Telegraph Media Group: Proposed Sale to RedBird IMI

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries (Julia Lopez)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for tabling the urgent question for the second time in as many days. This is a media-focused day for me, as I will take the Media Bill through its remaining stages straight after the urgent question, so forgive me if one has made me insufficiently prepared for the other, or vice versa.

I am in the frustrating circumstance that I can say only what is publicly known and nothing of the specifics in answer to questions about the ownership of the Telegraph Media Group, which contains two of the world’s greatest newspapers—The Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Telegraph—and, in The Spectator, the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.

As hon. Members will be aware, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has issued a public interest intervention notice in respect of the anticipated acquisition of the group by RB Investco Ltd, further to the notice issued in November in respect of the RedBird IMI media joint venture, which remains in force. She is leading this process and examining it in great detail and with great care, but it is a quasi-judicial process, involving the Competition and Markets Authority, which looks at jurisdictional and competition matters, and Ofcom, which will be reporting to her on public interest considerations in relation to the media, expressly accurate presentation of the news and free expression of opinion. Both reports will be returned on 11 March.

My right hon. and learned Friend, as a very assiduous and diligent KC, is making sure that I, as Media Minister, am absolutely excluded from the process, because that is what it demands. I am not permitted to know about the scrutiny that is under way, or to interfere with it. She is also not permitted to take into account any political or presentational concerns in her deliberations, and we would not wish to cause there to be any chink of light here that would leave the process open to judicial review. That leaves me in an unenviable position: I face understandable expert probing by hon. Members, to whom I can offer no answer beyond what is in the public domain. However, this urgent question is as much an opportunity for hon. Members to make their concerns clear and their views known, as it is an opportunity for me to answer them. So I say: be heard, loud and clear.

Straight after this urgent question, I will take the Media Bill through its remaining stages and make the case for that legislation in broad terms. I will argue that a free media, not interfered with by Government or indeed Governments, able to articulate and reflect a broad range of views, free to speak and create, and able to project to the world what democracy, a plurality of views and debate truly mean, is something important that we should value. In many respects, it underpins what we mean by a free society. Of course, we all know that; it is something that we repeat, automaton-like, in a way that risks giving rise to complacency. However, as I watch the actions of authoritarian states in these times of turbulence; as I see western democracies in a knot of angst over our values; and as I see our populations question, from the safety of these shores, whether our values still matter, I am reminded of the need to make that case again and again.

I cannot speak to the specific media ownership question—I know hon. Members will understand that, and will help me keep within the tramlines—but I can speak about media freedom; the need for media to be separate from political and Government interference; the importance of a British voice, domestically and internationally; and the pride we can feel in media institutions, such as those in the Telegraph Media Group, some of which date back two centuries and drove changes in this nation as profound as the Great Reform Act. To this day, those who write for those institutions ask questions of us all with a rare inquisitiveness and preoccupation with truth. [Interruption.] I shall finish shortly. I will be hearing—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Please do not tell me what you are going to do. I am in charge of the time. You are way over, and I expect you now to finish quickly.

[Julia Lopez]

I apologise, Mr Speaker, for over-speaking. I will listen to the points made, in the broadest of terms, and I suspect that I may agree with many of them.

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for her questions. As she is aware, a public interest intervention notice has been issued in this case, which means that I am not able to speak to a number of the points that will likely be raised. However, powers under the Enterprise Act 2002 allow us to look into acquisitions of this nature and to examine issues of media freedom of expression. We also have powers under the National Security Act 2023; the Cabinet Office has a role there. That will allow the Culture Secretary to look at some of the questions that my hon. Friend raises.

There will now be an investigation by not only the Competition and Markets Authority, but Ofcom, which will look into all these questions in great detail. That will allow the Secretary of State to make a judgment on what action she takes next. There may potentially be a longer investigation, after which she could be offered particular remedies, or could prevent a transaction. However, at this stage, I cannot speculate on what action she is likely to take.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I am frustrated with the Minister. I want to thank her for her answer, but frankly, it was not an answer. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), the Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, asked perfectly reasonable questions, which did not go into the specifics and zoomed out to the general, yet we still have no answers. A strong and independent free press is a cornerstone of democracy. We have a long history of that in the UK; The Spectator is the oldest magazine in the world. It is the responsibility of Government, regardless of their political persuasion or the newspaper under discussion, to safeguard the freedom to scrutinise, to expose wrongdoing and to speak truth to power.

We on these Benches recognise the legitimate public interest concerns raised over the proposed acquisition of the Telegraph Media Group, including about the accurate presentation of news, free expression of opinion in newspapers and the competition issues. I welcome the fact that the Government have asked further questions, and I await the conclusions of the investigations by the Competition and Markets Authority and Ofcom in full. But The Telegraph has been up for sale for months—the Secretary of State issued her first public interest intervention notice on 30 November. This process is ongoing. Employees at The Telegraph and The Spectator have been left in limbo, and senior journalists have expressed significant concerns.

Can the Minister tell the House why the Secretary of State has granted an extension to the deadline by which she expects to receive reports from Ofcom and the CMA in relation to the PIIN? I am sure she cannot, but I am just going to ask anyway. Can the Minister tell the House—this is a general one, so maybe she can—whether, in the light of the proposed sale, she has any plans to review the existing rules on media ownership? Has she or the Secretary of State considered that or had any conversations with colleagues about it?

With a general election approaching, in a significant year for democracy across the world and with record numbers of people going to the polls, the freedom of the press has never been more important. Now is not the time for the Government to have no answers or to be asleep at the wheel.