Newspapers: Foreign Ownership

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I was not aware of the point that my noble friend raises. I will take that back to the department and write to him in due course.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the letter that she sent to the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and others who have an interest in this, ahead of this Question, drawing attention to the publication of the consultation documents. It is of course right that the UK has regulatory protections in place for important industries such as our news media, but does she agree that Governments and regulators must exercise those protections swiftly? Does she accept that long periods of delay and uncertainty harm business confidence and may deter investment from the sorts of people we do want to see investing in the UK?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes many points that sound entirely reasonable. We are clear that we need serious investment in our media and we hope that the certainty that these SIs will provide, albeit with considerable protections around them, will enable media groups to obtain that investment.