Telegraph Media Group Ltd: Acquisition

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord’s question gets to the heart of an important distinction: there are newspapers that have websites, there are websites that are news providers, and there are online services that are not principally news providers but from which people increasingly derive their news. It is right that we look at all those things. He is right that the Communications Act 2003 has served us well for the last 20 years but, as we said in our debates on the Online Safety Act, it was written at a time when the internet was in its infancy and did not look at it. Of course, we touched on that in the debates on that Act and will return to some of the points in the Media Bill. We will shortly consult on expanding the existing media mergers regime and the foreign state ownership provisions to include online news websites, and we will touch on other matters when we discuss the Media Bill.

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, it has been a long time since 1855 and the start of the Telegraph at the time of the Crimean War and when David Livingstone found the Victoria Falls. Can the Minister tell us how many owners the Telegraph has had in that time? He may wish to write to me. It was started by Arthur Sleigh as a way of airing personal grievances against the future commander-in-chief of the British Army, Prince George, Duke of Cambridge. We should have a sense of proportion. I thought Rupert Murdoch, Roy Thomson and Conrad Black—the noble Lord, Lord Black of Crossharbour—did not have British passports, and there was Max Beaverbrook and many others, so this is not something new.

However, I respect the way the Government have acted fast to block a loophole. I pay particular tribute to my noble friends Lady Stowell and Lord Forsyth. In my day as Secretary of State, it was my noble friend Lord Inglewood who handled all the impossibly complex issues around media ownership. The Lords questions were always so much more difficult than those in the Commons, so I could simply sail through. I believe that it is extraordinarily important for there to be transparency about media ownership—so can the Minister inform us who the real owners of the Jewish Chronicle are?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I will have to write to my noble friend on that and to give a precise number of owners of the Daily Telegraph since 1855, and of the Spectator, which is linked to this and older still. She is right to refer to a number of the foreign owners that there have been. We have made the distinction throughout between foreign Governments and foreign investment; it is important to underline that again. We have no problem with foreign investment in our media businesses, just as in so many other areas of our economy. The problem raised by my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston and a number of others was foreign government interference. They made it clear that they would have as much of a problem with the Government of the United Kingdom having influence over newspapers in this country. However, it remains true that the Daily Telegraph is the only newspaper that has produced an editor who also sat in Cabinet: Bill Deedes. It has a long history of representation in your Lordships’ House and the fine line between politics and the media, but it is important that we maintain its independence so that it can continue to hold Governments to account.

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise—I have received a text from the Father of the House of Commons, who says that I never declare my interests. For the past 10 years, I have been an unremunerated trustee of the Economist newspaper, where we went through a change of media ownership, which we took extremely seriously. I am delighted to tell the House that the Economist is as flourishing today as ever it was.