Enterprise Act 2002 (Mergers Involving Newspaper Enterprises and Foreign Powers) Regulations 2025

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

If an investment fund directly controlled by a serving UK Deputy Prime Minister were proposing to take a 15% stake in a UK newspaper, what would the reception be? Well, why on earth are we allowing a fund that is led by the United Arab Emirates equivalent of Angela Rayner to do just that? There is a serious debate to be had on this issue, but using an unamendable secondary instrument that subverts primary law is not the way to do it. Let us have a debate, with the Government introducing new draft primary legislation. We can talk about the difficulty of defining what funds are in and what funds are out in a proper setting. We must act to reassert Parliament’s role and to prevent us from crossing this Rubicon. I urge your Lordships not to let this measure pass. Please support this fatal amendment. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, I must inform the House that if the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, is agreed to, I will not be able to call the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell of Beeston, for reasons of pre-emption. The Question I therefore have to put is that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, be agreed to.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, although I take a different position on this from the noble Lord, Lord Fox, I too would like to welcome him back to his place, and I am pleased to see that he is making a good recovery from his accident.

Last year, the House protected and guaranteed press freedom by forcing the Government to change the law and put beyond doubt the risk of a foreign Government owning, controlling or influencing a British newspaper. None the less, we accepted that it would be necessary to allow limited exemptions to state-owned investment funds to ensure the industry’s financial viability. So the principle of what we are debating today is not new. Although I do not endorse how the noble Lord, Lord Fox, depicted some of the differences, we certainly cannot deny that the regulations before us today present a different model from the one we were promised over a year ago. The cap is, as we have heard, 15%, not 5%, and instead of distinguishing between different states’ investment funds so that only some are permitted, all are included but limited to passive investment only.

The other thing we should not ignore is how badly the Government have handled this whole process and made arriving at a solution far more complicated than it needs to be. I will come back to that in a moment, as well as raising some questions for the Minister to address when she comes to wind up.

The question I have grappled with is whether a 15% cap, restricted to passive investment only, still supports the much bigger principle of press freedom that we fought hard to protect. I have concluded that, with some safeguards, it does, and in reaching my view, I have not just considered what is best for the future of the Telegraph, I have very much taken account of how we need to safeguard the future of the whole news industry. Because, while we all care about protecting a free press, upholding that principle will serve little purpose if our news industry cannot survive, and its economic conditions are worsening.

Last year, when I brought forward my amendment, the Communications and Digital Committee was conducting a major inquiry into the future of news. It was plain to see then that the news industry was in jeopardy and its business models threatened like never before. The Minister has already outlined how the pace of technological change, as well as fierce and unfair competition from the tech sector, has eaten away at advertising revenue for many years. But the situation has accelerated since last year. The sharp decline in traffic to news websites from AI-generated news summaries via search pages or models such as ChatGPT, never mind the ongoing uncertainty over copyright law, which the House has debated many times in the last few months, presents an existential threat—I repeat that phrase which the Minister used, because I genuinely think that is real.

By the way, it is also worth pointing out that the major foreign tech platforms, which curate news stories based on algorithms and provide these AI summaries, are far more powerful and potent in shaping public opinion than any British newspaper. They have access to all the investment capital they need, without any constraints as to where they source their funds.

The news industry needs to invest heavily to compete with the tech sector, yet its routes to readers and revenue streams are shrinking rapidly. Subscription is not a viable model for all organisations, with the mid-market red-tops and local news at gravest risk. But, even though market consolidation is likely and conditions are bad, we can be confident that our action last year dealt with the threat of several British newspapers or news organisations ending up in the hands of foreign powers. Now, we need to make sure that the UK news industry itself can respond to the challenges it faces.