Local Newspapers

Debate between Chris Bryant and Lord Garnier

Thursday 19th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

I will not take up my full allotted time, Sir Hugh.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on initiating the debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy for taking a real interest in this aspect of his portfolio. Few Ministers have had the length of service in one job and have therefore come to know a great deal about their subject; I am grateful to him for that. I also thank the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), who has brought great wisdom and knowledge to this subject, as we have witnessed today.

One of the dangers that I will relieve the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington of having to face is my being here for the entire debate—as he anticipated, a number of us cannot stay for its full length—but there is still danger that we will appear to the outside world as a collection of retired colonels, regretting the past. If we give the impression that the newspaper world should never change and that it is immune from the ordinary laws of economics, we are doing it a disservice, just as we are doing ourselves a disservice.

I have an interest to declare in that, for the past 40 or so years, I have been a member of the Bar who specialises in newspaper cases—newspaper and media law. I have acted for and against many local newspapers and I have understood, both as a consumer of the product and as a person being paid by them, the value that they provide throughout the country to local communities. It does not matter whether one is in Scotland—the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) mentioned his local paper in Stornoway—Northern Ireland or any part of England and Wales; there is no community that has not over the years benefited in some way from its local press.

Of course we regret the demise of the local press and the way in which it has changed. In my own county and constituency, the Harborough Mail, a weekly paper that has been going for more than 100 years, is now running from a hub—to use an expression used earlier—and is using shared content. It is no longer based in Market Harborough. It is part of the Johnston Press company, and our editor is now the editor of a number of local titles and he is based in Kettering, so we do not have that immediate local connection. Although Kettering is only 15 or so miles down the road, there is a psychological gap that has been created by the rationalisation—to use that awful expression—of the newspaper world.

My local daily paper, the Leicester Mercury, which was mentioned a moment ago, is in the same group as the Derby Telegraph. At one stage the whole production of the Mercury and all the journalists, as well as the outlying offices, were connected into the main office on St George street. When I first became the Member of Parliament for Harborough, the newsroom was noisy, bustling, full of paper and all that sort of stuff. Now, the newsroom is quiet, not only because everyone is typing on word processors and not the old Imperial typewriters, but because fewer people are in there, and as someone has mentioned, they are drawing on press releases, cutting and pasting.

I do not ascribe that problem only to the Leicester Mercury. When I worked in Fleet street newspapers—I am talking about the late 1970s—I remember listening to a City journalist on The Guardian complain that all he was doing was cutting and pasting or reproducing company press releases. He said, “That’s not journalism. That’s just copying.” If we do not get the training at local level for the journalists who translate to Fleet street and become the great national names of journalism, we will lose something, but I do not think that we will repair that loss by getting the state to subsidise the press, as I think the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) might have been implying. The press should be utterly free of Government interference. Yes, the Government—Parliament—should regulate the world within which we all operate, but the day that we get the Government paying for the production of newspapers is a day that I think we would regret.

[Andrew Rosindell in the Chair]

I do not want to belabour the point, but we cannot constantly regret the past. We need to come up with innovative and practical solutions. In his brief remarks, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon offered a few suggestions that he and his colleagues in the Committee of which he is Chair came up with. We need to ask the Government, whether this one or the next, to think carefully about what they can do without sitting on the press and the news media. What can they do to help them flourish?

One thing that I would urge the Government who are in charge of this review to look at is the way in which we regulate the acquisition and merger of local titles. That idea is not original to me; it has been suggested to me by the News Media Association and I am happy to repeat it. The association asks that we

“Reform and liberalise the local media merger and transfer regime so that more titles are not closed down because their sale to a willing buyer is blocked by the competition authorities.”

It tells me that

“In 2011, Northcliffe Media’s attempted sale of seven weekly newspapers to KM Group was aborted after the Office of Fair Trading referred the sale to the Competition Commission, leading to the closure of some of the newspapers.”

