Newspapers: Foreign Ownership

Lord Pack Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Pack]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to publishing the names of respondents to the consultation on foreign ownership of newspapers, and what assessment they have made of the evidence base provided by the consultation.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my interest as the author of email newsletters, which, in theory, may be subject to the legislation in question.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

The consultation on the foreign state influence regulations was published on 9 May 2024 by the previous Government. This made it clear that individual responses and organisation names would not be published, but their content would be summarised in the Government’s consultation response. This was published on 15 May 2025. Our assessment of the responses showed that respondents had a strong preference for a higher limit. On 14 July, we published the consultation responses, with appropriate redactions, following a number of FoI requests.

[Lord Pack (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer and for responding to the issue by publishing the responses. However, only four responses is a very small number, given the widespread interest in the issue and its importance. Although the Government have leaned heavily on the consultation in their explanations for their policy, three of the four responses were from parts of the newspaper sector that might be seeking foreign funds. Should the Government not be listening more widely to the many other voices concerned about potential foreign government ownership of our newspapers?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

Although we received four responses to the consultation, they were quite detailed and technical. We have had quite a lot of discussions in your Lordships’ House about the future of media and the need to make sure that we get good funding sources in so that media groups can modernise. It is appropriate that the Government paid account to the media organisations, but, as the noble Lord will be aware, we settled on 15% because this is within the CMA’s views on where it might be appropriate to set things so that there is no inadvertent material influence.