Cairncross Review

Ian C. Lucas Excerpts
Tuesday 12th February 2019

(5 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Jeremy Wright Portrait Jeremy Wright
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I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. On the BBC, there is a balance. It is right to ask Ofcom to consider whether further measures ought to be taken to ensure that the BBC is using its position for good, and it is important at least to ask whether it is facilitating good local content or effectively squeezing out good local providers. However, that is a matter for Ofcom. I repeat that the review also rightly praises the BBC, and the local democracy reporting service should be praised and expanded.

Turning to social media platforms, my right hon. Friend will know that the Government are engaged in several overlapping pieces of work, and the online harms White Paper will address many of the issues he describes. There is an ongoing question as to whether it is appropriate to apply the label of publisher to online companies. However, I am less interested in the label and more interested in what those companies do, how we ensure that they fulfil their responsibilities to the users of their services and then, of course, what should happen if they do not fulfil those responsibilities.

Ian C. Lucas Portrait Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
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The market dominance of the duopoly affects all our communities, including places such as Wrexham, where The Leader, the local paper, and Wrexham.com, the new kid on the block, are under threat due to multinational organisations. It is entirely right to confront the monopolistic situation, and I encourage the Secretary of State to take up the line proposed by the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman and be much more aggressive with the CMA in its dealings to break up that situation so that we can have honest news organisations right across the UK.

Jeremy Wright Portrait Jeremy Wright
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The hon. Gentleman knows well that the CMA is rightly independent and will make its own judgments. However, I hope that he will recognise that I have wasted no time in engaging it on this issue. As for the online platforms, he will have heard what I said about the position they hold within the online advertising market in particular, but we must make a distinction here. We must recognise that advertising has changed, probably irrevocably, which is Dame Frances’s view, but we must also ensure that the behaviour of online platforms is not squeezing what is truly good and useful about local journalism and what is essential to the conduct of our democracy.