Local Media

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) for securing this debate, and for his brilliant speech. I draw the House’s attention to my role as chair of the NUJ parliamentary group.

Since 2005, nearly 300 local papers have closed their doors. Millions now live in communities with only one local title, and millions more live in what we can only call news deserts, where meaningful local reporting just does not exist. We all know what that means: when there is no one in the room holding power to account, decisions are taken in the dark. When there is no local reporter at council meetings, in our courts or on our high streets, communities lose their voice. People lose the very information they need to understand what is happening in their constituencies, and what is happening in their lives.

The broken business models that we see today are a direct result of the local media market being dominated by a handful of corporations whose priorities have been consolidation, cost-cutting and the extraction of profit from once-thriving community institutions. Three companies now control over half the UK’s local papers and websites, and two companies dominate local radio. The same patterns are being replicated in the national media, with potential takeovers threatening to concentrate nearly half the newspaper market into the hands of a single individual. That is why new market rules must be introduced—not to punish success, but to safeguard the public interest. No private company should control more than 25% of the media market. Those holding more than 15% should be required to divest or establish publicly accountable structures.

I must stress that this crisis is not simply about ownership; it is about the hollowing out of newsrooms across the country. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned the redundancies at Reach, with over 300 editorial jobs gone in September alone. Titles that once had rich, thriving newsrooms are being left with one dedicated reporter, or sometimes none. Communities are being stripped of their chroniclers. Journalists are being stripped of their livelihoods. While the cuts happen, companies increasingly turn to AI to churn out homogenised, centralised copy. It is content that imitates local voices rather than reflects them, and that is just not journalism; it is misrepresentation, and the public know it. The overwhelming majority of people want transparency in AI-generated news, and they do not believe that the current safeguards are enough.

At the same time, tech giants continue to siphon off the advertising revenue that once sustained local titles, while refusing to contribute meaningfully to the journalism they profit from. They have taken billions, paid a fraction back in tax, and flooded our information environment with disinformation, extremism and chaos. This has gone on long enough. It is time for a reset. I urge the Minister to do what was suggested in the NUJ’s news recovery plan, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington did a fantastic job of outlining.

The key points from the plan are: reform media ownership rules with a strengthened public interest test; establish a journalism foundation to support new media and invest in public interest journalism; introduce a 6% windfall tax on tech giants; retain public notice requirements, thereby protecting a vital revenue stream and a vital democratic function; designate local papers as assets of community value; reform the local democracy reporting scheme, to ensure that public money supports genuine local journalism; and finally, use the BBC charter renewal to reverse the damaging local radio cuts and guarantee sustainable funding for trusted independent local news.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Murray]

That is really part of the Government’s response to this challenge, as I will lay out in my contribution. The Government are committed to devolving more power and funding to local leaders and communities to bring decision making closer to the people it affects. That, of course, allows local journalism and local news to exercise that transparency and hold power to account by being in the public interest and having that strong accountability. Those are all essential in the examples that we heard in the previous two interventions.

Local media plays a key role in all this—not only in helping to build a more socially cohesive country and providing trustworthy information at that local level, but in countering the false and divisive narratives that are percolating through all our communities, and in helping to keep communities informed, scrutinising local decision making and fostering civic engagement. These are all things that hon. Members have covered in their contributions.

At the same time, never before has this role been so endangered. We have also heard from many hon. Members about the dangers and the challenges. The way that we consume news has transformed—people say over the past 20 years, but actually it has been transforming daily. The way that people consume the news of tomorrow will be different from the news of yesterday.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I understand the importance of involving those at the coalface in the Government’s deliberations on the upcoming media strategy. Would he agree to meet the National Union of Journalists and consult it on the local media strategy?

[Ian Murray]

I will come on to that, but yes—I will lay out later what the local media strategy has done so far, how we have been consulting through the roundtables we have undertaken, and where the Secretary of State has been taking a leading role.

As we know, people are increasingly looking to their mobile phones rather than their local newspaper. I do not know when hon. Members last actually bought their local newspaper—picked it up off a shelf and paid for the physical copy. Across news publishing, local TV and radio, these changes have prompted significant financial challenges, as traditional business models for local journalism are under more pressure than ever. Those pressures are more acute for local news publishers, both in print and online, although many local outlets are now moving online.

Around 300 local newspapers, as we have heard already, have closed since 2005—equivalent to as much as a third of the sector—and the number of journalists employed by the three largest news providers, which have 60% of the market, fell from around 9,000 to 3,000 between 2007 and 2022. Over that 15-year period, revenue for those three publishers fell from nearly £2.5 billion to a little more than half a billion. We can see the challenge of revenue for our local newspapers.

The effect has been an overall decline in the provision of high-quality local media across the country. More than 40% of UK citizens who are interested in local news do not consider that their local news needs are being met. As many as 38 local authority districts now have no print, online, TV or radio dedicated specifically to that area, leaving up to 4.7 million citizens in local news deserts. That is why the Government are committed to the local media strategy.