Regional Newspapers

John McDonnell Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) on securing the debate and on the way in which he has introduced it. He referred to Leveson, and it is worth repeating that Leveson said that local papers’

“contribution to local life is truly without parallel…their demise would be a huge setback for communities

and

“a real loss for our democracy”.

Their demise has taken place before our eyes—that is the problem.

Let me give the figures from the National Union of Journalists—I am the secretary of the NUJ parliamentary group and my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) is the chair. We have been engaged in debates such as this for some time and things have got worse, not better. Over the past seven years, since we had one of our earliest debates, 20% of the UK’s local newspapers have closed. We have lost 240 titles and at the moment, we are fighting on a range of fronts. The Press Association has been closing its regional lobby service and making journalists redundant. We have tabled early-day motion 715, which exposes what is happening at the Press Association, and I invite Members to sign it.

At the moment, Johnston Press is trawling for redundancies of more than 50 posts, and the NUJ has been denied collective consultation on the cuts so far. That is not the sort of commitment we were given by some proprietors last year, who said that there would at least be a dialogue with their staff about what was happening in their companies. Trinity Mirror has just announced 75 job cuts, amounting to an 18.75% cut of its editorial work force. Interestingly enough, the company, while it is sacking its own staff, has bought a 20% stake in David Montgomery’s Local World, but it will not be putting its regional or local papers into that operation. The Daily Mail and General Trust has shed about a quarter of its work force of 3,000 since 2010 and it has announced a further 13% cut in regional editorial costs this year. The number of people employed at Northcliffe stood at 2,450 in 2012, compared with 3,130 in October 2010.

The jobs are going. We have been tabling early-day motions and have been engaged in discussions with the Minister and the previous Government about how we tackle the issue. The main concern is that the service is being degraded at a local level. We have done a survey of local NUJ representatives on the ground, and I will quote some of the things that have come back. From the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, the NUJ representative reported:

“Each reporter was supposed to spend half a day on their patch looking for stories. The idea was abandoned two years ago owing to staff shortages.”

The rep from Birmingham Post and Mail said:

“Staff are increasingly going for easy stories—those which can be filed and concluded as quickly and with little fuss as possible, from press releases and announcements”.

That is not the nature of the local press that we have come to admire. The rep from the Coventry Telegraph said:

“Loss of staff photographers and their replacement with freelancers and heavier reliance on reporter-supplied photos and submitted pictures likely to lead to deterioration in quality of pictures. Fewer reporters for all titles will also affect content and quality.”

A survey of NUJ members at Newsquest Essex north found that staff had worked an extra day a fortnight voluntarily. A letter to the management said:

“Editorial staff has been cut by a third in the past three years and the remaining staff have undertaken more work than ever.”

An NUJ rep from the north-west said:

“Reporters are less likely to get out of the office to see contacts and have less time on individual stories, developing and investigating them. Subs have less time to check stories, design pages and have less time spent on proofing pages.”

That is what we have witnessed, and that is the report back from the front about the seriousness of the cuts that have taken place. What is galling for staff is that in addition to the cuts, they have had pay cuts and pay freezes during the past 10 years, but at the same time some of the management wages have been astounding.

Let me give some examples. Paul Davidson, chief executive of the Newsquest newspaper group, received £598,441 in salary last year. The figures, for 2011, show that directors of Newsquest were awarded an additional £881,000 in “share-based payments”. It just goes on. Craig Dubow, head of the US parent company Gannett Company, Inc., resigned in 2011 and walked off with a £23 million golden handshake. It is not that the money is not there. What has happened over a long period is that there has been profiteering in the industry, which has resulted in the cutbacks that we are suffering now. That has put in jeopardy these community assets—that is what they are. The hon. Member for Burton is right about that. I wish they had been so designated so in the Localism Act 2011, because they are community assets that we all value.

Other activities need to be put on the record. There have been tax scams in the industry. A tax tribunal relating to Iliffe News and Media was told how that group had drawn up a tax avoidance scheme by assigning to its parent company the unregistered newspaper mastheads used by its subsidiaries, which were then charged as a lump sum payment, to downplay its successful financial position. That was exposed at a tribunal. The company lost the case. It was exposed that it sought a tax deduction for payments amounting to £51.5 million. That is an absolute scandal. In many ways, the management of the industry has brought about its own demise. That needs to be put on the record and made straight.

