Enterprise Act 2002 (Mergers Involving Newspaper Enterprises and Foreign Powers) Regulations 2025

Viscount Hailsham Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I always pay careful attention to the advice given to me by my Chief Whip. The advice—which I am not sure I am allowed to reveal—is that we should not support this amendment on the grounds that we do not vote for fatal Motions. I was very impressed by the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Fox. In fact, I agreed with every single word. That is a real first for me on something coming from the Liberal Benches.

Until quite recently, I told people that I have never voted for a fatal Motion, but in fact I discovered that I did some six weeks ago, as the noble Lord pointed out. We had a fatal Motion, and quite rightly so, because it was on a matter that we thought was in the national interest: the position of the Government on their treaty on the Chagos Islands. So both I and the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, have voted for fatal Motions in very recent history, so I am a bit confused by the suggestion that we should deal with this matter on the basis of some kind of procedure. We have heard the nature and seriousness of the arguments. If this House now feels that it cannot vote on a matter of this seriousness because of some mythology about fatal Motions, what is the point of us being here at all? What is our purpose? This is a central issue.

The other reason why I am a little confused is that, when we amended the legislation last year under the previous Government, my noble friend Lord Parkinson mentioned an amendment being made at Third Reading and said:

“We will amend the media merger regime explicitly to rule out newspaper and periodical news magazine mergers involving ownership, influence or control by foreign states”.—[Official Report, 13/3/24; col. 2042.]


I emphasise “foreign states”. He said:

“Direct investment in newspapers of any size will be banned … We will therefore introduce an exemption for investments where the stake is below 5% of the total … This would apply to passive investments by … sovereign wealth funds, pension funds or similar”,


not by foreign states. That was primary legislation passed by this House. There was no vote because there was unanimity across the whole House about the importance of banning foreign Governments from owning parts of newspapers.

There was also consensus across the House for extending that to other media services, which the other instruments refer to. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, quite rightly points out that they would, I think, be supported by the House were it not for the fact that they change the ownership rules to allow foreign Governments to be involved not just in our newspapers but in other news media organisations.

My noble friend Lord Parkinson also said that the Government recognised the

“risks that foreign state ownership of … the UK’s newspapers and news magazines could pose to democracy and to free speech”,

allowing them to

“over time corrode trust in our media as a whole”.—[Official Report, 26/3/24; cols. 584-85.]

What has changed in the past 12 months about those principles? The Government have changed, but that is not a reason to change one’s principles on this side of the House. This Government have sought to take secondary legislation and use it to change not just the intention but the effect of primary legislation. Now they are the Government—we lost the election.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

On that point of the use of statutory instruments, does my noble friend agree that many of the problems he has identified arise from the fact that statutory instruments cannot be amended? Is it not bizarre that in the autumn we are going to have a remedial statutory instrument, the terms of which could be incorporated into the present statutory instrument if we were able to amend it?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

As always, my noble friend makes an excellent point, but it takes me slightly off the subject. I am kind of arguing that these procedural arguments are trounced by the fact that what is being done here is that primary legislation is in effect being amended by secondary legislation—to which, as he says, we cannot make an amendment. That is completely wrong. If we allow this to go forward, there will be other examples. This is the Executive thumbing their nose at the Parliament. This is the Executive taking power.

I believe that these regulations abandon an important principle. In her introduction, the Minister deftly avoided and elided the suggestion that investment was needed from foreign Governments. I have no objection to national wealth funds. Indeed, we amended the legislation, and the 5% had nothing to do with foreign Governments. As I recall, it was introduced to allow the Norwegian pension fund to be able to continue its existence. That was an exception to the rule, necessary because of the nature of those funds. Now we have regulations that allow 15% to be held by foreign states; that is what is at stake here.

Notwithstanding the powerful advocacy from my noble friend Lord Black for the Daily Telegraph, this has nothing to do with the Daily Telegraph. This is about a general principle that foreign Governments could take a stake in our newspapers and other media assets. When I say that it is nothing to do with the Daily Telegraph, I am slightly suspicious, just to take my noble friend’s point, that we are being asked to do this at such speed, in such a hurry. It is nothing to do with the Daily Telegraph bid, I am sure. Why did the Government not just withdraw the amendments and table new ones, which we could discuss at length in the autumn? Could it be to do with some other business going on with the Daily Telegraph? I may be cynical, and perhaps I am being unfair, but it feels like that.

I took the liberty of sending to colleagues—I promise not to do it very often—an article written by Fraser Nelson, whom I hold in the highest regard as a political journalist. I have circulated it to a number of colleagues. It tells the inside story from his ringside seat of what has been going on with the purchase of the Daily Telegraph. I commend it to noble Lords because, if they read that article, they will certainly vote for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox. It is completely unacceptable that our parliamentary procedure should be overwritten and that we should create an open door for foreign Governments to get into our media services to meet a particular bid.

The remarkable thing is that when you ask the Ministers why they are making this change, they say that it is nothing to do with the Daily Telegraph—it is because they had a consultation exercise. As the noble Lord pointed out, they had all of four people responding to this consultation exercise, which made them change their minds. Who were the people who responded to the consultation? They actually said that they were not going to tell us—it was going to be kept secret, because it was so embarrassing to discover that it was the newspaper owners themselves.

Of course, it is always very dangerous to cross newspaper owners, especially if you are in politics, which is why Fraser Nelson is to be commended on his excellent article today. If we have foreign Governments owning newspapers, as opposed to foreign investors, there will be a conflict of interest between our journalists and their proprietors, because our journalists might want to write unpleasant things about some regimes that may or may not be allowed to own the newspapers. For this House, if it is a choice or conflict, which are we going to support, the freedom of the journalists or the financial interests of the proprietors? There can be only one answer: we have to support the freedom of the journalists, even if they do not always reciprocate in respect of this House.

There is one further point I would like to make, and it is about RedBird. I do not have a clue where RedBird’s money is coming from; it is not disclosed. How can we possibly feel comfortable with that? I know that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has been so spectacularly successful in arguing in this House for freedom, not just in this country but all over the world, has grave concerns about the relationship between RedBird and the Chinese Government at the highest level. I know nothing about RedBird, and therefore I feel even more despairing that the Government should be bringing forward these regulations, instead of the Secretary of State having by now instituted for the MMC to carry out an inquiry into precisely those matters.

It is with great pride and pleasure that I shall support the Liberal amendment, not because it has been made by the Liberals, although I have huge respect for the noble Lord, Lord Fox, but because I believe that he is speaking for the whole House as it was before the election, when almost unanimously, without a vote, we upheld the principle, which these regulations seek to undermine, that foreign states should not be allowed to own newspaper assets in this country.