Telegraph Media Group Ltd: Acquisition

Debate between Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord’s question gets to the heart of an important distinction: there are newspapers that have websites, there are websites that are news providers, and there are online services that are not principally news providers but from which people increasingly derive their news. It is right that we look at all those things. He is right that the Communications Act 2003 has served us well for the last 20 years but, as we said in our debates on the Online Safety Act, it was written at a time when the internet was in its infancy and did not look at it. Of course, we touched on that in the debates on that Act and will return to some of the points in the Media Bill. We will shortly consult on expanding the existing media mergers regime and the foreign state ownership provisions to include online news websites, and we will touch on other matters when we discuss the Media Bill.

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, it has been a long time since 1855 and the start of the Telegraph at the time of the Crimean War and when David Livingstone found the Victoria Falls. Can the Minister tell us how many owners the Telegraph has had in that time? He may wish to write to me. It was started by Arthur Sleigh as a way of airing personal grievances against the future commander-in-chief of the British Army, Prince George, Duke of Cambridge. We should have a sense of proportion. I thought Rupert Murdoch, Roy Thomson and Conrad Black—the noble Lord, Lord Black of Crossharbour—did not have British passports, and there was Max Beaverbrook and many others, so this is not something new.

However, I respect the way the Government have acted fast to block a loophole. I pay particular tribute to my noble friends Lady Stowell and Lord Forsyth. In my day as Secretary of State, it was my noble friend Lord Inglewood who handled all the impossibly complex issues around media ownership. The Lords questions were always so much more difficult than those in the Commons, so I could simply sail through. I believe that it is extraordinarily important for there to be transparency about media ownership—so can the Minister inform us who the real owners of the Jewish Chronicle are?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I will have to write to my noble friend on that and to give a precise number of owners of the Daily Telegraph since 1855, and of the Spectator, which is linked to this and older still. She is right to refer to a number of the foreign owners that there have been. We have made the distinction throughout between foreign Governments and foreign investment; it is important to underline that again. We have no problem with foreign investment in our media businesses, just as in so many other areas of our economy. The problem raised by my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston and a number of others was foreign government interference. They made it clear that they would have as much of a problem with the Government of the United Kingdom having influence over newspapers in this country. However, it remains true that the Daily Telegraph is the only newspaper that has produced an editor who also sat in Cabinet: Bill Deedes. It has a long history of representation in your Lordships’ House and the fine line between politics and the media, but it is important that we maintain its independence so that it can continue to hold Governments to account.

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise—I have received a text from the Father of the House of Commons, who says that I never declare my interests. For the past 10 years, I have been an unremunerated trustee of the Economist newspaper, where we went through a change of media ownership, which we took extremely seriously. I am delighted to tell the House that the Economist is as flourishing today as ever it was.

BBC Funding

Debate between Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, as the BBC is operationally and editorially independent, it is up to it to decide how it spends its settlement, but I know it will want to maintain its excellent reputation throughout the United Kingdom in representing and delivering an excellent service to people right across the British Isles, as S4C does in Wales, as the noble Lord says.

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

Will the Minister advise the Secretary of State that it would give greater veracity to her criticisms of the BBC if she refrained from commenting on party-political bias? That is the job of the party chairman. As Secretary of State, she is the sponsor for the broadcasting industry and I suggest she leaves criticisms of party-political bias to a different authority.

EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Debate between Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register and add my praise for my noble friend Lord Wharton of Yarm’s maiden speech. I greatly admired his activities championing the northern powerhouse. At that time, I had reservations about his referendum activities, but all that is behind us now. I feel most strongly that the time of mourning and looking back has gone. We have spent a year arguing with each other; it is now time, as the noble Lord, Lord King of Lothbury, said, to think what we are going to do for Britain. Brexit did not cause our problems and is not going to answer our problems: it is our combined efforts—civil society, the commercial sector and the Government—deciding what we are going to do with our economic, industrial, commercial and social fabric that can make us the winners that we so want to be. We need a great deal of positive energy in that.

I commend the Prime Minister. He said he wanted Britain to leave the EU and to negotiate a trade deal. He has done both these things in the timetable he set for himself and the country. Politicians are often accused of not doing what they say: in this case, he and his team deserve credit for delivering what he said he would. Whatever the quibbles about the agreement we have reached, things would be a great deal worse without it.

Let me move to the detailed question about what we are going to do about our industrial strategy. Forgive me, this is not a matter of Twitter wars or soundbites but of extremely knowledgeable, experienced people coming together to look at our priorities: academics, leading businesspeople and top-quality civil servants. I think it is time to reverse the balance: for campaigning, political skills are excellent, but now we need a much more hard-headed, cool-hearted, pragmatic, logical purpose. I hope we will see more people join the Government who have those skills—there are many of them in the Tory Party—and can take people with them and earn respect.

I particularly commend the activities of the International Chamber of Commerce. For many years, it has been unequivocally committed to global trade. Those who work with the ICC—I have been a director of the UK component for many years now—argue that we should reset trade relations, do trade differently and develop a trading strategy that includes climate, development, digital and foreign policy to deliver a more inclusive, sustainable and greener economy. So say I. We remain the world’s fifth biggest economy and have any number of settings where we can play our part, whether it is CHOGM, the G7 or COP 26, which will be a really exciting moment for us later in the year. We need to put a positive message of how we are going to put the past behind us and remain on extremely civilised terms with our European friends.

Of course, European Britain is part of global Britain, and constantly blaming the inadequacy or otherwise of the agreement will be exactly like when people complained that everything that went wrong in Britain was Europe’s fault. We need to stand on our own two feet. We need a degree of Margaret Thatcher’s bracing energy and positivism; no carping, constructive work and looking forward. Let me just say—have I got time?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

There was an error with the clock, but I fear my noble friend has had her two minutes.