Media Bill

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Foster. I will come to my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s amendment and the important issue it raises in a moment. First, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on his efficient opening speech. I welcome this long-awaited Media Bill. The Communications and Digital Committee that I have the privilege of chairing has been calling for many of its measures for several years.

The Bill is in good shape, and I would not advocate for any substantial amendments. However, there are still questions about the consequences of its changes and how well the public service broadcasters are currently responding to their strategic challenges. As my noble friend the Minister said, my committee’s current inquiry is about the future of news and how the news industry is responding to strategic challenges, such as falling audience trust, impartiality in a world of evolving social divides and the impacts of tech platforms on news media business models. These are big challenges which are unlikely to solve themselves. I am sure that many of the points that are made today will also come up in our session with the public service broadcasters next week.

PSBs must serve all audiences across the United Kingdom with high-quality programming. The changes to the public service remit for TV are understandable and I hope they will provide the direction and flexibility to deliver the remit more efficiently. But such changes must not become an excuse for cutting back content that is more difficult to produce or addresses an area of market failure—the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, gave a powerful illustration of some of those genres. As our inquiry on the future of the BBC emphasised, PSBs fulfil a vital function in providing valuable content that would otherwise disappear, particularly as they face growing competition from international streaming giants. Although I am content with the changes, for Ofcom to be effective in ensuring the public interest is best served through them, the broadcasters must provide clarity on how they will interpret their responsibilities, including what they will not do, as well as what they must.

The prominence provisions to ensure content is properly carried and easy to find on various devices, including audio devices, are also crucial to the future of PSBs. I am particularly pleased that the measures for radio and smart speakers were included in the Bill; the world is changing fast, connected devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, and our regulations need to keep pace.

Radio is an area where there are legitimate concerns about the BBC’s proposals to spin out new digital stations from Radios 1, 2 and 3 that will compete with existing similar offerings from commercial stations. It comes at the same time as the BBC appears to be transitioning away from local radio to local websites, which struggling local news industry representatives say is impossible to compete with. Moreover, BBC local radio, at its best, is the ultimate example of distinctiveness in a crowded marketplace. These changes underscore the need—as called for by my committee—for the BBC to set out a refreshed strategic purpose and clarify what changes are necessary for it to continue delivering for all audiences so this can be used to inform decisions about its future funding.

More broadly, making changes to help our broadcasting sector thrive involves striking a balance. The structural changes in the market pose a growing challenge to all UK providers, and we should not be shy about championing and supporting things that make the UK’s broadcasting sector distinctive and internationally valued. The Bill has done a good job here; but, equally, it must not mean that PSB status can be taken for granted. The PSBs must continue to demonstrate the value of what they provide, and that includes doing a better job of serving all audiences across the country and showing that they are responding to people’s concerns, particularly around impartiality in news and other genres. There is more to do here, and we should continue to press for improvements because these organisations and institutions exist for the benefit of everyone.

Finally, I want to state my personal support for Clause 50 of the Bill, which repeals Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act.

I will turn at this point to my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s amendment and the matter of independent media. We are all aware of the issues around foreign Governments owning print or broadcast media. Personally, I agree with my noble friend: I have no problem with foreign businesses owning UK media; they are a large reason why we have a thriving media environment that is financially independent of government. But I do have principled concerns about ownership by foreign Governments or outfits under significant government control. That is materially different, and raises big questions about foreign policy, editorial independence and the relationship between an outlet’s owners and its coverage.

We need to have confidence in our media. Having foreign Governments own such a critical and sensitive part of our nation is not only unnecessary and troubling; if it was allowed to happen, it would completely undermine public confidence in our free press. At the moment, there are no automatic measures to prevent this, which does not seem right. My noble friend Lord Forsyth has argued that this Bill is the right vehicle to do something about this. In principle, I agree and I had assumed the same, but like my noble friend I have also had extensive discussions with the Public Bill Office, which has also advised me that such an amendment would be out of scope. I certainly look forward to my noble friend continuing his discussions with the Public Bill Office.

