Telegraph Media Group: Ownership

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Twycross on 16 September (HL10228) and following media reports in August of Redbird Capital Partners’ formal notification to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to acquire Telegraph Media Group, when they will update Parliament on action they are taking to resolve the Telegraph’s ownership and ensure compliance with Chapter 3A of the Enterprise Act 2002.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

Noble Lords may have seen press reports that the department has received a formal request from RedBird IMI to progress the sale of the call option to own the Telegraph. Thorough due diligence will be conducted on the proposed transaction, and should the Secretary of State have reasonable grounds to suspect either public interest or foreign state influence concerns, she will intervene. The Telegraph Media Group remains protected under pre-emptive action order. The Secretary of State will inform Parliament when regulatory decisions are made, as is consistent with standard practice.

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[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s confirmation that the formal bid has been received and that during this phase of scrutiny the existing protections for the Telegraph remain in place. I very much hope that the Secretary of State will soon be able to say that she is minded to involve the CMA and Ofcom in the scrutiny of this bid. That will be important, should she decide to give it the go-ahead, for our future confidence in the Telegraph’s editorial independence. Meanwhile, can the Minister please confirm that the regulations to prevent multiple 15% equity stakes from state investment funds will be laid before the end of this month and applied to this case? Will she also make clear—and confirm, I hope—that the 15% is an absolute cap, and that any financial arrangements such as debt or earnout on top of a state investment fund’s proposed 15% stake would go against the intention of those regulations?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her engagement, not least with me, with the Secretary of State and with officials, which has enabled us to get to what I hope everyone agrees is a better place than where we were previously. I would like to reassure her that we still intend to lay the regulations preventing multiple foreign state-owned investors owning an aggregate of more than 15% of UK newspapers by the end of this month. This cap will apply to any live merger at the time it comes into effect. The cap means that state-owned investors can own up to a maximum of 15% of the total shares or voting rights in a UK newspaper, provided that their investment is passive. We are absolutely clear that the overall intention of the policy is that a foreign state should not have any control or influence. This is what the Secretary of State considers carefully when she looks at the details of each case.