Enterprise Act 2002 (Mergers Involving Newspaper Enterprises and Foreign Powers) Regulations 2025

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, very briefly, I offer the Green group’s support for the fatal amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Fox—and I welcome him back.

I will make three brief points, one of which is drawing on my experience. I declare my position as a former editor of the Guardian Weekly newspaper, the international edition of the Guardian. Before I worked for the Guardian, I worked for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times newspaper, and I was the page 1 sub-editor for a period in the early 2000s. There was a lot of interest at the time in what influence Rupert Murdoch had on what the Times did. That was something of interest to me, and I watched it very closely. There was only one specific case where it was widely known that Rupert Murdoch had explicitly intervened in the Times’ coverage. What I saw regularly, evening after evening, was senior editors agonising, asking: “Would Rupert like this?” or “Would Rupert not like that?” This was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, about the provision here whereby the Minister can intervene if they see influence. How are you going to see influence such as that? It is not a visible action—nothing is even said.

My second point is that my support for the fatal amendment is in no way support for our current media ownership arrangements. The Green Party has long worked with the Media Reform Coalition, focusing on the extreme concentration of our media in a handful of right-wing media tycoons. What is being proposed here is not going to improve that situation.

Thirdly, reflecting on what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said about Chinese influence, I draw the House’s attention to a ruling this morning in the European Court of Human Rights on a case brought by three former MPs, one of whom is former Green MP, Caroline Lucas. They did not win their case over the Brexit referendum in 2016, but the court in Strasbourg did find that there were shortcomings in the UK’s initial responses to allegations of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum campaign. As Caroline Lucas said afterwards:

“It’s hugely significant that the court has found in favour of our case that foreign interference is a threat to our right to free and fair elections”.


I would add that it is a threat to free and fair democratic debate.

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I will be brief. I am sure that noble Lords feel that they have heard enough from newspaper editors already. As another former newspaper editor, I was going to sit quietly, but I must take issue with the comment from the noble Baroness opposite that Rupert Murdoch was always an unseen influence on what senior editors wrote. As a former senior editor there who disagreed vehemently with Rupert Murdoch over very many things, I can say that that was not at all a consideration in what we wrote. I have no doubt that he told those at the Sun every evening what to write, and that they wrote it. It shows that newspapers are influenced by their proprietors if they wish to be, and if their audience is happy with that.

Listening to this debate, we seem to have lost the idea of what has happened to newspaper audiences. They are no longer what they were. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, talks about people having their newspapers delivered to their homes and those newspapers upholding British values. Maybe he has been reading the Daily Telegraph recently, but my reading of the Daily Telegraph is that it does not tally with my British values, and it may not tally with the British values of everybody here.

Newspapers have a role. It is no longer the role that it used to be. They are fulfilling it to the best of their ability, but competing with numerous other sources and not always succeeding. As others have mentioned, the web in various guises, particularly social media, provides the news for the majority of young people in this country. I contend that that is far more dangerous than any influence on a major national newspaper. If some major national newspapers were to influence the debate at all in this country, I do not think that Keir Starmer would be the Prime Minister today—it could still be Liz Truss. Newspapers do not have that much influence any more.

However, there is no doubt that the procedure that has brought us to this position has been flawed. I think the Minister accepts that the Government have not made the best job of this. If she can give the House some indication that the potential loophole between now and the autumn will be fully bridged, then we should support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, because there is sufficient regret over how this has been done. We should not pass a fatal amendment that looks to a history that no longer exists.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, this is not a media studies debate on proprietors and their influence over the press. This is about state ownership, which is what we voted on. It is not about whether Rupert Murdoch has an undue influence. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, explained the process through which he concluded that he had changed his mind, but he has not changed anyone else’s—nobody even asked whether we had changed our minds.

This is about subverting the primary law, that we all voted on, behind our backs. A decision that we made has deliberately been reversed. Everybody might have changed their minds, but that is not the point. If you are thinking about the constitution, it must be brought back as a debate. If it was not for the amendments, we would not be having this debate.

The final thing is the context. Everyone who has spoken has stood up and said, “We believe in press freedom”. In this country, press freedom is ultimate: each party declares that it is for press freedom. I will remind noble Lords of the context. I am still in shock at the revelations about the super super-injunction brought out by leading members of both parties—or brought out by one party and then supported by the other—that has completely slapped press freedom across the face in relation to the Afghan leak. The reason I mention that is that when people say, “Can you just trust us? We all believe in press freedom—this is not going to undermine press freedom”, press freedom is already under pressure. We have seen that, behind the scenes, the press can be denied the right to information that they should have had in relation to that Afghan scandal.

As far as I am concerned, in this instance I will be supporting the fatal amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, not necessarily for all the reasons that have been indicated by all the speakers from the Liberal Democrat Benches, but because we have to show that press freedom and parliamentary procedures cannot be subverted behind our backs.