Regional Newspapers

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Griffiths]

Thank you, Mr Hood, for that advice. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Newspapers are businesses, and are run by business people. They recognise that they must diversify, and they are looking for alternative income and revenue streams. All our newspapers now have internet sites, and are looking at how to spread their contents on as many platforms as possible. I hope that the Local World venture will help in that objective, but the reality is that advertising revenue through the internet is much lower than what can be expected through the printed medium, and that is disappointing for the many newspapers that have invested heavily in their online presence and advertising. They are competing with a whole host of different bodies, and competing with advertising on Google, Yahoo and other providers. It is difficult for them to compete.

The problem is not a UK phenomenon. The Newspaper Association of America says that industry losses account for some £500 million in a half year, which is offset by only a £20 million increase in online revenue. That shows the position that our newspapers are in. They are trying to be good businesses, and looking for new markets, but those new markets have much smaller margins and revenue income. We must look at what we can do.

I touched briefly on democracy. We all recognise how much more difficult it would be to communicate with our constituents without a local newspaper to get our message across. It is a case of, “If it didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.” We must look at the implications for us as politicians and as the Government if we lose this important communication tool. I have a hardy band of deliverers in Burton, but my ability to communicate with my constituents would be vastly reduced if I lost my local newspapers, and I would be remiss if I did not mention the Burton Mail. I am lucky to have such a great newspaper. It is a daily newspaper, and run by a fantastic editor, Mr Kevin Booth. I am also lucky to have three weekly newspapers, the Uttoxeter Post and Times, the Uttoxeter Echo and the Uttoxeter Advertiser. Strangely, they all serve Uttoxeter in my constituency.

Those newspapers, particularly the Burton Mail, serve another purpose. They are local campaigning tools. They are the voice for the local community. They do not just transmit information to my constituents; they take up causes on their behalf. The Burton Mail has run a whole host of campaigns on issues such as knife crime, making the town centre safer, and keeping the Margaret Stanhope mental health centre in my constituency open. A plethora of great campaigns have galvanised the community in the way that a Facebook page simply cannot. If we lose our newspapers’ campaigning ability, the voice of our communities will be diminished, and we should care deeply about that if we care about our constituents.

Our local newspapers are the first point of call for people to find information. Although my local councils—East Staffordshire borough council and Staffordshire county council—have fantastic websites, Twitter feeds and Facebook accounts, to try to communicate with the people who pay council tax, those people do not visit the websites daily to look for information, whereas local newspapers are such a repository of information. I said earlier that if we did not have them, we would have to reinvent them.

The Government must realise the importance of our local newspapers in communicating messages to the country. The Government advertising budget is under pressure. We recognise that we must make serious savings, and the Government are looking at communicating through new media, but many of my constituents are older people. Although we have a large number of silver surfers in Burton, many people still do not use the internet, Twitter, or Facebook, and turn to local newspapers for information. If we lose that, it will be to all our detriment.

The Government need to look at what more we can do. I have come up with the phrase “community capital”, and I think there is some community value in what our local newspapers do. In the same way that we support post offices through Government initiatives for the provision of services, and the voluntary sector through the Big Society Bank and investment in voluntary services, we should look at supporting our local newspapers to ensure that that community capital is not lost.

I point to two things. First, I recognise that the Government have taken some steps on tackling the issue of council newspapers. We have all seen the growth of free local council newspapers that go through doors at quite some expense, and my right hon. Friend and chum the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has done a great deal to try and rein in the worst excesses of those councils. However, we are still seeing some councils, such as Cardiff city council, spend huge amounts of money. A newspaper is produced there 13 times a year at a cost of some £33 million to the taxpayer. Is that a good use of council tax payers’ money, or should we be looking at what we can do to support our local newspapers?

Secondly, I touch on the issue of Department for Transport notices. A consultation ended earlier this year, as the Minister will know, on the DFT and its use of advertising notices in our local newspapers to ensure that local residents understand properly what is going on with the transport network in our constituencies. Were that important income revenue to be lost to local newspapers, I have absolutely no doubt that it would lead to the loss of journalists and tip some of our weaker local newspapers, which might disappear for ever, over the edge.

