Draft Enterprise Act 2002 (Definition of Newspaper) Order 2025 Enterprise Act 2002 (Amendment of Section 58 Considerations) Order 2025

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 General Committees

[Stuart Andrew (Daventry) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I welcome these orders, and I hope it will please the Committee to hear that I do not intend to detain us I do, however, want to raise a few issues.

As the Minister said, a statutory review in 2021 conducted by Ofcom recommended that the Secretary of State should broaden the scope of public interest considerations beyond print newspapers and broadcasters to capture a broader range of news creators to reflect changes in consumption. As many colleagues will be aware, the 2024 news consumption report found that 71% of UK adults consume news via online sources. It is therefore right that action is taken to future-proof our media regimes. The Government admit that their measures are narrower than Ofcom’s recommendations. Will the Minister report on any issues Ofcom may have raised with her about this approach, given that it does not cover the full recommendations?

The Government’s press release noted that they did not want to put any “undue pressure on businesses”. Is the Minister confident that the right balance has been struck? I accept that this is quite a narrow tightrope to walk, but it is important that we get this right. I also note that some respondents to the Government’s consultation shared the view that broadening the scope of the public interest consideration to apply to mergers involving enterprises involved in newspapers or broadcasting was unnecessary. The responses suggested that this could have a

“chilling effect on investment and consolidation”.

Will the Minister please reassure the Committee that this will not be the case, as we want to see as much investment as possible, especially given the current media landscape?

Can the Minister update us on the secondary legislation to further bolster the foreign state influence regime, to prevent multiple states acquiring 15% of newspapers? When will it be laid? We had to alert the Government to this seemingly a significant oversight in the drafting of the legislation. There is clearly a lot of concern out there, and while we want to see investment, we must safeguard against any state ownership of our free media.

More broadly, the Opposition will always support accurate news reporting, freedom of expression and the plurality of voices within the newspaper market, so I welcome the speech the Minister made and the action the Government have taken. None the less, I would be grateful for answers to those questions.