Mentions:
1: Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con - Life peer) in the world and its position on the full range of foreign affairs issues—development, diplomacy, defence - Speech Link
2: Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD - Life peer) Does the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office have the resources to achieve everything that this - Speech Link
3: Lord Naseby (Con - Life peer) I thank our Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for the way it has stood by it, questioning - Speech Link
4: Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-affiliated - Life peer) My Lords, as has been said today, foreign affairs and what happens here are becoming more closely linked - Speech Link
Mentions:
1: Viscount Trenchard (Con - Excepted Hereditary) the Foreign Secretary for giving us this opportunity today to debate the UK’s position on foreign affairs - Speech Link
2: Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab - Life peer) We also saw the bungled merger between DfID and the Foreign Office, deprioritising development, sapping - Speech Link
3: Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con - Life peer) The noble Baroness is very welcome to come and join my round table in the Foreign Office and talk about - Speech Link
4: Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton (Con - Life peer) I was honoured to meet his wife and mother at the Foreign Office last week and, again, we should call - Speech Link
Feb. 22 2024
Source Page: Foreign Secretary's meeting with Brazilian Foreign Minister, February 2024Found: Foreign Secretary's meeting with Brazilian Foreign Minister, February 2024
Apr. 26 2024
Source Page: Foreign Secretary meeting with Foreign Minister of Mongolia, April 2024Found: Foreign Secretary meeting with Foreign Minister of Mongolia, April 2024
Oral Evidence Mar. 12 2024
Inquiry: The situation in Ukraine and the UK’s responseFound: Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and Foreign
Feb. 21 2024
Source Page: Foreign Secretary’s meeting with the Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs, February 2024Found: Foreign Secretary’s meeting with the Argentine Minister of Foreign Affairs, February 2024
Found: foreign powers (1) Schedule (Mergers involving newspaper enterprises and foreign powers ) makes
Found: AND FOREIGN POWERS 70A Intervention by the Secretary of State (1) The Secretary of State must
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of banning foreign government ownership of British media assets on (a) the UK's relationship with key international partners and (b) foreign investment in other sectors.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Maintaining a free and thriving press is a top government priority. Newspapers and news magazines play a unique role in our democracy, by providing accurate news and information, helping to shape opinions and contributing to political debate. The purchase of UK news organisations by foreign states runs the risk of undermining faith in our free press.
To address this we will table government amendments to the Digital Markets, Competition & Consumers (DMCC) Bill at Third Reading to explicitly rule out newspaper and periodical news magazine mergers involving ownership, influence or control by foreign states.
We will amend the Enterprise Act 2002 to create a new Foreign State Intervention regime for media mergers to work in parallel with the existing Public Interest Considerations regime. Our focus here is not on foreign investment in the UK media sector in general, but is targeted specifically on foreign state investment of newspapers.
Under the new Intervention regime, the Secretary of State would be obliged to refer cases to the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) through a new type of intervention notice, where she has reasonable grounds to believe that “a foreign state newspaper merger situation” has been created. This situation will arise where a merger involving a UK newspaper or news magazine gives a foreign state or body ownership, control or influence over the newspaper enterprise.
If the CMA concludes that the merger has or would result in foreign state ownership, influence or control over a newspaper enterprise, the Secretary of State will be required to make an order to block or unwind the merger.
We plan for the changes to take immediate effect upon Royal Assent of the DMCC Bill.
This policy is still in active development, but we want to ensure that the new measures do not have any undesired effects on wider foreign investment in UK media or on passive investments made by established investment funds.
The new measures will only apply to foreign states, foreign state bodies and connected individuals, and only to newspapers and news magazines given the unique role these publications play in contributing to the health of our democracy by providing accurate news and information, helping to shape opinions and contributing to political debate.
The UK has a strong track record for encouraging foreign investment which has been critical to growth within the media and wider creative industries. The Government remains committed to encouraging and supporting investment into the UK and we recognise that investors deploying capital into this country rely on the predictability and consistency of our regulatory regime. The UK remains one of the most open economies in the world, which is key for the prosperity and future growth of our nation.
Found: Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill: Supplementary Delegated Powers Memorandum