I am fast coming to the end of the time that I have to speak.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

More!

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank the Minister for demanding more, but sadly no one behind me is saying the same.

I know that the Minister is a champion for local newspapers. I have seen the number of times that he has appeared, peering out from the pages of the Wantage and Grove Herald, and I know how he supports his local newspapers. However, although he is responsible for this issue in his Department, we need to look at the wider landscape and what the Government can do to support local newspapers, if we are serious about a sustainable future for them. I urge him to look at what he can do to get a council of war together with other Departments. Let us look at what we can do with the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Cabinet Office, in relation to the big society, and at what we are doing with Departments such as the Department for Transport. Let us get all those Departments together and see how we can maximise the benefit of our local newspapers.

I am a Conservative and I hate to use the word “subsidy”—I do not use that word lightly—but there are ways in which the Government can do more to support, rather than subsidise, our local newspapers. We have to look innovatively at how we can channel Government activity and use our local newspapers to their benefit and that of Government.

Trust is hugely important. As we have seen in recent weeks, although Twitter is a fantastic vehicle for getting information out, it is also hugely unreliable. We have seen the implications that that has had for people who have been thrust into the media spotlight through no fault of their own. Local newspapers are trusted in a way that no other form of information is. We as a Government support the BBC, local television and Channel 4 through various mechanisms, and it is important for us to begin to re-examine how we support our local newspapers to ensure that they continue to hold us as politicians to account, continue to be champions for their local communities, and continue to support our local communities in achieving all that they can.

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[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Hood. I should apologise immediately for being late and not hearing the first seven or eight minutes of the debate. I am therefore very grateful to be called. I was thinking about what I was going to say when you called me. You did so rather earlier than I expected. That probably serves me right for being—

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend will have to be spontaneous.

[Glyn Davies]

What I say is probably always spontaneous.

I wanted to make a contribution because local newspapers are incredibly important in mid-Wales, where I live. The main reason for that is the retraction of the broadcast media; clearly, there has been financial pressure on the BBC in particular. They have withdrawn from the level of coverage in mid-Wales that I think we reasonably deserve. Now, the whole democratic basis, which has been a significant part of this debate, depends on our local newspapers. It depends on the County Times, which is a key weekly paper, the Shropshire Star, the Advertiser and the Cambrian News in the west. Without those newspapers, local issues simply would not be aired at all.

I want to give a couple of examples. The biggest local impact is that of onshore wind farms, whether we agree or disagree with them as individuals. They desecrate the whole area, and without the local newspaper campaign, the issue simply would not have engaged the local community anything like as much as it has. The whole of mid-Wales is part of that massive campaign, and we depend on the local newspapers to help us deliver it.

Last week, there was another issue. The local health trust has suddenly increased the waiting time for elective surgery from 26 weeks—in Wales it is 26 weeks; in England it is 18—to 36 weeks. The local population would not know that if it were not for the local newspaper. Local newspapers are therefore crucial in delivering the information that we need.

A point that I want to make briefly, without developing it, is about the concerns of local newspapers about the impact of our discussions on Lord Justice Leveson’s report. Most of us would agree that it has very little relevance to local newspapers, but there is massive concern about what bureaucracy it might deliver to those organisations. Many local newspapers are close to the brink in their financial liability. We will have to be very careful about any great increase in the bureaucracy that is needed to comply with new rules and regulations that apply to national newspapers. Great damage could be caused in our attempt to do good.

My final point will reinforce one made by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), who secured the debate. It is about how we can ensure that local authorities and Government try to channel much of their spend on delivering information, which is right and proper, through local newspapers. Powys county council—I am not being critical of what it is doing—is desperately keen to have everyone know what is happening within the council. That is right and proper, but it seems to me that if it were inventive and channelled that information through the local newspaper, by engaging someone who would almost be a dedicated reporter, would be a cheaper and more effective way of engaging with people. Almost nobody looks at the stuff the council puts out; it is very professional and very good, but it does not actually deliver what people want, and the same may apply to information campaigns by the national Government. We need inventive ways of transferring that spend so that it supports local newspapers.

