Media Green Paper

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

Order. Please note that, to get everybody in, I need to impose a five-minute time limit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. Universal accessibility is vital in this debate. I agree with much of what has been said so far, but I am concerned about the switch-off of free-to-air as it stands.

In the year I was elected, 2010, there were strong proposals to switch off the FM and AM signals. We are now 16 years down the line, and long-wave has just been switched off; the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) about losing the ability to do a long-wave broadcast are important to bear in mind. We keep talking about the technology moving along and about being able to access broadcasts on cables and the internet, but that will never be true for people who live on canal boats, for example. With digital television, these days someone can just stick up a Squarial, point it in roughly the right direction and get their television channels—my wife and I have taken holidays in a canal boat and in a camper van, and we have been able to do that. A camper van is slightly different, because it is probably used more for leisure purposes, but there are people who live on canal boats. How are they going to get an internet connection?

Technology may move on, but it worries me that we say, “In order to solve this problem and that problem, you are going to have to buy or rent something, or in some way or another enter into a contract to receive something that you currently get free.” The BBC is one of the most valuable institutions this country has, because it is able to be a public service broadcaster. It loses its way at times, when chasing ratings and saying that it has to be in competition, on some things that only a public service broadcaster can deliver.

If we say that people will have to pay something or other to be able to get television, surely that completely destroys a licence fee. People will be not only taxed to watch television, but charged again to actually be able to use the thing that they are paying a tax on. The BBC has to maintain a free-to-air service, however that is delivered. I am not sure that that technology is there yet but, once it is, it will be vital that people are not charged for it.

The way forward is having tried and tested technology. A lot of us went out and bought DAB radios when they came out. Most of those DAB radios are now in the bin, because DAB+ was brought out and Classic FM stopped broadcasting on DAB; my previous car did not have DAB+, so I had to go back to FM to listen. I am sure we all have certain digital radio sets that now do not pick up many channels at all. The industry changing what a person can receive on, after they have already invested in new equipment, is also something that must be looked at.

My constituency has a lot of people who live on canal boats; I am sure many other constituencies do too. We must give careful consideration to those areas: where there is not a solid land point of contact permanently, how are we going to make sure that people receive the things that they currently get and pay a licence fee for? The licence fee is not a television licence fee; it is a licence fee, because it covers the radio broadcast as well. If it slowly gets to the point where people say, “I am already paying for this, so I am not going to pay for that,” it will remove a whole host of radio, and I think that radio is the most important thing that the BBC does.

I very rarely watch television news now, because it is just a second-by-second diatribe as the broadcasters try to fill in a gap all day long, whereas anyone who listens to radio news will actually get the news in half an hour. There is probably more news in the 6 o’clock news on Radio 4 than in two hours on one of the other broadcasters. There are some very sensible programmes; it is a great pity that “The World Tonight” is coming to an end, although replacing it with “Newshour” from the World Service could be very useful.

However, there could be some unforeseen circumstances if we are asking people to pay twice. Given the reputation of the television licence, they may stop paying it. Fundamentally, I want to make sure that we do not take away the ability even to receive television, and that we keep considering whether people may be land-based and whether they can get that connection.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

I call Ann Davies.

Local Media

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

Many hon. Members wish to speak. I suggest a ballpark time of approximately four minutes. I call John McDonnell.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I do not do that baloney about what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, but congratulations on your elevation to the chair, Dr Khan.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

Thank you very much.

[John McDonnell]

I will be brief. I declare an interest as the secretary of the National Union of Journalists parliamentary group and my hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) is the chair. This will be like a Metropolitan police interview between us, and I am not sure which element I am doing.

These debates have gone on for at least the 20 years that I have attended. What usually happens is that there is a large attendance, and hon. Members get up and list the names of local journalists to ingratiate themselves as much as possible. From the NUJ’s point of view, however, that never works.

I will briefly run through the stats because what we are facing at the moment is pretty stark: 300 local papers have gone out of publication since 2005, which is when we had one of our earliest debates. An estimated 5.4 million people now live in deserts where there is no local paper. In my local area, like that of the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune), we had five but we are now down to one that is not really local. I take pleasure in the local journalism students at Brunel University doing their best to revive a paper, but it is a real struggle. We are almost in a monopoly situation now. Nationally, Newsquest, NationalWorld and Reach cover 51% of local papers. The situation is even worse for DAB radio, which is two thirds controlled by Bauer and Global; they have 60% of analogue radio as well.

