Local Newspapers

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is always a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. In fact, there is a never a delight greater than serving under your chairmanship—and if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing the debate. I knew that he and other hon. Members were seeking it, and I am delighted that it has come to pass. Perhaps he thought that only a few of us would be here and that we would have to stretch our speeches out for hours to fill the allocated time—we know that the Minister finds that difficult to do—but what my hon. Friend had forgotten was that the debate has a subtitle, “How to get in your local newspaper”, and an awful lot of colleagues have come along to get in their local newspaper. We have heard an array of names of local newspapers and a great deal of name-checking, and we are all grateful for it.

It is a shame that the beknighted Gentleman, the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell), is unable to join us for the end of the debate. He has apologised, and obviously we understand that he has to fight off the Labour contender in his seat, so he cannot stay here for the rest of the debate.

I was delighted to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), who made extremely important points about what is happening in Wales, which I will refer to later.

It is always a delight to hear from the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), the honourable toyboy of Mrs Thatcher—[Laughter.] Well, that is what the press described him as, so we can only presume that it was the truth. Maldon, of course, has a great tradition of journalist MPs. Tom Driberg had quite a reputation, which the hon. Gentleman has not quite managed to live up to—or live down to, or live across, but I have never crossed Westminster bridge with him, so I do not know.

I am envious of my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), because I think the Rhondda, too, should be the Great Rhondda. His constituency should not be the only one called “Great”. In fact, my constituency used to be the Great Rhondda, in that it was Rhondda Fawr and there was a Rhondda Fach as well. Perhaps we will return to the Greater Rhondda at some point.

It was a delight to hear from the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier). He also represents Oadby and Wigston, though he left those two bits out, and I see that he has departed this realm—or this room, anyway.

The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) has obviously gone off to his constituency as well. He referred to Martin Shipton and David Williamson as great scions of Welsh journalism. I would only say that Martin Shipton laid a bet with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), when I was selected as the Labour candidate in the Rhondda in 2000, that I would lose the seat because of my sexuality. My hon. Friend said that I would win by more than 10,000 votes, and he had better political antennae than Mr Shipton, for which I am grateful.

We also heard from the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), which is always a delight—oh, he’s gone as well.

My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) told charmingly entertaining stories of the various different careers that she has had in the past, and it was a delight to hear from her.

The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) referred to selfies, and as one of the early proponents of the selfie, it is a delight to hear that everybody has now come round to my opinion on this matter. I merely point out that further to The Mail on Sunday and The Sun advertising my selfie in November 2003, I increased my majority at the next election, so it pays to advertise—although perhaps not in quite that fashion, would be my advice.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) has been derided by the press in the past, in many different ways and in many different guises. He has the scars on his back and he is proud of them, as are many of us.

The truth is that, as many have adumbrated this afternoon, there are enormous problems in the local newspaper industry. As people have mentioned, first of all, there are the closures, with 150 titles gone since 2008. In November 2014, Trinity Mirror itself closed seven newspapers, losing 50 journalists. It does not feel as though the pace of those closures is slowing, and if anything, there is a danger that it will increase.

There has also been a dramatic fall in sales, not only in local newspapers, but in national newspapers: it has been 15% year on year for some time now. Last year, sales of the Bolton Journal fell by 39% in a single year, whereas for the Coventry Telegraph, they were down by 14.4%. In Wales, as we know even more keenly than I suspect many other places, sales of the Western Mail fell last year by 14%, and it is now down to just 19,654 copies. It does not feel like a national newspaper any longer, given that 3 million people live in Wales. The figure for the South Wales Echo is similar—20,634—and they are virtually identical newspapers now, with many articles repeated word for word from one to the other, or nicked from the Rhondda Leader.

As I have mentioned the Rhondda Leader—because I have to do my bit about getting into my local newspaper—it is a depressing fact that, when I was first elected, the number of copies sold every week was in the tens of thousands, and it is now 4,342. It is not a local newspaper any more, and frankly, that is partly because most of the news is not local news. It is published out of a hub. The paper is not published in the Rhondda and has not been for some time. It does not have its own distinct set of reporters and the inside pages often refer to all sorts of other places in south Wales that have nothing to do with the Rhondda. The fall even in the last few years, from nearly 10,000 copies in 2009 to 4,432 now, means that sales have halved in the period of this Parliament, and that represents a major problem.

There has been the collapse in journalism as well. In 1999, Media Wales had 700 journalists, but it now has 136. It simply cannot provide the same degree and level of expertise about a wide range of subjects—from agricultural through to politics, to broadcasting and so on—that the national newspaper of Wales really needs. Many local newspapers now have barely any truly local content, and certainly none with investigative reporting or fact-checking behind it, as many hon. Members mentioned.