Instead, I have tabled an amendment to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. That amendment states that foreign Governments should not be allowed to buy our news media organisations unless the Secretary of State and relevant regulators have agreed the proposal and it has been confirmed by Parliament by the affirmative procedure. In other words, it cannot happen unless Parliament says so. That amendment, which I have tabled and has been co-signed by my noble friend Lord Forsyth and the noble Lords, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen and Lord Anderson of Ipswich, is a serious one, and I expect the Government to take it seriously. To that end, I ask my noble friend the Minister and his colleagues to meet me and my co-signatories as soon as possible, because it is due for debate on Report in less than two weeks, on Monday 11 March.

As to this Bill, I am very pleased it has made it this far. I support it and urge all colleagues to support its speedy passage through Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the previous speakers, who have been advocating for more emphasis and importance to be ascribed to Welsh and Scottish television. As a Cumbrian, we do not have any regional dialect television, but I live in hope.

I am also delighted to support the Bill, and simultaneously slightly depressed because we heard from a number of speakers that the previous Bill covering this was 20 years ago. Well, I was the Minister sitting where the Minister sits now on the Bill before that. On that occasion, I told your Lordships, who I do not think really believed me, that we were on the cusp of a revolution. We are now dealing with the effects of much of that revolutionary change. Everything has morphed and evolved, and all the hardware that we were talking about are now forms of computer.

There is a single universe of multiplicity, variables and variations behind the subject that we are discussing. It began with the moving image. I am glad to say that radio is now increasing its prominence, and I would never have guessed at the popularity of podcasts, with some of them so important to people who work in the Palace of Westminster.

Then, as now, there was a vigorous debate about public service broadcasting, and in an era of almost limitless quantities of information, it is just as important —arguably more important—given the volume of material that is available and washing around in the digital space. At the centre of it, a core of curated and moderate material is very important.

It is equally important that it is not from a single monopoly supplier, and it must be from independent organisations that are free from either domestic or foreign political control. I entirely agree with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, about the control of newspapers by foreign Governments or their fronts. I assume that he would agree that, were that to go ahead, the Government would deserve to lose the next general election.

These matters underpin our civic society and freedoms and rightly sit at the heart of the Bill and our discussions. Since much of this is, in one way or another, paid for by all of us, it follows that access should be free to the user and made simple, and the material should be didactic and give some pleasure as well.

I feel like I am the Grinch at Christmas, but we are in a world where excessive prominence is given to sport. I enjoy sport and it has an important place in our society, but it seems all politicians go weak at the knees at the mention of it. There are a range of things behind paywalls that matter to people, and we need to recognise that. A system where people can come together over subjects that they value is part of the project’s raison d’être; we must recognise there are other things beyond sport.

When we look at the media from the perspective of this Chamber—and the noble Lord, Lord Mendoza, made this point—we sometimes forget that media is big global business, and that we must, as a nation, have our share of it, and the policies surrounding our media must support this and our media’s contribution to our national prosperity and global influence. This depends on having trained and skilled entrants into the industry, and we must recognise that, first, we have a good record in this country and, secondly, it is expensive, but it will be even more so if we do not get it right. Equally, we must make sure that the working capital of the media industry is not killed off by public parsimony, greed or confiscatory taxation. Outcomes are capable of being measured not only in strict financial terms.

In some ways, the digital world is a kind of Wild West, but it is neither the public bar nor simply a private domain. Private matters can go viral, and private point-to-point communication can become as publicly available as deliberately broadcast material. In this country, we have a limited jurisdiction over the interface between the virtual and territorial worlds, and we must find ways of dealing with often difficult, ever-changing problems for lawmakers, Governments and regulators.

