English Football: Independent Regulator

Lord Jones Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I cannot give the noble Baroness all these details, not least because my honourable friend the Sport Minister is setting out further detail in another place. I shall be glad to write to the noble Baroness to follow up on all these points.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, the running of the football league includes Welsh clubs. Under the new auspices, what do the Government intend regarding, for example, Swansea, Cardiff, Wrexham and Newport? In this sense the English football league is also the Welsh football league. Lastly, will the Minister use his considerable influence to persuade the Lords spiritual to pray hard for my own team, Everton FC? It is in trouble and may go down to a hotter place.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I cannot speak for the Lords spiritual, but I know that their prayers will be ecumenically directed. The noble Lord makes an important point. As with the application of the review to other sports, there are lessons to be learned for football internationally and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. We are discussing this with individual teams and with sports bodies.

UK Journalism (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, it is daunting to follow the noble Lords, Lord Lipsey and Lord Grade. I thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert of Panteg, and his committee and staff for their comprehensive and deeply researched report.

The first paragraph of the summary stands out when it mentions

“the fundamental role that journalism should play in a healthy democracy”.

Likewise, the detailed measurements concerning trust in paragraphs 51 and 71 stand out. It was heartening to read the detailed references to training. Surely we would agree that it is everything for the young ones. “Chwarae teg”, as might be said in Panteg in the lovely land of Wales, our homeland.

The concepts of liberty and the journalistic profession are impossible to disentangle. Our liberty lies ultimately in the Commons Chamber, blessed by the secret ballot. There is a fail-safe across Parliament Square in the Supreme Court, an independent judiciary free of corruption and unafraid. So this is about liberty above all else. We need the fourth estate as never before, as its newly born rival, the ubiquitous and separate social media, appears to be devouring all before it.

In my grammar school days, I had a paper round. I read and delivered the long-lost titles of the 1940s, such as Reynold’s News, the Empire News, the Sunday Graphic and the News Chronicle. Today, the situation locally is not very happy. We still need traditional journalism. Think of those unemployed country-house butlers no longer ironing the unruly pages of the tabloids and the Times. Think of no longer having Quentin Letts and his chuckling, rollicking Dickensian destructions, and the “Gotcha” red-tops. Think of the sober, many-paged Guardian security scoops and Martin Wolf’s thoughtful, pink-paged FT assessments gone missing. Think of Ms Toynbee, Ms Turner and Ms Boniface—their brutal home truths and deep commitment lost. Think of Mr Rod Liddle’s Sunday Times breakfast lambastings gone. Think of the Telegraph’s morning sports section no more—there was a brilliant Fury fight report on Monday. Perish the thought of all that disappearing.

Paragraph 19 steadfastly states:

“Journalism is integral to liberal democracy … it ‘shines a light on wrong doing and acts as an essential check on the behaviour of individuals in positions of power’”.


Surely a continuing, ever-more prosperous metropolitan elite will need, read and shelter these titles. But these journalistic delights do not come cheaply. The stringent Economist, with the anxious testiness of Bagehot, comes in at six quid, bar a penny, with the Guardian at £2.50. I would sum it up by saying that price matters in any struggle for survival.

We need journalists and their newsprint. How can the near-total sway of social media, Twitter and Facebook, Napster and Apple, and all the ubiquitous, influential and insistent rest not imperil journalism? Has power flowed irreversibly out of a discredited Westminster these last decades? Across the road, for example, there is 4 Millbank and its television studios and its political and programme editors. Is the besuited, still male, televised but somewhat Victorian Parliament losing out to ever more powerful social media? The changing balance of power affects governance and, ultimately, our liberty. Has the media in the ascendancy dealt an historic blow to an ailing Parliament? Can the mother of Parliaments recover her feet of clay, so prominently displayed daily to all?