Media Bill

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 28th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate even if—he will forgive me—I did not agree with every word he said. I declare my interests as deputy chairman of the Telegraph Media Group and director of the Regulatory Funding Company, and note my other interests set out in the register.

In the 14 years that I have been in this House, I have never known a period during which we have had such a rollercoaster of legislation impacting on the media. It is like the fabled number 11 bus: you wait for ever, then four Bills come along all at once. Indeed, there are arguably five Bills if the Private Member’s Bill in another place on SLAPPs is included. Each Bill has been incredibly important and this last one, which we embark on today, is no exception. I strongly support it. It has been a long time coming—two decades—and I hope that we can help it on its way to the statute book speedily and intact. The pace of change in the media landscape is ferocious and history will judge us harshly if we delay in any way these vital changes; they are needed now.

Like other legislation that we have considered, particularly the Online Safety Act and the digital markets Bill, this Bill has already undergone extensive and detailed scrutiny, as well as widespread consultation across the industry. It comes to us, perhaps unlike some other legislation, in pretty good shape. While scrutiny is important, like my noble friend Lady Stowell, I do not believe there is any case for fundamental change to its shape or terms.

One thing we must ensure is that the Bill is future-proofed. As we have heard, the Communications Act 2003 has sat on the statute book for over 20 years, without any mention of the internet in it. That is perhaps one reason why media markets are now so fundamentally flawed as a result of the growth of the giant tech platforms, to the detriment of consumers and content providers. To make sure that does not happen again, we must ensure that there is a regular review of the Bill’s terms and impact, particularly in regard to PSB content.

PSB content is a vital component of UK media, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said, and we have seen its power recently in exceptional drama from ITV. But the future of PSB is at serious risk because in the distorted global media market we have, it is the unaccountable platforms which increasingly determine what UK audiences see. Without action, PSB content could disappear from view on global online platforms and that would be unconscionable. We must protect it at all costs and the Bill is a vital step. We should make sure that we do nothing in this legislation which adds to the regulatory burdens and costs on PSBs if we want them to thrive—a point that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, made very effectively.

Ofcom’s role is central to that. While Parliament will set out the framework, it will be the regulators, as with the Online Safety Act and the digital markets Bill, which have to do the heavy lifting, and they will have a great deal of discretion. During the passage of this legislation, we should send a strong signal to Ofcom —it is very good to see my noble friend Lord Grade in his seat—and we expect it robustly to implement its terms, particularly in regard to prominence and dispute resolution, and to do so without delay. We must hold it to account for that. The recent introduction by Amazon of global standard terms requiring all content providers—including PSBs—to provide 30% of their advertising revenues shows how important this is.

On the subject of Ofcom, one issue that concerns me is the potential for the Bill to create a new form of complaint tourism industry, with people from outside the UK able to complain under both the standards code and the privacy and fairness code. That has serious implications for the breadth of content available to UK audiences. It will also be a significant burden on Ofcom, which is already facing the huge extra responsibilities of the Online Safety Act. I believe that complaints should be accepted only from UK residents or, at the very least, that there must be a mechanism to assess to what extent the codes are being used inappropriately for content tourism, with adjustments to the complaints regime made accordingly. My noble friend Lord Grade already has enough on, and we do not want to add too much to his burden.

The other area of real importance in the Bill is the future of radio, which plays a huge part in the lives of so many UK households. I strongly support the measures in Part 6 to ensure that audiences can access their favourite radio stations on voice-activated devices when they ask for them, but again, we need to make sure that the legislation is future-proofed so that our good intentions are not outpaced by the speed of market change. There is a strong case for broadening the scope of the Bill to include online-only radio content provided by Ofcom-licensed stations. For example, the award-winning Virgin Radio Pride summer pop-up, which provides a dedicated platform to celebrate the LGBT+ community, as well as discussing important issues impacting on LGBT people, would not be covered by the Bill’s protections. The Bill can also go further, through minor technical amendments, in addressing the imbalance of power between the giant tech platforms and UK radio stations in a number of areas, including access to data, non-financial carriage charges and the insertion of platform advertising before radio stations.

I would like to take up some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who, I am afraid, seems to be stuck in a past which has long since vanished, but I have not really got time. There is little that I want to say about the repeal of Section 40 except this: it was one of the most odious and shameful pieces of legislation ever put on to the statute book in this country in the modern democratic age. It sought, for the first time since 1695, to hold a gun to the head of the free, independent press in the UK and say, “Join a state-backed regulator or we will close you down”. That would have had the real-world commercial impact of forcing publishers, particularly regional and local ones, to pay the costs of a libel or privacy action even if they won. It would have punished newspapers and their websites for telling the truth and utterly destroyed investigative journalism. It would have been completely incompatible with our commitments under the ECHR.

The result of all that is that it has severely dented the UK’s once-shining reputation for press freedom. If it had ever been implemented, it would have been the day that liberty died in this country. For all those reasons, it must not be allowed to stand a moment longer on the statute book. The repeal of this abominable legislation is long overdue and all credit is due to the Government.