Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

1. What steps her Department is taking to support local journalism.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

16. If she will make an assessment of the effectiveness of Government support for local media.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julia Lopez]

Since we are doing some name checks, let me pay tribute to The Havering Daily, Time FM and the Romford Recorder. I think the hon. Gentleman must have missed the Digital Markets Act 2022 and the key recommendation of the Cairncross review, which identified the lack of balance in the relationship between publishers and dominant platforms. We brought that recommendation to the House and it was passed. That was our main effort to protect local journalism, but of course it was not our only effort. We also provided business tax relief for local journalism offices, we support the BBC’s local democracy reporting scheme, we have protected public notices income, we are looking at how we use Government advertising spend, and we are speaking to the teams about what else we can do.

[Mr Carmichael]

This seems to be an appropriate moment to acknowledge that in Orkney and Shetland we are blessed with some very good-quality local media: The Orcadian, The Shetland Times, Shetland News, SIBC, BBC Radio Orkney and BBC Radio Shetland—if I have forgotten anyone, I will doubtless suffer for it in the weeks to come. For communities such as ours, a strong local media presence is an important bulwark against the relentless centralisation of control, power and government in Edinburgh, which is why we need to protect our media. Does the Minister agree that what we really need is a coherent strategy for all aspects of local media, including advertising, to ensure that local media outlets remain strong?