The Future of News (Communications and Digital Committee Report)

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Friday 25th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by praising the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Pack, and the work of my noble friend Lady Stowell and the members of the Communications and Digital Committee for this report. I declare my interests as the publisher of the Daily Sceptic, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union and an occasional contributor to the Daily Telegraph.

Last week, I wrote to the Secretary of State at DCMS, pointing out that her duty to issue a foreign state intervention notice regarding interference in a UK newspaper by a foreign state has been triggered—it was triggered more than three months ago—and asking why she still had not issued it. Under Section 70A of the Enterprise Act 2002, as amended by the DMCC Act 2024, the Secretary of State must give the CMA a foreign state intervention notice if they have reasonable grounds for suspecting that, among other things, arrangements are in progress that will create

“a foreign state newspaper merger situation”.

The Enterprise Act sets out the conditions under which a foreign state newspaper merger situation is in

“in progress or in contemplation”

and, if any of those conditions are met, the duty to issue an FSIN is triggered.

One of those conditions, condition 4, is if a

“foreign power has the right or ability to direct, control or influence to any extent, the … policy or activities (in whole or in part, and whether directly or indirectly)”

of a newspaper. On 17 January, the Telegraph reported that RedBird IMI had given directions seeking to influence the operational and financial management of the Telegraph. The headline on that story read:

“Telegraph Urged to Slash Jobs and ‘Forget’ Sale as Abu Dhabi Fund Applies Pressure”;


and the first paragraph read:

“The Abu Dhabi Fund which holds the fate of The Telegraph in its grip has urged executives to make more than 100 redundancies to deliver stretching profit targets”.


Plainly, condition 4 has been met.

Why, then, has the Secretary of State not adhered to her statutory duty to issue a foreign state intervention notice to the CMA? The purpose of the amendment to the Enterprise Act 2002, which was made last year by my noble friend Lord Parkinson after pressure was brought on the Government by my noble friends Lady Stowell and Lord Forsyth, was to prevent foreign states influencing or controlling UK newspapers. That is exactly what the Telegraph reported was happening last January. The IMI part of RedBird IMI is owned and controlled by the Vice-president and Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE, and RedBird IMI is the entity attempting to influence the operations and financial management of the Telegraph. Why is the Secretary of State allowing this to happen, contrary to the will of Parliament?

One of the recommendations of the report of the Communications and Digital Committee is that the news sector needs to innovate if it is to survive. The Telegraph would dearly love to innovate and develop its digital offering, but it cannot do that until RedBird IMI allows a sale to proceed—which, thanks to the inaction of the Secretary of State, it is under no pressure to do. Her failure to act means that the Telegraph has been kept in a state of suspended animation, with executives unable to make vital strategic decisions about its long-term future.

Another area in which the Secretary of State has been dragging her feet, as my noble friend Lady Stowell said, is in making the secondary legislation setting out, among other things, what percentage of the shares in a UK newspaper enterprise can be owned by a foreign state. If Redbird is indeed separating from IMI, as newspaper reports have said, with a view to putting together a new bid, possibly involving IMI, it cannot do that until these new regulations have been made. The last Government opened a consultation about this secondary legislation on 9 May last year, and it closed two months later. That is more than nine months ago, but the Secretary of State still has not made the secondary legislation. She has not even said when she is going to make it.

The Secretary of State replied to my letter yesterday, and I thank her for doing so, but it was wholly unsatisfactory, arguing that because Redbird IMI’s interference in the Telegraph was not significant, her duty to issue an FSIN had not been triggered. In fact, the interference reported means that the threshold has been met. The Secretary of State needs to act before it is too late. The committee’s report is entitled The Future of News, and I do not think I am the only member of this House who thinks that that future will be pretty bleak if it does not include the Telegraph.