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

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I have been listening quietly to the debate, and I think I am the first person to rise who has actually chaired a newspaper company, albeit a small regional company, in this country.

It is my view that, where someone has 15% control, they have a presence in the boardroom; it depends on other circumstances exactly how that presence may work out. But nobody, with the possible exception of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has really addressed what is a very serious point, which is that people who own things—and everything has to be owned by somebody —can change their minds. There is an underlying assumption behind much of what we have heard this afternoon, that if you are a foreign state, you can say, “I won’t use my ownership to exercise influence”, or you might be one that thinks, “I want to promote my own country in the receiving country”.

Of course, the problem we face is that the investment market for media is international and most media, particularly some of the papers we have been discussing this afternoon, are essentially nationally focused. There is a disjunction between the regulatory regime and the realities of the capital markets that lie behind a lot of these projects. All I would say is that it behoves us to be very cautious. As the Queen said before the Scottish referendum, “Be careful”.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I never in my wildest dreams thought my last speech as leader of the Liberal Democrats in your Lordships’ House would be to express my concern about the future of the Daily Telegraph. Politics is a funny business.

The arguments that we have been hearing this afternoon fall under two broad headings: the substance and the procedure. On the substance, there is no need to rehearse the argument about why foreign influence on our media is thought to be a bad thing. There is agreement about that. The logical way in which we stop there being foreign influence is to make sure that there is no foreign ownership. But we have heard this afternoon, first from the Government and then from others, that it is better to have some foreign ownership than for the press to face an existential threat.

This argument, one would have thought, was not entirely new. Yet, when the digital markets Bill was being debated in your Lordships’ House, amazingly, our media did not face an existential threat—nobody argued that. So, in the course of a year, we have gone from a point where a 5% stake by a non-state foreign actor was thought to be acceptable to where we now find that our newspapers face an existential threat unless foreign Governments are allowed to own 15%. As the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, asked—although he did not put it quite like this—if the stake has gone from 0% to 15% in a year, where are we going to be next year, given that we are told that the traditional media are on a slippery slope? I find that a very curious and uncompelling argument.

The question, though, is whether to accept the assurance that a 15% foreign-government stake will not influence or be allowed to influence the editorial stance of a newspaper. The first argument is that this 15% stake is merely passive: you are buying 15% in a newspaper in the same way that you might buy 15% in an oil company or conglomerate. However, given that we are told equally by the same people that these newspapers are facing an existential threat, is it likely that a hard-headed Government will decide that the best use of their funds is to buy a newspaper or part of a newspaper on a passive basis? Having looked all around the world, is that the best return that they will find for their funds? The answer is palpably “No, it is not”.

The next argument in defence of what is proposed is that there is a backstop and that the DCMS will be able to intervene when there is undue influence. However, as the Minister said only last week that, in those circumstances,

“it is likely she”—

the Secretary of State—

“could intervene”.—[Official Report, 16/7/25; col. 1827.]

I emphasise “likely” and “could”.

Suppose that the influence was being exercised in a manner to which the Government were sympathetic; would a Secretary of State intervene in those circumstances? If they did not, what pressure from whom would cause a Secretary of State to intervene? We know that influence over the way a paper presents itself is a subtle thing. In circumstances where you have a Government who are sympathetic to that influence, my contention is that those exercising the influence would get away with it. They amount to the substantial arguments against the proposition before us.

The question about procedure relates to how this has been undertaken. There was a consultation to which there were four responses. Normally, if a consultation receives four responses, you start again, because clearly more than four entities have a view. But, blow me, the four entities all have a similar and partial view, because they potentially stand to gain from this change, and the Government accept that as a reason to change their mind. This is extraordinary to me. I can think of no other consultation where four entities peddling their own argument would get a Government to change their mind. This is an extraordinary consultation, if we can think of it as consultation at all.

The next thing, as has been pointed out, is that this SI is amending primary legislation. I think everybody agrees that this question of press freedom is quite important, so what happened when this SI was debated in the House of Commons? Did they spend this sort of time on it? Did they have impassioned argument with people changing their mind? They spent 18 minutes on it, the vast bulk of which was the Minister at the start and the end. There were literally a couple of speakers in the entire debate. Either the House of Commons is not interested in the issue or it did not realise what was going on, because it is an SI and, as we know, MPs regard being put on an SI committee as a bit like being sent to Siberia for a month. So, in reality, this issue has not been debated at all in the House of Commons, which is extraordinary. If most MPs had realised what they had agreed to, without actually agreeing to it themselves, they would have opposed it.

The whole thing seems to be potentially very damaging and shows parliamentary scrutiny to be non-existent, except in your Lordships’ House in this case. For it to proceed would be bad for freedom of the press and for the way we deal with these things. When, on 3 June, the noble Earl, Lord Minto, urged people to vote for a fatal Motion on the Chagos Islands, he said that it was his

“duty to bring this fatal Motion to the House”.—[Official Report, 3/6/25; col. 614.]

We think that it is our duty to bring this fatal amendment to the House, and we urge noble Lords to support it.