Northern Ireland: Economy

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating my noble friend Lord Lexden on securing this debate. I know from my long association with him that there is no greater or more eloquent champion of the people of Northern Ireland, its history and heritage, and the opportunities for its future than my noble friend, as has been evident today in his choice of debate and the passion of his remarks.

Economic issues are perhaps of more significant importance in Northern Ireland today than almost anywhere else in the United Kingdom. I would like to speak about one small but crucial sector of Northern Ireland’s economy—its creative industries. As the media play a role in that I should declare an interest as a director of the Telegraph Media Group. The creative economy is important not only because of the private sector jobs it can create and the investment it brings, but because it is so often at the very cusp of the public/private divide that is the defining characteristic of the Northern Ireland economy, which we are discussing this evening. As such, the creative economy could and should have a vital role to play in rebalancing the economy of the Province.

Northern Ireland is already home to a lively cultural sector, employing, according to the Northern Ireland Executive, some 36,000 people, and there are many success stories to tell—such as the emerging film and TV production centre, with Northern Ireland being used as a base for filming major productions such as HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and Universal’s “Your Highness”. Northern Ireland Screen’s target is for direct, achievable, levered investment in the Northern Ireland economy of £112 million from screen production activities between 2010 and 2014.

Northern Ireland has a long-standing musical heritage. Indeed, Belfast will be hosting the MTV European Music Awards on 6 November.

It also has a vibrant newspaper industry, with over 50 publications throughout the Province. Papers such as the Tyrone Courier have even beaten UK-wide circulation trends. This publication is believed to have doubled its readership in the past 10 years by focusing on key community issues.

But there are some serious economic issues ahead in this sector. For understandable reasons, there have been cuts to the Creative Industry Innovation Fund, which helps leverage investment in the cultural economy. Perhaps more worryingly, there seems to be little strategic thinking by the Northern Ireland Executive about how to develop infrastructure for the creative industries and allow them to play their part in economic regeneration. The Northern Ireland Programme for Government for 2007 to 2011 made scant reference to this sector. I hope the next one, when it appears, will remedy that.

The newspaper sector is facing particular challenges. In recent years its workforce, according to Skillset, has shrunk to around 1,000 people, and the workforce of the publishing sector as a whole has halved. There are serious commercial question marks hanging over the viability of some of the Province's smaller local newspapers, themselves a vital part of Northern Ireland’s civic tapestry.

One of the key problems is the change that is taking place in the public sector, ironically enough. Fewer public sector jobs has meant reduction in public sector recruitment advertising, which accounts for some 70 per cent of the recruitment revenues on some newspapers. The depressed property market, which is probably more stressed in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the United Kingdom, has had a similar impact on classified advertising revenues. These pressures come at a time when, ironically, weekly newspapers in Northern Ireland are often at the centre of boosting the Province's private sector businesses, while initiatives such as the Newspaper Society's local business accelerators campaign, launched only today and welcomed by the Prime Minister, can play an important part. It is an excellent initiative. Papers such as the Banbridge Leader and the Dromore Leader and the Mid Ulster Mail and Tyrone Times have launched successful business awards, highlighting the strength of local SMEs and the resilience of larger businesses.

A number of things can be done to help strengthen the creative economy—the jobs it supports and the investment it brings, as well as the vital part it plays in the cultural life of Northern Ireland—as the economy is rebalanced.

First, it is vital that we do what we can to help the Province's newspaper industry. There are continuing concerns about the threat to statutory public notices in newspapers, a key source of income as well as an essential tool for members of the public and community groups to find out about public events and developments in their area. Already local council public notice advertising spend is down 37 per cent in Northern Ireland, which is hitting newspapers hard and opening up a democratic deficit. Further reductions would be intolerable.

Secondly, I welcome what the Government are doing to help publishers in Northern Ireland, as elsewhere, diversify their businesses. The Government are planning three local TV stations in Northern Ireland and there was considerable interest in the recent visit of the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport to promote those plans, which can help the media in Northern Ireland expand beyond print and offer cross-selling of advertising packages across the full range of media—newspapers, TV, radio and Internet.

It is however vital that the UK regulatory regime recognises the realities of today's highly competitive local media markets, allows greater flexibility over media mergers and acquisitions and does not continue to block small, family-owned newspaper publishers from developing and growing their businesses in the deeply troubling way that happened only this week in a proposed merger relating to the Kent Messenger Group and Northcliffe Media.

Thirdly, there are significant opportunities to begin, through heritage-led regeneration, to build hubs of creative industries that will help promote private sector investment and jobs. Such regeneration can be a great catalyst for private sector growth in areas of major deprivation—for instance around the Carlisle Memorial Church and the Crumlin Road Gaol and Courthouse in North Belfast. This is a focus for the valuable work of the Belfast Buildings Preservation Trust, which I strongly commend. The trust, along with the Northern Ireland Design Alliance, is seeking to use the creativity that is the driving force of this sector to help in the delicate task of rebalancing economic structure and policy in Northern Ireland. This will also help the heritage-based industry, in particular, to forge new links with EU member states and with the United States of America, countries with which there has traditionally been little engagement in this sector and, as a result, lost opportunities for private sector investment.