We now need to look to the future. Montgomery has bought out Northcliffe Media and Iliffe News and Media in what amounted, I think, to a fire sale of those assets, but the staff of those groups are seeking to ensure that there is a long-term plan for security. Unfortunately, the negotiations on the TUPE transfer are being conducted at the moment at breakneck pace and it is very difficult for the staff to obtain clear answers to the many questions that are being put about contractual terms, long-term security and, in particular, the fate of their pension entitlements. What could be seen as a good initiative could falter because of the failure to engage with other stakeholders and, in particular, with the staff via the NUJ.

We can report similar experiences elsewhere. There is the outsourcing from Media Scotland-Trinity Mirror. Two thousand jobs have gone from the Welsh media industry in the past decade. In Northern Ireland, Johnston Press has made cutbacks overall. That is the bleak picture, but we could have confidence. I share the view expressed by the hon. Member for Burton: this is not about subsidising, but about supporting and investing for the long term.

The Minister has taken a particular interest in this issue in opposition and since he has transferred into the ministerial car. As a result, I think, of one of these debates, he convened a meeting of proprietors and editors to have a discussion on getting a long-term strategy developed. I was really disappointed that only one turned up. That showed disrespect not just to the Government and the Minister but to all the other stakeholders in the industry. I would follow the path recommended by the hon. Member for Burton. I urge us to reconvene the meeting. It can be called a seminar, brainstorming session or whatever. We need to get the proprietors and editors round a table. We would want to ensure that the representatives of the employees—the NUJ—were there, as well as any others who had an interest in the matter. It would be useful to have representatives of other Departments at the table to consider what role they can play in investing in, not subsidising, the industry in the long term. We can tap into the creativity that is out there.

Let us say that we do convene the meeting and it is hosted by the Government. I hope that it would be on a cross-party basis, because that was the nature of the attempts that the previous Government made. That would not just demonstrate seriousness but show that there would be a long-term approach to the issue, whoever is in government. We need to make it clear in the debate today and other sources that if that meeting is convened, we expect the owners and proprietors to attend and to take it seriously. Otherwise, they do not just disrespect Government and the parties in this House, they also let down whole communities that rely on their local newspaper for the reporting of local news and, as the hon. Member for Burton said, for the holding to account of those in power. I therefore urge the Minister to try again. Let us try again on a cross-party basis to get people round a table to develop a longer-term strategy for the industry, which we all desperately want to succeed.

[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Order. I will start calling the Front-Bench speakers at 3.40 pm. I have four hon. Members on my list of speakers. If hon. Members are reasonable with their time, we should be able to manage that. The next speaker is Glyn Davies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Danczuk]

Absolutely. The message will have been received, I have no doubt. I will check Twitter shortly after I sit down to see whether the paper has picked up on that point.

[John McDonnell]

A ministerial instruction.

[Simon Danczuk]

That ministerial instruction is extremely helpful and I appreciate it.

I was talking about the usefulness of being able to follow Twitter and see what is going on in Rochdale council meetings; but I have another example. Deborah Linton, a journalist on the Manchester Evening News is tweeting about the autumn statement to the people of Greater Manchester—taking politics out to people so that they can follow it and see what is going on. While I am talking about journalists I will mention Jennifer Williams, who works for the Manchester Evening News, and the recent Cyril Smith scandal. She has pursued that story and written well about it on several occasions. There is still excellent journalism—even if it is under the cosh, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) pointed out.

I want to mention Leveson briefly. If the national press had followed local press standards there is no doubt that we would not be in the position we are in now. The Rochdale Observer is always quick to make amends if there are inaccuracies in reports. It completely adheres to the requirements of the Press Complaints Commission. It is unfortunate that a small number of national journalists and press organisations have brought the industry into disrepute.

The people of Rochdale are immensely proud of their Rochdale Observer. I know that the Manchester Evening News, the Rochdale Observer and Trinity Mirror are opposed to statutory regulation, but I still feel that we need some statutory stick with which to push the media to behave themselves and get their house in order.