Some of the problems with the material that we are dealing with and the extent of it—we have recently discussed in this House digital markets, this Bill, data protection and artificial intelligence—occur within the context of Brexit repatriating to this country a significant amount of regulation that was previously dealt with at European level, which is an unnoticed aspect of this. The effect is that all these things are connected, are complicated, move quickly and are always changing, and I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Mendoza, that one of the great challenges we face as a nation in this sector is how can we properly legislate in a timely manner in a fast-changing world.

What is clear from the Bill is that much of this will be done by secondary legislation, but there is considerable dissatisfaction, which is entirely legitimate, with the way Parliament handles these things. Setting aside general constitutional principles, I wonder whether our system of scrutinising secondary legislation is doing this properly on a technical level for the individuals and commercial sectors affected. I also wonder—and I do not know if they will thank me for suggesting it, and I rank it no higher than a suggestion—whether, on a rolling basis, the Communications and Digital Committee could have a standing role in examining the substance of these things. I can see that the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, in front of me is sceptical about that.

Finally, I turn to Clause 50. I chaired a local newspaper group for 10 years and one of the characteristics of the newspaper industry, based on its traditions of investigative journalism that this House has always endorsed, is the great suspicion of the Government of the day. I am surprised by the apparent nonchalance of the national press about what looks like an attempt in the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill to corrupt our legal system. The changes in this Bill will proceed; on the other hand, there is hard and soft law, and if the abuses that undoubtedly took place are going to be kept under control in future, it is important that the soft law—if that is the way we are going—deals with the problem. The difficulty is there is not sufficiently wide public confidence in the self-regulatory system that is in place. There still are abuses from the national newspapers, although not what we saw previously, but the confidence is not there, and they need to look at themselves to see if they think they can improve their standing in the wider world, which underpins their acceptability and long-term sustainability. Maybe a bit of blood on the carpet will help.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, and I say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that we are still on an advisory speaking time. The noble Lord made a very important point about parliamentary oversight of the powers delegated or devolved to regulators through various pieces of legislation that have gone through Parliament in the last few months. The solution is to expand our existing Select Committee capacity to manage that and not to try and manage it through our existing capacity, because we do not have the relevant resources and we need more. I have tabled an amendment to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill precisely to meet that objective, and I urge the noble Lord to support it when it is debated in a couple of weeks’ time.

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

I was delighted to hear what the noble Baroness said. My remarks were clearly justified because they elicited that remark from her and got her on her feet to tell us all about it.

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[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

If I may, I will point the noble Lord to the answers we have given which set out some of the timelines; there are different timelines under the different Acts and the work that Ofcom and the Competition and Markets Authority do. I will set them out, rather than try to give them off the top of my head, but I have answered questions from this Dispatch Box before and will continue to do that and through Written Questions where possible.

I pointed my noble friend Lord Forsyth to the Enterprise Act and the National Security and Investment Act, which cover the actions available to the Secretary of State, including where she has concerns about media freedom and freedom of expression. As my noble friend indicated, his lively discussions with the Public Bill Office and his resorting to this regret amendment reflect that this is not a matter for this Bill, but, as the contribution from our noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston showed, she has had more success with tabling an amendment to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. I would certainly encourage them both to continue their conversations with my noble friends Lord Camrose and Lord Offord of Garvel.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

I am grateful for what my noble friend has just said, but am I to take it from what he said to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, that the DCMS is not going to engage in this matter at all? Am I to direct my questions to the noble Lords who are responsible for the DMCC Bill?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

As it falls to my noble friends Lord Camrose and Lord Offord to take that Bill through, it will be more fruitful to have the discussions with them—they will be having them on behalf of the whole Government. But, as my noble friend will appreciate, because my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has a quasi-judicial role, she is limited in what she can say, and so it limits what we can say. I am very happy to continue to answer questions on the process while my noble friends continue their discussions with my noble friends who are answering for the Government on the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. I look forward to the discussions with my noble friend Lord Forsyth, who I hope will not press his regret amendment this evening. With that, I beg to move.