Another significant opportunity is the BBC's decision to move programme and production responsibility outside of London. Speaking last week at the Belfast Media Festival, director general Mark Thompson spoke of his hope that BBC Northern Ireland would become a “fully-fledged creative hub”. That will contribute not only to national network programming but, provided the BBC opens its arms to the private sector rather than acting as a publicly funded competitor, it can create another unrivalled opportunity to promote the economic rebalancing that is central to this debate.

In all these areas, policy needs to be developed to encourage relevant new skills, to help in the creation of new economic hubs, to support risk-taking and a creative approach to regeneration, and, above all, to provide leadership in a sector where this has traditionally been in short supply. In that way, the richness of Northern Ireland's cultural sector—its music and performing arts, its screen and TV potential, its newspaper publishing industry and new media and its heritage and built environment—can play a long-term role in attracting private sector investment and new jobs and, at the same time, enhancing the quality of life and of enjoyment of people throughout the Province.

Localism Bill

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borrie]

My Lords, I shall speak also to the nine other amendments in the group that stand in the names of myself and the noble Lords, Lord Black of Brentwood, Lord Smith of Finsbury and Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank. Members of the Committee will immediately realise that the four of us sit in different parts of the House so it is a truly cross-party group of amendments.

It is perhaps less obvious that all four of us have had some involvement in the regulation in this country of advertisements. Three of us have been successive chairmen of the Advertising Standards Authority and the noble Lord, Lord Black, is a member of the Advertising Standards Board of Finance, which raises the finance of the authority by virtue of an impost upon advertising receipts in the industry. The noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, who is the current chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority, is not able to be present this evening but wishes me to say to the Committee that he fully endorses the intent and purpose of these amendments.

All four noble Lords who have put their names to these amendments are, of course, well disposed to the general value and usefulness of promotion and marketing of goods and services of all kinds. This is essential to the economy and deserves one’s support. However, we are all equally appreciative that advertisements should be—in the phrase that has become common because it is the well known remit of the Advertising Standards Authority—legal, decent, honest and truthful. We accept that all advertisements need to accord with the demands of the environment and of the countryside and need therefore to comply with the requirements over the years of the Town and Country Planning Acts, including for those kinds of billboards which may distract motorists from the need for driving safely.

Town and country planning laws have long ensured that local planning authorities have adequate powers to ensure that the owners of billboards on the roadside comply with detailed legal requirements. The Bill seeks, among other things, to update these laws, and that is a fine objective and well worth pursuing. However, I am sure your Lordships will appreciate that it is important to ensure that the advertiser has an appropriate and proportionate right of appeal for any adverse ruling, such as the issue of an enforcement notice by the local planning authority to remove an advertisement. The trouble with Clause 111 as it stands is that it adopts what I might call the present London position on appeals. That is, instead of a right of appeal to local magistrates’ courts, the only so-called appeal is a claim for judicial review to the High Court—a much more expensive proposition and, even though limits on judicial review have expanded in recent years, not an ordinary appeal on the merits. Our amendments seek to replace what I have called the London position with a right of appeal to the magistrates’ court from an enforcement notice issued by a local planning authority to the effect that an outdoor ad is illegal and ought to be removed. That would be a much more proportionate and appropriate route of appeal and more apt for modern ideas of access to justice and the rule of law. After all, it is the position that has operated outside London for many a long day. Magistrates’ courts are, in my view, a valuable, perhaps unsung, and low-cost local justice resource and should be treasured.

Indeed, in recent years, High Court judges have criticised the lack of rights of appeal in London from local planning authority enforcement decisions. For example, Mr Justice Irwin, in the case of Clear Channel UK Ltd v London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in 2009, said the lack of a normal appeal process is “draconian”. Media owners are reluctant to challenge what may be, after all, an erroneous use of local planning authority power, because the costs involved in the only remedy—judicial review by the High Court—are too great. The word “draconian” to describe the lack of an appropriate appeal mechanism had earlier been used in 2003 in the case of R (on the application of Maiden Outdoor Advertising Ltd) v Lambeth London Borough Council by Lord Justice Collins, who is now a member of the Supreme Court—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Collins of Mapesbury. In these cases, where seeking judicial review is not commercially viable, natural justice is simply not being served by the present procedures, which I have outlined as the London procedure. Small businesses especially are simply deterred from challenging a possibly subjective or irrational decision by local planning authorities. Of course the local planning authority may get it right; but it may get it wrong, and it is important that a reasonable right of challenge should be provided in the legislation. The ability to access a magistrates’ court would be a fairer and more appropriate procedure.

Finally, this is, after all, a Bill dealing with localism. Magistrates’ courts are a low-cost, local judicial resource that should be cherished and welcomed. They are part of the local scene. I beg to move.