Advertising revenue fell dramatically during the recession, but there have been further problems since then. The advertising revenue for local newspapers is still falling, in part because they used to rely on people selling or buying a car or their home, and many of these things are now done entirely on the internet. Some hon. Members have asked, “Would it not be a good idea if Government advertised more in these newspapers?” The legal requirements are clear, but I do not think that Government should advertise in newspapers solely to keep the newspapers alive. That would be inappropriate. Government have to decide what is the most cost-effective way of communicating with all the community.

I say gently to the newspaper proprietors that I think sometimes they have conspired in their own downfall with regard to local newspapers—I truly do. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington made extremely good points about boardroom pay and profits simply not matching, or being completely out of kilter with what was needed in the industry to invest for the future to make sure that there was an ongoing revenue stream. Therefore, to try to keep the figures up, companies ended up putting cover prices up. The Rhondda Leader now costs 90p—quite a significant sum if there is to be no local newspaper content. When The Northern Echo put up its price by 15p a little over a year ago, the number of people buying the newspaper fell dramatically. Fifteen pence may be nothing to Members of Parliament or to many people listening to this debate, but that just made it an unattractive option for many people in the north. Somehow or other, we have to deal with that vicious circle. Why does that matter? It matters for the simple reason that local newspapers are an essential part of local democracy and local culture—people understanding what is happening around them.

At the moment, there is a little story going on in my constituency. Maerdy surgery has decided to go part time on Thursdays and has threatened to close on Fridays. There is no means of knowing that from a local newspaper now. To all intents and purposes, it is barely reported at all. There is a grass fire going on in Porth this afternoon. I doubt whether that will get into a printed newspaper in any shape or form, and if the kids who probably started the fire got arrested, I doubt whether that would end up being in a newspaper, either.

This is a problem for us all, because local government is where most of the policies and most of the public services that we talk about are administered. If no one gets to find out what is happening in their local area, there is no true accountability. That is all the more difficult in Wales. Scotland has quite a substantial national set of newspapers. They compete with one another. There is competition for voice, political posture and quality. Very little of that happens in Wales, where virtually only one voice can be heard in any given area and many people simply do not understand the devolved settlement. Sorry, I mislead the House. It is not a settlement; it is the devolved process, which changes every year because some new Secretary of State for Wales comes in and decides, “Right, we’ve got to do another chunk of devolution that no one will end up understanding.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby referred to local newspapers as the breeding ground for this country’s great journalists. Nearly every journalist, whether on television, on radio or at a great national newspaper, started life on a local newspaper. But even in south Wales, which in Cardiff has one of the best schools of journalism in the land and in Europe—it is much respected around the world—those newspapers are finding it difficult to take people on. There will be a very significant problem in the long term for the whole newspaper industry if we do not manage to address that.

Of course we should not overstate the problem, because it is possible to find out what is happening with the Maerdy surgery on Facebook, and that is increasingly changing the pattern out there. Many local people will create a local Maerdy page, a Ferndale page, a Treorchy page, a Tonypandy page, a Llwynypia page and so on, and people go there and have great conversations about what is happening in local politics and so on. However, that excludes a significant proportion of the population, who do not have internet access or do not want it, and we need to be aware of that.

Of course we must have a plurality of voices. My particular anxiety in relation to Wales—this was mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Llanelli and for Newport West—is that the BBC could all too easily be the only news voice in Wales, providing news for S4C and deciding how much funding it gets, completely out-resourcing ITV and making it difficult for anyone to listen to anything other than one single voice. This has always been depressing to me. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli mentioned the problem of a newspaper referring to whether Castell Coch was on the right or left of the motorway and revealing that the person had obviously been going in the wrong direction. In fact, it would be quite nice if BBC journalists could occasionally get north of the M4 to see Castell Coch. The problems with the BBC in London never managing to get any further than Camden are replicated elsewhere in the country because they cannot get any further than Llanishen.

I should say, however, that it is not only local newspapers that sometimes get things wrong. I remember that on one occasion the Daily Mail wrote that I was an ex-gay vicar, and it took me 20 minutes to explain that I am not an ex-gay vicar; I am a gay ex-vicar. There is a very significant difference between those two propositions—I have put aside one thing, but not the other.