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[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) for securing this important debate, and I am more than happy to put on record that he made an excellent speech.

I had not intended to speak about my local newspaper, but I cannot help feeling that a precedent has been set. I now feel obliged to talk at some length about the Rochdale Observer and the Manchester Evening News. They are both part of Trinity Mirror group, which I would argue is one of the fairer and more balanced publishers in the United Kingdom.

The reporting on the Rochdale Observer is second to none: community news, local sport, profiling of businesses and events. Its features on the history of Rochdale are fantastic, and the excellent recipes by a local restaurateur, Andrew Nutter, are spot on; I have attempted some of them on occasion and failed miserably. There is a great variety of news, stories and features for people to enjoy, and that must be celebrated. However, the paper also brings national news to local level. It provides a review of regional and sub-regional news, but what it does best, obviously, is provide news for the town—down to district level, whether in Littleborough, Milnrow or Newhey. It provides real focus, even to street level on occasion.

Most importantly, the role that the paper plays in democracy should not be underestimated. We occasionally talk about the editor of the Rochdale Observer, Gerry Sammon, as Rochdale’s answer to Rupert Murdoch, which is a little unfair as he is much more reasonable, amiable and friendly than that—and very fair. The paper provides scrutiny of the council, MPs and other private and public organisations. It is the people’s champion in Rochdale, giving local people a voice. Like my colleagues I buy the paper every week, and always turn first to the letters pages, to see what Rochdalians have to say about the events of the day. The paper also gives support to campaigns. The hon. Member for Burton mentioned charitable work, which is important, and the Rochdale Observer does that; but it runs other campaigns too. One was about shopping locally. It was a fantastic campaign to urge Rochdalians to shop in the town centre and make the most of it.

The paper has also harnessed technology—something that has been touched on in the debate. The newspaper is published twice weekly but the website provides breaking news on an hourly basis. It also provides wider reach to people who might not pick up the newspaper. As to social media the paper has embraced Twitter exceptionally well. I follow Twitter when I am in Parliament; I follow Chris Jones, one of the local government journalists on the paper, who tweets from the full council meeting, so I can find out instantly what is going on there.

[Mr Vaizey]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not mind me intervening on his speech, and I welcome him to the Chamber as a new Member of Parliament. On the subject of digital media and local newspapers, is he aware that when I tried to get a link to him and his campaign priorities the Rochdale website does not take me to the page? Does he agree that he must impress on Rochdale’s Rupert Murdoch the need to maintain links to news stories about the new local MP?

[Simon Danczuk]

Absolutely. The message will have been received, I have no doubt. I will check Twitter shortly after I sit down to see whether the paper has picked up on that point.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood.

I thank all hon. Members for their participation in this important debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) for securing it. It encapsulates both the threat to and the opportunity for local newspapers that, as each hon. Member spoke, I was able to visit their local newspaper website to see what they have been up to and the quality of the local newspapers they extolled. For example, I was impressed that the Burton Mail has already reported this debate. It reported my hon. Friend’s remarks on Monday—it is a telepathic, future-gazing newspaper. I do not want to get involved in local newspaper politics, but it seems to leave the Uttoxeter Advertiser in the dust. However, its report of the Christmas lights being turned on—not by my hon. Friend, but by the mayor—recorded my hon. Friend’s attendance in suitably deferential fashion.

I shall move on to what the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said about cross-party talks on the future of regional newspapers, but I must correct—I do not know how to put this in parliamentary terms, Mr Hood—what was a factual inaccuracy. The hon. Gentleman said that I had moved from Opposition to a ministerial car. I have never had, do not have and will never have a ministerial car, because it is important that Departments save money, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has halved its ministerial budget.

My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) made a suitably spontaneous speech. I am not sure that he praised the Shropshire Star, so let me do so for him. I notice that its editorial backed him strongly on a matter of recent controversy. The hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) mentioned the Sunderland Echo, which is also a fine newspaper. Even though she has been in the House for only two and a half years, she has already racked up almost 300 entries on its website.