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and in doing so, declare an interest as the director of the Advertising Standards Board of Finance. I support these amendments—and I talked about these issues at Second Reading—because they will ensure an equitable, consistent, and, above all, local mechanism for challenging enforcement notices across the UK. They would deal with an important point, which is that new Section 225A appears to be the only provision within Part 5 of this Bill relating to planning that lacks any right of appeal. From a practical point of view, this set of amendments is likely to be of benefit to both media owners and local authorities because, as the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, said, the magistrates’ courts are best placed to provide a quick, cost-effective route to resolving disputes, something that an action for judicial review in the High Court would never be able to provide, especially when issues of fact rather than of law are likely to be in dispute. From the aspect of the principles underpinning this Bill, it would mean that a local tribunal would be able to look at issues affecting a local neighbourhood, not a remote court possibly many hundreds of miles away.

I appreciate that these are relatively technical amendments, but I underline that they are none the less of real importance to local media owners, who are an important part of the local media ecology in towns and cities up and down the country. I am extremely grateful to the Minister for receiving representations from the industry since Second Reading. The importance of this issue is also underlined by the fact that, as the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, said, the signatories to this group include not just the current distinguished chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority, the noble Lord, Lord Smith, but his two predecessors, the noble Lords, Lord Borrie and Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank. These colleagues, who have huge experience in advertising regulation, understand greatly the importance of the local advertising industry and an equitable, fair and local treatment for it. That is what this admirable Bill is all about, and I hope that these amendments will help to tidy up this technical but important area.

International Women's Day

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, we have this afternoon heard many eloquent and passionate contributions about the challenges facing women at home and across the globe. It is a privilege to be able to join in. This is an issue to which I am delighted the Commonwealth will also be turning in a few weeks, when the theme for this year’s Commonwealth Day on 14 March is “Women as agents of change”. That title is spot on, particularly in the developing countries that I shall talk about. Women are so often drivers of societal change that investing in their advancement in education, healthcare and equal opportunities is one vital key to the acceleration of economic and cultural progress in the developing world.

The other agent of change is, of course, the free press. Here I declare an interest as chairman of the Commonwealth Press Union Media Trust and a director of the Telegraph Media Group. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, in introducing this debate, was quite right to point out the issues of involving women in the decision-making process. That is nowhere more true than in the media. One of the most significant ways in which we can seek to ensure the continuing advancement of women is to see to it that their voice is properly and effectively heard in newspapers and magazines, and in the broadcast media, for that voice is the engine of progress. That means getting more women into journalism in developing countries. The more women reporters there are, who have direct experience of improving the position of women, the louder and clearer the message of how to foster lasting change will be heard, even in countries where there is still a great deal of repression. That change will embrace so many crucial issues including poverty, domestic violence and HIV/AIDS. I say to my noble friend Lady Heyhoe Flint that it might even cover the coverage of sportswomen in the media.

Over the past few years there has been welcome progress in this area. India has started to promote women into senior positions in the media and Sri Lanka has had several women editors both in the past and, indeed, today. Pakistan is almost unique, particularly for an Islamic country, in that at one time or another almost every major newspaper has been edited by a woman. In many African countries, women are increasingly involved in positions of influence, particularly in the broadcast media. Let us celebrate that.

However, there is still a great deal more to do. While the average percentage of women journalists worldwide is estimated at 38 per cent, it is as low as 6 per cent in places such as Togo or Sri Lanka—despite the fact that there have been many women editors in the latter—and only just above 20 per cent in much of sub-Saharan Africa. In some countries, being a woman journalist brings real peril. In February of this year, Rwandan editor Agnes Nkusi was sentenced to 17 years in prison, and her reporter Saidath Mukakibibi to seven, while their newspaper Your Voice was closed for six months, for criticising the president. These two courageous women are just the most recent examples of women journalists who have spoken out against brutal regimes and, undoubtedly because of their sex, suffered unduly and disproportionately harsh reprisals in an attempt to discredit them.

No wonder that in so many developing countries with traditional societies journalism is seen as too risky a career for young women, many of whom are actively discouraged by their families from taking up the trade. To counteract this, some forward-thinking media organisations, such as the Deccan Herald Group in India and Wijeya Newspapers Ltd in Sri Lanka, are increasingly implementing measures to alleviate these cultural concerns, including organising transport to and from offices, providing chaperones for women reporters interviewing men, and providing security in war zones.

On top of that, there needs to be substantial ongoing investment, in financial as well as cultural terms, in encouraging women into the media, ensuring that they are adequately trained, and enabling them to engage with their peers on issues not just of general concern but specifically those that impact on the health, welfare and prosperity of women. As we mark International Women’s Day, let us celebrate the progress that has been made in this area, understand the real scale of the challenges ahead, and determine to redouble our efforts to ensure that the voice of women in journalism is heard ever more loudly.