Lord Grocott
Main Page: Lord Grocott (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Garden of Frognal
Well, one can never anticipate the questions in your Lordships’ House but I thank my noble friend for putting me right on kindly media moguls. Regarding his question, I think that that could be a topic of advanced research for some students in one of our splendid universities, making a comparison with other countries.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, have not successive Governments made unnecessarily heavy weather of what is actually a very simple, although very important, problem, which is, as my noble friend Lord Soley said, the huge concentration of media power in just a few people? Can I ask the noble Baroness, first, certainly to accept what the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, has recommended and, secondly, to adopt the very simple principle that one national newspaper is more than enough for anyone?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
The noble Lord of course makes very valid points. Once again, I have to draw attention to the fact that we have ongoing inquiries which will look at that, and it may well be that they will conclude that one national newspaper is enough. However, we have had some very productive cases of people owning more than one newspaper, and the question then is: how many is too many?