research, for publication in due course, explores the role that local journalism played in informing the public of events as they unfolded, helping to de-escalate tensions. Our strategy is intended to strengthen our local media in this vital role.
The noble Lord, Lord Pack, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Wheatcroft and Lady Stowell, asked specific questions around the local media strategy. The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, asked for more detail. We are engaging with industry and recognise the urgent challenge faced by the sector. Although we have not ruled out options for financial support, noble Lords will understand the challenging fiscal context. In response to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pack, we are also considering the role of public notices and the important role of the local press in holding local public services to account.
Numerous noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell, Lady Wheatcroft and Lady Cash, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, my noble friend Lord Knight, and the noble Lords, Lord Gilbert of Panteg and Lord Ranger, spoke about AI, tech platforms and the way in which the whole media landscape is evolving. Clearly, a significant challenge for local and national press is the evolution of technology and news consumption habits, including the relationship between news publishers and the online platforms through which citizens, including noble Lords, increasingly find their news.
Developments in generative AI bring opportunities but, clearly, also risk amplifying the challenges that this industry continues to face. Central to this is the interaction between the training of AI models and our copyright laws. The potential of AI to support human-centred creativity will open up new frontiers across a range of sectors, including the news media, which is central to our mission to drive economic growth and a key aspect of our plan for change. We also, however, recognise the key basic principle that rightsholders should have control over and be able to seek and receive payment for their work.
The Government, as a number of noble Lords noted, recently consulted on updating the AI copyright regime. We are engaging closely with stakeholders, and both the Minister for Media and the Technology Secretary have met recently with key press sector representatives to discuss the consultation. We want to ensure that actions taken forward provide certainty and strike a balanced approach to this issue. We recognise the urgency here, but it is important that we get it right. We will continue to engage extensively as we consider next steps.
My noble friend Lady Healy of Primrose Hill raised misinformation and disinformation, and I look forward to the committee’s forthcoming report on media literacy that my noble friend referenced. It is clear that developments in AI also heighten concerns about the risks of sophisticated disinformation, including from foreign states and hostile actors, polluting public discourse and undermining trust. That point was made by many noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Faulks, my noble friend Lord Knight and the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone. The Government take this seriously. We are acting to make it more difficult to spread false information online and to reduce its impact. The Online Safety Act is key to improving user safety across a variety of online harms and placing duties on platforms to remove illegal disinformation.
In relation to points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, there is a difference of view between where disinformation starts and ends and dissent begins. We may need to disagree on where the line falls, but to me, this disagreement itself represents a strength of our democracy.
In relation to the need for media literacy, which was raised by a number of noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Healy and Lady Keeley, the right reverend Prelate, and the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, we agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, that media literacy is not a luxury. As noble Lords will be aware, the Government have established an independent school curriculum and assessment review. The interim report of the review, published in March 2025, highlights the need for renewed focus on media literacy in response to evolving technological challenges.
We know that this is not just an issue among children. The Government are conducting research to help us target the next phase of DSIT’s media literacy work and ensure it complements Ofcom’s work under its Online Safety Act duties. But perhaps, if we are looking at a plural media landscape of the future, the best protection against the spread of misinformation and disinformation remains our news publishers and broadcasters. An independent and trustworthy press contributes to our national discourse and democracy, ensuring that the public can access fact-checked, accurate journalism. Therefore, we are also working to make sure that our media ownership rules are future-proofed. This means ensuring the media mergers regime reflects the changing ways in which people can access news and that foreign states should not own, control or influence the policy or operation of UK newspapers and news magazines.
I know members of your Lordships’ House were hoping for an update by today on two areas: first, on what level of exceptions to the new foreign state intervention powers in the Enterprise Act are required to permit sovereign wealth funds, sector pension funds or similar to invest up to strict limits; and, secondly, as referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on our plans to expand the legislation to allow the Culture Secretary to intervene in media mergers involving a wider range of print news publications, online new publications and news programmes.
The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, spoke in particular about online news and bringing this into the regime. It is right that the media mergers regime is updated to reflect the way in which the public are increasingly accessing news, which is online. We plan to publish a response soon and will lay the necessary SIs shortly thereafter. At present, the Government are focusing on the reforms to the media ownership rules suggested in Ofcom’s 2021 review. The review did not recommend that online intermediaries, including social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, should fall within the scope of this regime.
The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, as I fully anticipated she would, raised foreign state influence. I had hoped that it would have been possible for an announcement to be made by now. I appreciate how frustrating it is for noble Lords to have me give essentially the same response as during previous debates on this matter. However, we must ensure that we consider this topic carefully before proceeding. This matter remains a priority for the Government, and I will update the House very soon.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell and Lady Wheatcroft, the noble Lord, Lord Young, and others referenced the Telegraph sale. The noble Lord, Lord Young, referenced his correspondence with the Secretary of State in his professional capacity. I want to reassure your Lordships’ House that the Secretary of State is committed to seeing the Telegraph thrive and wants a sale that aligns with relevant public interest considerations, including free expression of opinion, accuracy of reporting and a range of views in newspapers. As noble Lords are well aware, the Secretary of State’s powers and duties in relation to media mergers must, however, be exercised in a quasi-judicial way after she alone has considered all relevant factors that have a bearing on the statutory tests and in order to confirm whether or not the necessary thresholds have been met. We cannot provide a running commentary on the sale and these discussions, due to the commercial sensitivities surrounding any transaction and the quasi-judicial nature of Secretary of State’s role.
I want to be very clear to the noble Lord, Lord Young, and your Lordships’ House that the Secretary of State’s letter in response to the noble Lord’s correspondence made it clear that it was an initial response ahead of today’s debate, out of courtesy. A letter of the length and nature sent to her by the noble Lord, Lord Young, would usually, as it definitely does in this case, require a substantially longer period to respond.
