Johnston Press

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I come in at the point at which the Minister left the Statement. My first real job was, week after week, to write the front page of our local newspaper, the Star. It produced Llangennith, Llwchwr, Llanelli and Burry Port versions, and I did the Burry Port bit. My brother worked as a linotype setter with the local press. The loss of 200 titles and more than 6,000 jobs since 2005, with printing presses now far distant from the communities where the titles are published, leaves us with an absence of democratic accountability and engagement. I knew everybody whose hair was being cut in Burry Port when I was reporting. When a baby turned out to be twins, I did investigative journalism of a primordial nature.

How can we measure the beat of a community’s heart and provide for community cohesion if we are being asset stripped in this way? A further 200 titles are now at risk and 2,000 jobs are uncertain. Pension rights are under threat. The future is bleak. Can we really wait for the Cairncross review? Are not some of these tendencies only too clear already? Must we not do something before it goes too far? They say that Facebook is going to give £4.5 million to train 80 journalists over the next two years. Where will they be employed at the end of those two years? How many more titles will go? It is a serious question. If Facebook was taxed properly, could the Government not then invest in embodying and implementing whatever the Cairncross review comes up with? All these questions rose to the surface when this peremptory action came to our attention on the news this morning. Will the Minister give some concrete replies to these genuine concerns?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Lord makes a number of good points. First, I wholeheartedly agree with him about the need to support, where we possibly can, local newspapers. They have been the lifeblood of communities, and they provide essential and very necessary information for communities, whether on local democracy and local councils, or on births, deaths and marriages or on much more—I could go on—so it is important that we do our best to support them.

On the noble Lord’s question about Johnston Press, I would argue that it is good news that the JPI consortium has been formed—it is good news to the extent that it has pledged to take over Johnston Press. This is just the beginning, and there is much work to be done to settle things down, but it is good news that JPI has said that it wishes to continue business as normal. Obviously, we will have to see how things progress. JPI has also been open and transparent about the pensions issue, and it is fair to say that, as a Government, we will be looking at how the PPF responds to this particular matter.

Finally, on the local democracy issue, the noble Lord may have alluded to a different point but the BBC local democracy reporting scheme is one way forward. So far, 144 journalists have been appointed to that scheme, which enables the very thing that we want to do, which is to support local reporting.