The first issue for the agenda is that there is just a lack of regulation. We should not allow that sort of monopoly development to take place, so we urgently need to look again at regulation. We have just had another round of redundancies at Reach, as some Members will know because they signed the early-day motion on the issue. We have had 300 redundancies, and on top of that 50 sports journalists went during the summer as well.

The hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill mentioned the issue with AI. The problem now is that the use of AI is very clever, because it looks as though news is almost localised when it is not—it is just a different use of language. It is a betrayal of local people that AI has been distorted in this way. We have stood back and watched this happen while the tech companies have exploited the whole industry and made fortunes. One calculation in our briefing was that the US tech firms have made about £15 billion of profits, a lot of it from us in this country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Salford and I will both dwell on something fairly obvious to us: regulation definitely needs to be looked at again. The NUJ has always suggested that there should be a 25% limit or cap on how much is owned by any particular corporation. We also want to look at new models of ownership. We have had this debate before and stimulated some development, but it was not consistently resourced. One argument we have put to the Government is that we need a journalism foundation that looks at new ideas to bring together people from all sides of the industry. We are also calling on the Government to look at a tax on techs that can be reinvested in local journalism. We suggest 6%, but even limited taxation on the techs would mean we could provide a lot more support at local level.

I say to my right hon. Friend the Minister that it was a bit of a knock-back recently that the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will not require local authorities to advertise in their local press. That is a valuable source of money. I am talking about information on alcohol licences and other local notices. We think that is a real step backwards and might, in itself, be make or break for some local newspapers. We would also like newspapers to be defined in the Bill as community assets, so that they have the same protection as other local community assets when they come up for sale.

The BBC charter renewal has been mentioned, and we think there is a real opportunity there. I should also mention the local reporter scheme via the BBC, which we negotiated under a Conservative Government. It was an advance, but it is now being exploited by some local papers that are exploiting the individual journalist to do other work, rather than local reporting. We need to review that, but we think the scheme is good in itself.

I have outlined a programme of reforms that we think the Government could readily work on. As we can see today, there is a lot of cross-party agreement on how we can go forward. As I repeat time and again, there is not a person here who does not value their local paper for holding him or her to account.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

A couple of Members have dropped out of the debate, so we have a bit more time. There is no time limit, and anyone who spoke for four minutes or who has not yet spoken may make another intervention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) for securing this important debate.

According to the Press Gazette, nearly 300 local papers have closed since 2005. We are at a tipping point. The Public Interest News Foundation estimates that 12.5 million people live in areas where there is only one local paper, while 5.4 million people live in news deserts. Local papers provide reliable information at a time when misinformation runs rampant online.

My constituency is lucky to have The Scarborough News and Whitby Gazette, which publish a quality weekly paper with a small and dedicated staff. Regionally, we have the York Press, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), and the campaigning newspaper The Yorkshire Post. On the air, we have This is the Coast, Coast & County, and of course BBC Radio York and BBC Radio Tees.

However, journalists have told me that they are increasingly worried about their own survival—and these journalists are veteran survivors. They have raised concerns about Government proposals to remove the legal requirements to publish alcohol licensing notices and notices on local authority governance changes. The National Union of Journalists has highlighted that local papers remain the main source of news for the digitally excluded. One local editor put it plainly when he said that

“denuding print audiences of the right to know what is happening in their community does not feel like community empowerment to me.”

I agree with him.

Taken together, the changes would deliver a double blow to an already fragile sector. They would deprive titles of reliable revenue, potentially putting papers at risk and impeding the flow of information in our communities. The Secretary of State has committed to publishing a local media strategy to ensure that there is trusted local news across the UK. Ahead of the publication of that strategy, I urge the Minister to consider the impact on these valued and trusted titles of proposed changes to the requirement to report notices. If we value local media and the democracy it sustains, we must legislate to protect it.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

Thank you, everyone, for keeping to such good time and enabling all colleagues to get in. We now come to the Front Benchers. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Youth Provision: Universal and Targeted Support

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)]

I will call Harpreet Uppal to move the motion and I will then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates. There will be no other speeches, but Members can intervene briefly.

[Harpreet Uppal (Huddersfield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered access to universal and targeted youth provision.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan, and a pleasure to open this important debate on access to universal and targeted youth provision. It is fantastic to see so many Members here—I should have gone for a 90-minute debate after all!

I am grateful for the opportunity to highlight the vital role that youth services play in supporting young people across the country and delivering on the Government’s mission to reduce barriers to opportunity. I know that many colleagues share my deep commitment to ensuring that every young person in our constituencies has the support and opportunities they need to thrive. Members from across the House recognise that youth services are not a luxury, but an essential part of our communities.