The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and others raised the BBC and charter review. As the media landscape undergoes the next generational shift, the BBC must also adapt and be supported to do so. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, about the importance of the BBC producing quality news, a point echoed by the noble Lords, Lord Ranger and Lord Parkinson. The forthcoming charter review is an opportunity to set the BBC up for success into the future. As a priority, this Government will start a conversation to ensure that the BBC represents and delivers for every person in this country.
As somebody who spends more time than I would probably like to admit listening to the radio, I also agree with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, about the role of the World Service internationally.
The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, asked where we might be going with the charter review. The Secretary of State’s ambition is clear in this respect: she sees the charter review as an opportunity to secure the BBC’s future for decades to come.
The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, also asked about Ofcom and the review of the Broadcasting Code. In the Government’s view, it is essential that news broadcasters are regulated effectively by Ofcom to ensure that broadcast news is duly accurate and impartial. Ofcom has an ongoing duty to keep the Broadcasting Code up to date. Following the judicial review that the noble Baroness referenced, Ofcom has announced that it will consult on changes to rules to restrict politicians from presenting news in any type of programme. That is a matter for Ofcom as the independent regulator.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Stowell and Lady Fleet, the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Parkinson, and my noble friends Lord Knight and Lady Keeley referenced the issue of SLAPPs and media freedom. It is also essential to have a healthy news ecosystem in which journalists can report without fear of abuse, threat or intimidation. We recognise concerns over the use of strategic lawsuits against public participation—SLAPPs—to intimidate, harass and silence journalists, and understand the very real financial and psychological impact that this has on victims.
Our immediate focus is on implementing the anti-economic crime SLAPPs measures in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. Our future approach will be informed by monitoring the operation of new procedure rules being implemented by the Civil Procedure Rule Committee so that future reform options are backed by evidence. We do not wish to legislate in haste, risking unintended consequences that could upset the interplay between the rights of access to justice and to free speech. We also continue to consider the issue of SLAPPs within the National Committee for the Safety of Journalists, which brings together stakeholders to discuss journalists’ wider safety issues.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulks, raised a number of points around press regulation; in particular, IPSO. Like others, I recognise his work in this area. Of course, with press freedom comes responsibility. We recognise the work that press regulators such as IPSO and Impress do to hold our press to account. This independent self-regulatory system is vital to ensure that the press adheres to clear and high standards.
I end by reiterating the importance of public interest journalism in our democracy. A free, fair, sustainable and plural press in an age of misinformation and disinformation is genuinely more important than ever. As politicians, we rely on and sometimes take for granted access to a wide range of views across media. We are among the most news-dependent—what the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, rightly described as “news junkies”. We forget at our peril the rise in news avoidance and should ensure that we work across party divides to fight mis- and disinformation, rebuild trust and find ways to ensure access to high-quality news for all.
I again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and the committee for the work that they have done in this regard. We are committed to supporting the future of news and the committee’s report is an excellent reminder of everything that is at stake.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, I am conscious of time and that there is another debate still to come. If I may say, very briefly, because the Government Deputy Chief Whip is in her place right now, I am hugely grateful to the Government for scheduling these debates today in the Chamber, but she may have heard frustration in the last debate about the time available for contributions. She might want to consider, if we were to do a similar sort of exercise in future, whether two debates on a sitting Friday might be a more realistic way of accommodating this kind of debate—but I say that with all due respect and huge thanks for the time that has been allocated.
I am also very grateful for all the contributions to the debate. We have heard speeches from Members reflecting the expertise in the House, as well as the expertise we have been able to enjoy on the committee and which the committee continues to enjoy.
I welcome back my noble friend Lord McNally—I call him my noble friend as both a noble friend in the past and during our time on the committee. He blew a bit of a hole in some of the euphemistic tributes that were paid to me by others by describing me as rather strict in my term as chair, but I am very grateful for all the kind remarks about me and the committee’s work. I restate what I said at the beginning: it was a real pleasure to chair the committee.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pack, on his great maiden speech and the emphasis that he put on email newsletters. They are important, not just to local media but to national media. One thing which is worth us reflecting on is that the reason a lot of news organisations are now investing in these newsletters is because it reintroduces for them a direct relationship with their readers, and it takes out the aggregators—the platforms—that my noble friends Lord Lansley and Lord Gilbert referred to, in terms of the control that they exercise. I look forward to more from the noble Lord, Lord Pack, in the future.
Time prevents me from going through in any great detail all the various points that have been raised by other noble Lords. The Minister covered a huge amount of the points that were raised in her response to the debate, and I am grateful to her for that. I know that she is a diligent member of the Front Bench and takes her responsibilities in the department seriously. It is somewhat disappointing, though, that we leave this debate not much better informed about some of these important issues than we started, in terms of where the Government are going on SLAPPs, for example, or when they are going to come forward with their local media strategy. I was pleased that she was as positive as she was about the CMA and the digital markets legislation, and I am grateful to her for that, as I know those watching this debate will be.
On the issue of ownership by a foreign Government, as the Minister will know and as I said—and as restated by my noble friend Lord Young—time really is of the essence here as far as ownership of the Telegraph is concerned. It really cannot be left unresolved. As I said, I am pleased that there are signs of a potential deal coming to an end, but that secondary legislation has to be in place. Bearing in mind all that the Minister said in response to an Oral Question before the Easter break, I really thought she would have been able to give us some comfort that those regulations would be coming forward very soon. I urge her to go back to the department today and say, “Keeping on saying that this is complicated and requires more time is not good enough”. The Government have now had nine months to sort this out, and there does not appear to be any legitimate reason why they have not done so. Again, I am grateful to the Minister for her efforts, but I urge her to press even harder.
As I say, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions today.