Johnston Press: Administration
Debate between Rachel Reeves and Jeremy Wright(6 years ago)
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Jeremy Wright
Yes, I am happy to do that. In fact, the first newspaper I ever appeared in was my hon. Friend’s local newspaper, so it has a particular place in my heart. She is right: one thing that we expect Dame Frances Cairncross to do, and upon which we will wish to act, is to preserve good-quality, well-sourced, authoritative journalism at local and national levels. It is fundamental to the way in which we hold power to account, and it is an important part of the antidote to so-called fake news, on which my hon. Friend’s Select Committee has done such good work.
Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
May I pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), who asked what will happen to people who are currently in receipt of pensions? I do not think it is correct to say, as the Secretary of State has said, that their pensions will not be affected, because they will be uprated in line with consumer prices index inflation rather than retail prices index inflation for years to come. If someone expects to carry on taking a pension for 20 years, they will lose out on thousands of pounds if their pension is uprated at this lower rate. Will the Secretary of State confirm that people who are currently in receipt of final salary pension schemes at JPI Media, to which they have now been transferred from Johnston Press, may indeed lose out to the tune of thousands of pounds because of these changes?
Jeremy Wright
Again, I must I am afraid remind the House of what I said earlier. There are good reasons why, at this stage at least, I need to be cautious about what I say about the detail of this transaction and the background to it. What I would say to the hon. Lady is that it is very clear that this business was having significant difficulty before this transaction was carried out over the course of the weekend, and were these businesses to have been liquidated there would have been very serious consequences for all concerned. As I say, it is important that I am cautious at this stage about what I say.