The Future of News (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Friday 25th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox; I never know when I will be standing up. I too welcome and congratulate the Communications and Digital Committee and the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell—the former chair of the committee—on their thorough and broad-ranging report. Fearing the time limit, I shall do it no justice in covering the challenges and opportunities it highlights for the future of news and the media more widely. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pack, on his maiden newsletter—sorry, speech.

I aim to summarise three areas in line with the report: my personal experience in the area of news digitisation; current challenges; and public sector broadcasting—which is a theme that has been recurring in the debate—namely, the BBC.

When I started to engage in mainstream politics 25 years ago, I was something of an outlier; I was a Sikh Conservative, and this brought me to the attention of the media, notably the BBC or, to be more accurate, the BBC Asian Network. I learned quickly that you have really only arrived if you have spoken to someone from the BBC. The respect for anyone, from an intern to a senior editor, who had a BBC pass was unsurpassed, for its history, standards and the trust placed in it by the public and the institutions reporting were unprecedented. It was the voice: Auntie.

However, the emergence of social media changed how and whose voices are heard, especially with the rise of Twitter, now sort of known as X. I started using Twitter in 2009. As the Mayor of London’s transport adviser, I had a myriad of policies, projects and initiatives to communicate, and the mayor had changes of mind quite regularly back then, so I had to make sure that I was on top of getting that message out. I saw Twitter as an ideal channel to broadcast on and to bypass the traditional media. In those very early days, I could consume some rather clear feedback, wanted or unwanted.

News digitisation has been turbocharged ever since then. News organisations and journalists face challenges from the pace of both technological and behavioural change, as society changes its wants and needs when it comes to news, and from the emergence of influencers. I refer to a new report, published this month by 5654 & Company and MessageSpace, titled Influence and Information, which dives into the media habits of Westminster. Unsurprisingly, it highlights that social media is the most popular media source among MPs. It concludes that 97% of MPs use social media every day—I wonder what the other 3% are doing—and highlights that more than three-quarters of MPs access digital news publications multiple times a day. That increases to 90% for MPs who were elected for the first time in 2024.

What does all this mean? Politicians are in a new era of digital news consumption and the news media will survive, but it has to evolve, and has evolved, in the digital era. Social media platforms will serve as the go-to aggregation services for daily news, but also for challenges to traditional news sources, such as influencers and new disruptive media outlets. We can see the application of AI, content aggregation or even generative AI, as further challenges, but news is now interwoven with market-driven content and clicks monetisation, as well as the type of editorial control exerted on news.

I return to the BBC. Apart from how we consume, we must consider our media’s influence and its soft power. The BBC, as has been mentioned, has generally been considered the global bearer of the gold standard for public sector broadcasting, but its position as a trusted news source seems to have become disputed. Internationally, the BBC News brand still holds the kind of respect and authority that aligns with institutions such as our monarchy, but it does not feel at home in a more modern Britain, as the BBC News source becomes diminished.

I would like to focus my ask of the Minister on the recommendation on the process leading to the next BBC charter review. The committee’s report highlights the struggles of the anchor institutions such as the BBC, but let us unleash the BBC into the future digital news world, understand the challenges that it faces from disruptors, platforms and global news markets and help it to find its footing in the new world of news media, to digitally evolve faster, to remain valued and trusted at home and internationally.