Media Plurality: Communications Committee Report

Lord Razzall Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, this debate should obviously be looked at in the context of the development of the law recently. Until the Communications Act 2003, the only restriction on media mergers or the abuse of a dominant position was through competition law. The 2003 Act introduced for the first time a public interest test for media mergers, which imposed on the Government an obligation to assess whether the media merger would have adverse effects on media plurality. The Act had two major weaknesses. First, there was no definition of plurality, although we all understood that it probably referred to what Mr Murdoch was up to; and secondly, there was a basic weakness that a plurality review occurs only in the circumstances of a merger.

The recommendations this report makes are quite significant. It recommends that Ofcom should continue its transactional review capability, and the centrepiece is of course the tripartite approach the committee recommends. First, in the event of any media merger the competition authorities first look at the impact of the transaction on competition or on the abuse of monopoly position, where there is no transaction; secondly, Ofcom looks at whether a transaction has an adverse effect on media plurality; and thirdly, and very significantly, as the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, indicated, there should be a statutory periodic review of plurality of media markets by Ofcom on a four to five-year basis. Like members of the committee, we believe that if whoever the next Government are could legislate to that effect, the potential abuses by media moguls will be avoided.