The problem for us, of course, is whether this is all just a load of howling at the wind. Are we, like King Lear, finding it easy to spot the problem but not so easy to find the solution? That is a real question for the Government, because in response to many of the suggestions that have been made, other hon. Members have said, “Well, that doesn’t really work.” For instance, it was suggested that a bit of the licence fee might be taken to pay for local newspapers. I do not think that that is a goer myself. I think that any suggestion that there should be some kind of state subsidy for local newspapers is a major problem, for the obvious reasons about freedom of the press and so on. That leaves us with some difficult issues to address.

We need to hold on to some clear principles. The first is that in any given part of the country, there cannot be just one voice dominating what people hear. That applies to the whole country as well. A single person should not have so much power over the media that they can dominate—I hope that we will be able to say something about that in the general election—but it is also true for regional news and local news. I think that an important point to pursue is the one that I made to the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough in relation to newspaper groups that close a title but then are so jealous of their intellectual property that they refuse to allow anyone else to take over the title. I am sure that if the Rhondda Leader were ever to close, people in the Rhondda would want to take it over as a community venture.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) is not here now, but he referred earlier to the Camden New Journal, which is a completely different model of doing a newspaper. It has managed to survive through remarkably difficult periods, and perhaps others could, too. I gently say to some of the newspaper organisations that if they are closing down a title, they could look at handing it on to others in a constructive way. There are other models, and we need to pursue them.

I support the idea from the National Union of Journalists that there should be a short sharp inquiry. The hon. Member for Maldon is stepping down as Chair of the Select Committee—well, he does not have any choice, but he is leaving. He is departing from that Committee. Who knows? He may have more greatness thrust upon him. The point is that the Select Committee did a very good report in 2010. I think that the Select Committee is the right body to do the next inquiry, because it can bring people in; it can force people to come, and it can do it swiftly and relatively cheaply. I would very much welcome that, but it is not for a shadow Minister or even a Minister, were I to become one, to tell a Select Committee what reports it should engage in.

Finally, I want to ask the Minister a few questions if that is all right.

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

If you must.

[Chris Bryant]

The Kraken rises! The Minister is shuffling his papers and getting ready for the questions.

We were all intrigued by the Government’s announcement yesterday, but I am slightly sceptical about it. What is proposed might be a good thing, but I am nervous about how it will work. I say that because I blew a fanfare, as did the Cory band in the Rhondda—incidentally, it is the greatest brass band that Britain has had—when the orchestra tax relief was announced in December; but then of course we all discovered that it does not apply to most orchestras and it does not apply to brass bands, because of how the Government have drafted the concept of an orchestra. Not even the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is counted as an orchestra under the tax relief.

I just want to be precise and pin the Government down. Why consider only business rates? Why have the Government gone for that angle? I understand, of course, that some of these issues are devolved, but a tax relief would not normally be devolved and would be available in Wales and in Northern Ireland and, for that matter, in Scotland, depending on how it was crafted.

What counts as a local newspaper? That sounds like a stupid question, because we have all referred to so many local newspapers, but is something that carries only advertising and no locally created content a local newspaper? Does something that is produced by a local council count as a local newspaper? If the Government stick with the business rate model that they have gone with, what happens if all the content of a newspaper is produced in England but the newspaper is distributed in Wales, or vice versa? I presume that the Government do not intend to legislate on that before the general election—if that is to be the case, we might have to meet rather more frequently than usual next week—but I wonder when the Government intend to publish their consultation on the matter.

With those comments, and with enormous thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington for securing the debate, I will close my remarks. I agree with the octogenarians who have spoken in the debate that there are far too few of them. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby heard that.

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I am genuinely grateful to be appearing under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. This has been a lengthy debate. At one point, I thought I was in an episode of “Doctor Who”, because the debate started under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for York Central (Sir Hugh Bayley), but the next minute—so absorbed was I in the speeches I was hearing—I turned around and it was you in the Chair, Mr Rosindell. I wondered whether the time lord had changed into a younger, more vigorous and, may I say, more handsome version. I am only kidding; I am a huge fan of the hon. Member for York Central, and I echo the comments that have been made about this being potentially his last chairmanship. I wish him well in the future.

I thank the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for securing the debate, and for his kind words, which I was not expecting. I am grateful for the kind things that he said about my work with local government. I am not entirely sure whether this is the last debate that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) will take part in. I gather that the Speaker is holding a special debate for retiring Members, in which they can reminisce—at length, we hope—on their time in the Chamber. I wanted to say, after hearing the hon. Gentleman’s speech, that it is a privilege to speak in a debate led by so many distinguished old warhorses. I should make it absolutely clear that I do not include in that the hon. Members for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) or for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). I include everybody else, however, including the official Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).

