Enterprise Act 2002 (Mergers Involving Newspaper Enterprises and Foreign Powers) Regulations 2025

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support the Government on this measure. I think that 15% passive ownership is perfectly okay. I very much support a lot of what the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said about the roles of proprietors. I have edited three national newspapers, so I know a lot about proprietors. Indeed, my last proprietor sold our newspaper to a man who had made his money out of Big Ones and Asian Babes. If that is considered a good way to pass things on, I would really question this.

A passive investment is perfectly okay and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, said, the power and influence of a newspaper is absolutely about the proprietor. The proprietor will appoint an editor who is more or less in line with them. If this investment is passive, the Government have done something valuable because we have a lot of problems in our press and with various things. For instance, the Independent is highly linked financially to Saudi Arabia. I declare an interest as Geordie Greig, the editor, is a friend of mine. We have discussed this endlessly. He says that you cannot find any influence of Saudi Arabia within his newspaper, and I agree. The fact that it does a Saudi Arabian issue is its business. I am not saying I like it, but it is making a newspaper, which many of us read, available free at the point of delivery, and all sorts of good things that are otherwise going to disappear.

Rupert Murdoch is a very complicated proprietor. A lot of the stuff to do with phone hacking is still not resolved. It is very rich of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, to say that everything is going to fall apart if we get some investment in the Telegraph. Proprietors have politics and they want things to be done their way. The Government have a right, indeed, a duty, not only to make sure that this passive investment is kept that way, but to look at the whole question of proprietors. Obviously, they are going to want influence, so it is very important that the Government carry on if this is going to be about general press and, indeed, media regulation, which looks also at online regulation. Heaven knows where the money for all of that is coming from.

We need to have very firm standards here. In the meantime, I thoroughly support what the Government are proposing today, and a fatal amendment against it would be a real mistake.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. She and I probably have not always agreed on everything, but I echo every word that she said today.

I have thought long and hard about whether to take part in this debate, but as it touches on two subjects very close to my heart—the sustainability of an independent free press and, in practical terms, the future of the Telegraph Media Group—I concluded that it would be irresponsible not to do so.

Let me declare my interests—and I mean that in the broadest possible sense. First, I hope that all noble Lords will recognise my unwavering commitment to press and media freedom, a cause that I have championed passionately for three decades. I have stood up consistently and robustly for it in this House, even when it has been deeply unpopular and unfashionable to do so, and I would never support anything that I believed would damage it. I stood almost alone in opposing the imposition of statutory controls in the Crime and Courts Act 2013, and what became Section 40. I campaigned for 11 years for its repeal, in the teeth of opposition from the Liberal Democrat Benches. I note with some irony, given that they have such a track record, that they are putting forward this fatal amendment today in the name of press freedom, and we should not fall for it.

Secondly, I have worked for the Telegraph Media Group for exactly 20 years this September, which is half my working life. I love the Telegraph, and the protection and promotion of its safety, security, editorial independence and freedom, and sustainability are etched into my DNA. I would never do anything to compromise that, and I declare my interest as its deputy chairman. It is for both those reasons, philosophical and practical, that I make these few remarks.

The news publishing industry in the UK does face— I will be the third person to say it—an existential crisis. We all know the reasons: the impact of digital and the voracious appetite of unaccountable, unregulated platforms have put enormous pressure on the revenues of all publishers. Tragically, many titles have closed, particularly in the local press, with thousands of reporters’ jobs lost. The future of many others hangs in the balance, and the analysis put forward by my noble friend Lady Stowell is absolutely spot on. The implications for our democracy are profound.

The situation has been made worse by the decisions of this Parliament; in particular, the data Act, which we have, with some reluctance, just passed. While publishers are fighting hard to remodel their businesses and build new revenues, the exponential growth of AI, unrestrained by effective copyright law, threatens the very future of all news brands, as I have pointed out with perhaps monotonous repetition in this House.

Artificial Intelligence: News Media

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of artificial intelligence on the sustainability and reliability of the news media.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare my interest as deputy chairman of the Telegraph Media Group.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

Trustworthy journalism plays a vital role in our democracy. Rapid recent developments in generative AI pose both significant risks and opportunities for news media. We are engaging with press stakeholders on this. The Media Minister and the Technology Secretary each held roundtables earlier this year with publishers and broadcasters to discuss the issues around AI in journalism. The Government will support our news media to capitalise on the huge potential benefits of the technology while mitigating its risks.

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, AI poses an existential threat to independent media because of the way it scrapes their high-quality content without either attribution or payment to those who created it, which is an act of theft directly threatening the provision of quality news and the jobs of thousands of reporters. Is the Minister aware that research by market leader Cloudflare shows that, for example, for every 73,000 pages of content scraped by Anthropic’s AI crawlers from news providers, there is just one single referral back to publishers’ websites? Does she realise that without this vital traffic, publishers cannot sell advertising or subscriptions, and their businesses become unsustainable? The free press cannot wait years for copyright reform because there is nothing left to protect. We were promised immediate action on this issue when the data Act went through; when will we get some of it?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

We want to get this right and for AI to work for everyone. All our work is around protecting existing rights for creators and the press and ensuring that AI creates new revenue streams for them. We are carefully reviewing all the responses to our consultation to ensure that any proposals taken forward properly support both the AI and creative sectors, including the media.