Ofcom has since endorsed the industry’s position, suggesting that the media merger regime needs to be modified and local media excluded from its plurality review, but there is no evidence that that new approach has been adopted. Through the Minister, I urge that the review consider that position.

Johnston Press is a large organisation. It owns the longest continuously published local newspaper, the Belfast News Letter, which has been published daily since the first half of the 18th century. I do not know who owns The Oban Times in Scotland, to which the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar referred, but it is the most widely read newspaper throughout the English-speaking world.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman has referred to long ownership of titles. One of the things that have happened when large conglomerates, such as the ones mentioned in this debate, close titles is that they have refused to allow anybody else to use the titles. Might there not be an advantage to making it possible—after a moratorium of, say, two or three years—for others to take on such titles, so that they can maintain the tradition, albeit under a different model?

[Sir Edward Garnier]

That is a very sensible suggestion, which I hope the review can take into account. Of course, the owners of the intellectual property in a title may want to resurrect it in some other form, or to restart the newspaper when times get better. For example, the Evening Standard and the Evening News here in London are now merged into one paper, but who knows whether the current owner of the Evening Standard may not one day wish to revive the Evening News? I do not know where the ownership of that title has gone. However, the hon. Gentleman’s point is worthy of consideration.

I urge that we behave in a positive way and do not constantly doomsay and give the impression that the problem is completely insoluble. It is not, if there is the will and if there is intelligent and appropriate management of the finances of these companies—although some of the stories told by the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington and for Great Grimsby about the movement of money within them were surprising, if not shocking. None the less, it seems to me that the newspaper industry has it within its resources to do a lot to help the local press. For example, why do not The Daily Mail or The Sun, both immensely successful newspapers in their own right, adopt a local paper outside the family tree of Northcliffe Media or News Corp, so that both can flourish in their different markets? No one would suggest that the Leicester Mercury is competing with The Sun or that the Harborough Mail is competing with The Times, but there are commonalities of interest that could be explored, to help little local newspapers.

My constituency has lost the Harborough Herald & Post. I have no idea who owns the title now, but there was a reasonably well read local newspaper that has gone and will probably never come back. I want the Harborough Mail and the Leicester Mercury still to be there in 50 years’ time. I am sure many other hon. Members would like a good local voice operating loudly and disinterestedly in each of our constituencies.

Royal Charter on Press Conduct

Debate between Chris Bryant and Lord Garnier

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Garnier]

The Prime Minister and the leader of the Labour party were extremely busy over the weekend, as were their representatives, dealing with England and Wales—

[Chris Bryant]

Wales won.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

And I am not sure that their minds were on libel tourism to Cairo and other places along the Mediterranean, but who knows what will happen? Let us try and get it right for England and Wales.

[Chris Bryant]

Wales won.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I am afraid that that is just one of the things we have to live with, and if we cannot cope with it, we are probably in the wrong place. I noticed that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was able to speak for 12 fluent minutes without having seen the motion or read the charter—but then he might have prepared something earlier.

[Chris Bryant]

I wish you had.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

That is also probably true.

To wrap up, something good seems to have happened over the course of this weekend and it is about to be translated into further action this evening, but I urge us not to oversell it or think that we have solved the problem of press misconduct. It will go on—it is all part of human nature. However, we have made a small step—indeed, rather more than that—towards bringing the press and the public to a better place. I therefore commend the Prime Minister and all who took part in the negotiations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Bryant and Lord Garnier

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Solicitor-General]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her appointment as shadow Solicitor-General. There are many people who think that the Law Officers themselves are pretty shadowy, but I—

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Shabby or shadowy?

[The Solicitor-General]

I would never accuse the hon. Gentleman of being shabby. His dress code is always immaculate.

[Chris Bryant]

You have lost your train of thought now.

[The Solicitor-General]

I think that the train of my thought is concentrating on the shadow Solicitor-General.