The partnership that I have built with the Opposition spokesman is pretty formidable. We are at the stage where we are beginning to finish each other’s sentences, and when he got up to speak, he nicked the line that I was planning to open with. There are many important reasons why Members participate in debates about local newspapers, but it should not go unnoticed that I made a note of every newspaper that was mentioned in the debate. Rather than mentioning every speaker, it is probably worth my mentioning the Braintree and Witham Times, the Maldon and something newspaper—I cannot read my own writing—the Llanelli Star, the Carmarthen Journal, the South Wales Guardian, the South Wales Evening Post, the new paper on the block, the Carmarthenshire Herald, the Western Mail, the Maldon Standard and the Essex Chronicle. My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) gets bonus points for mentioning two journalists, Nina Morgan and Ally Grainger, whom he described as “excellent”. It will be interesting to see the coverage that they give him in the next five weeks.

I should also mention the Grimsby Telegraph, the Cleethorpes Chronicle, the Leicester Mercury, Martin Shipton—he has had mixed reviews during this debate—David Williamson, the Liverpool Echo, Nicola Adam, The Visitor and the Lancaster Guardian. I give a special mention to the Richmond and Twickenham Times, in which I hope to appear tomorrow following my visit to the Orleans House gallery in Twickenham with the excellent Conservative candidate Tania Mathias; and to the Brentford and Chiswick Times, in which I hope to appear tomorrow following my visit to the Watermans arts centre this morning. Having grown up in Chiswick, I know all about the work of Erin Pizzey, and I used to read the Brentford and Chiswick Times regularly. I will also mention the Walsall Express & Star, the Walsall Advertiser, the Scunthorpe Telegraph and the Rhondda Leader.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

What about the Islington Tribune?

[Mr Vaizey]

The Islington Tribune and the Camden New Journal.

[Paul Flynn]

Disgracefully, the Minister has not mentioned the South Wales Argus. We should point to the vacuity of his contribution, however. We would like him to say something, rather than indulging in a shameless attempt to get mentioned in the papers tomorrow.

[Mr Vaizey]

I quite agree. I merely mentioned the newspapers that exist in the constituencies of hon. Members and my hon. Friends. I would not indulge in this kind of thing on my own behalf, however. I would not mention the Wantage Herald, the Wallingford Herald or the Didcot Herald, which are three editions of the excellent weekly newspaper in my constituency. Neither would I mention the Oxford Mail, which sells 40,000 copies a day, prints 6,000 different Oxfordshire articles every month, has 670,000 unique users visiting its website and, importantly for the tone of this debate, has 17 reporters on the ground. I am told that that is more reporters than all the other Oxfordshire news outlets combined; I assume that that includes the BBC. I should also mention the Oxfordshire Guardian.

[Austin Mitchell]

Unfortunately, I forgot to mention the Yorkshire Post, which is Yorkshire’s national newspaper, so I would like the Minister to include it in his roll of honour.

[Mr Vaizey]

Before I move on to the meat of the debate, I would like to mention an excellent newspaper, the Yorkshire Post, which has a fine track record of many years.

We are speaking somewhat light-heartedly about a serious subject, namely the health and well-being of our local newspapers. I absolutely understand the points made by hon. Members and hon. Friends about the threat that local newspapers have faced. We have rehearsed many times in the House the reasons for that threat. We have discussed whether it has been caused by existential factors such as the rise of new technology and the changing way in which consumers access the paying parts of the media landscape, namely classified advertising, or whether it has been caused by bad management. Some hon. Members have referred to bad management in relation to bad investment decisions or what some might term asset stripping, which others might describe more neutrally as taking investment in different directions. When the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington spoke, I was reminded of our debates about football clubs. Local newspapers are community assets, in the broadest sense, with a huge following of loyal supporters. Most people want owners who understand the place of a local newspaper in a community, and who invest accordingly.

If I can say so without risking too much opprobrium, perhaps the death of the local newspaper has been exaggerated. It is worth recalling that there are still 1,100 local newspapers in this country with 1,700 related websites, and that 31 million people read them every week. The Johnston Press reaches 25 million people every week. A third of local newspaper readers do not read their national paper. Local newspapers have the distinct advantage that the advertisements that they carry are more likely to be trusted and acted on than those in other newspapers. The readership of the print edition of local newspapers is declining, but the readership of the digital edition is increasing. Some newspaper groups have seen a rise in readership of between 30% and 50% a year, albeit from a low base.

It is worth paying tribute to the hard-working editors, local directors and journalists who have kept local newspapers going, and who are going through the same kind of transition that has been seen in other areas, such as the music industry or film and television, as we move ever more quickly towards digital platforms. Those people continue to work very hard and to consider difficult issues to which there are no easy answers. If there were easy answers, they would have been implemented already.

The Government must do what they can to help, and part of that role is to get out of the way and clear away hurdles or, to put it another way, to try to level the playing field where there is unfair competition. I do not mean unfair competition in the sense of anti-competitive behaviour but in the sense of burdensome regulations on local newspapers that may not exist for other outlets. Let us start with the Chancellor’s welcome announcement on rates relief in yesterday’s Budget. The spokesman for the official Opposition ended his excellent speech by asking me detailed questions about that. We have held a number of meetings with local newspaper groups, which the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington helped to facilitate. The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has also engaged with local newspaper organisations. There is an appetite to act.

Why focus on business rates? One reason is that it removes unfair competition. Local newspapers, by definition, often have large buildings with large numbers of staff, whereas smaller local newspaper websites have fewer physical overheads. Reducing business rates is an obvious way of targeting relief and reducing costs. The consultation will be published after the election, and I cannot say exactly how it will be framed, but the definition of a local newspaper might parallel the one set out in the requirement for statutory notices to be published in local newspapers. There are plenty of potential definitions, but it seems obvious to use an existing one.

When the next Government publish that consultation, it could form part of a more wide-ranging discussion about the future of local newspapers. The next Chair of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport may decide that it is worth holding an inquiry at the same time as that consultation. That gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon for his excellent chairmanship of that wonderful Select Committee over two Parliaments, and hon. Members will relish any opportunity to hear him tell a few anecdotes from those 10 years.

Levelling the playing field through targeted rates relief would be a good thing. Continuing on that theme, the Government have two other achievements. First, on the town hall Pravdas—the free newspapers effectively paid for by council tax payers that are often made to look very like a local newspaper both visually and tonally— we have published a statutory code of conduct to ensure that councils do not produce publications that compete unfairly with local newspapers. As the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington mentioned, the Government have acted, where appropriate, when councils have breached that code.

Secondly, as far as I can recall, statutory notices have been a live issue for this entire Parliament. There was a threat that statutory notices would be withdrawn from local newspapers, for which statutory notices are obviously an important source of income. That has not happened but, nevertheless, there is still a debate to be had on statutory notices. The debate is not binary in that we would either take away statutory notices from all local newspapers or simply keep the system as it is. The debate has become more nuanced, and the Government have provided £1 million to pilot new ways of publishing statutory notices, which could include using local newspaper websites more effectively to bring statutory notices to the attention of a wider public. We could even potentially issue e-mail alerts about statutory notices via local newspapers. We want to continue with statutory notices, but we need to modernise them. That should not be seen as simply cutting off funding for local newspapers.

At the moment, the Government do not believe that conferring community asset status would be easy, and it is obviously important to remember that local newspapers are still private organisations. We remain open to persuasive arguments about whether community asset status could be a route to save local newspapers. I note the shadow Minister’s comments on the hoarding of newspaper titles. When a newspaper closes, its title and the value of its brand are not made available for local communities. The door remains open on that, and the Government do not have a fixed view. We remain open to persuasion, but we can see no clear way forward at the moment.

Finally, the BBC charter review will sit firmly in the next Government’s in-tray, and it is important that work on that gets under way as soon as possible. The BBC is clearly making overtures to local newspapers. For example, the BBC has a local working group—the local live partnership—with newspapers in Leeds, west Yorkshire and the north-east. The BBC is considering the potential opportunities for sharing training resources, for example, with local newspapers, which is another way to alleviate costs. In another part of the country, I gather that the BBC is auditing how often it uses local newspaper sources to generate its own news output, which should give the BBC a clear idea of how much it depends on local newspapers, thereby providing a potential route for accreditation or click-throughs to local newspaper sites.

At the other end of the spectrum, many local newspaper groups would welcome the opportunity to use BBC content, particularly video content, on their websites. The relationship between the BBC, local newspapers and local newspaper groups should be explored in the next charter review, although I am aware of the caveats in effectively extending licence fee funding to local newspapers. That important and subtle debate will form part of the charter review discussion.

I am grateful for the extensive and learned contributions on local newspapers by so many hon. Members and hon. Friends. I am glad that we have made progress, albeit at the end of this Parliament, on making a potentially meaningful change for local newspapers. We need to consider a range of different issues, and I hope that local newspapers will be high on the next Government’s agenda.