Although I welcomed the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) to the Chamber, I pointed out that he must engage more closely with the digital strategy of his local paper, the Rochdale Observer. Despite the “page not found” message, I at least picked up that he is making the town centre his priority. I was also pleased, in relation to another part of my brief, that Rochdale is looking to create a cultural quarter. If there is anything I can do to help him with that, I shall.

I would have praised the Grimsby Telegraph were the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) still here—I gather that he has gone to meet his grandchildren, for which he apologised to me before he left—and I would have pressed him on his campaign to save Scartho baths. Finally, I can only endorse and agree with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) about the quality of the Teesdale Mercury.

Given all that, it will not surprise hon. Members that I will talk about The Wantage and Grove Herald. It is an interesting quality of newspapers—I am sure that all hon. Members have had the same experience—that if I talk to my Conservative activists, they tell me that The Wantage and Grove Herald is run by the Liberal Democrats, and if I talk to the Liberal Democrat activists at civic functions, they tell me that it is run by the Conservative party. The Wantage and Grove Herald is, therefore, clearly doing its job.

I want to make a serious point, as I start the main body of my speech. At a time of economic austerity—we have talked about the perfect storm for local newspapers of facing a recession at the same time that the rise of new technology is completely disrupting their business models—Newsquest, which owns The Wantage and Grove Herald and its sister paper the Oxford Mail, has invested in new plants and machinery, and now prints a range of local papers, not just its own. The editor, Simon O’Neill, who now oversees several local papers, has always been keen to stress to me at our meetings that Newsquest continues to invest in local journalism. The organisation does not have the same number of bodies on the ground that it had when I became a candidate 10 years ago, which is an interesting snapshot of the rapid change that has come upon local newspapers. None the less, it is focused on maintaining the quality of its local journalism.

Let me briefly record some of the issues that the Government as a whole have considered. We have had several debates about local newspapers in the House since I have been the Minister. We also often debate—such debates are always well attended—any threats to local media, including to local newspapers or to BBC local radio, which were on the horizon a few months ago.

One of the first acts of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government was to revise the local publicity code. Hon. Members will be aware that more than 18 months ago that code was revised by delegated legislation to reduce the number of council free sheets. That was to ensure that the free sheets, which were becoming ever more sophisticated and which were financed by council tax payers, did not compete overtly with local newspapers. I have seen the change where I live in west London, which had a powerful local council newspaper. That now comes within the local newspaper as a free sheet and therefore now supports the local newspaper.

We also changed the local media ownership rules to ensure that there was a possibility of local newspaper groups looking across platforms as technology changed to try to remove the artificial silos that kept radio, television and newspapers apart. At a time of booming media, and without the internet, such controls were perfectly understandable, but when consolidation and the need to compete with the internet became a concern for the industry, it was important to get rid of those controls.

Local television will provide new opportunities for local media coverage. I am delighted to say that we have state aid clearance today—it happened just in time for this debate—which will go up on the Department for Culture Media and Sport website as we speak.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland mentioned traffic notices. I note that the Department for Transport consultation closed in April, but it has, in the run-up to this debate, been unable to update us on how it will deal with the thorny issue of, on the one hand, wanting to save councils’ money and, on the other, not wanting to undermine the financial support on which local newspapers depend, because they depend to a certain extent on public notices.

I want to take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton—the central thesis of his debate was that Government should co-ordinate more closely in support of local newspapers—and the point made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington in referring to the meeting that we sought to have with local newspaper owners. I will not share the language of the hon. Gentleman, but I did note with interest that only Johnston Press took up the invitation to attend that meeting. More than 50 hon. Members also turned up, so local newspapers and local newspaper owners cannot complain about a lack of interest or support from the House of Commons and Parliament, which is an important point to make.

Some people might not have turned up at the meeting for fear of getting a bit of a bashing; they might have been bashed about their salaries because it would probably have been at chief executive level, or about job cuts. In reality, the meeting was very constructive because it enabled Johnston Press to explain its strategy and how it was accommodating the digital revolution and investing in local websites and how it wanted to continue with a print strategy, and it enabled local Members to express their views. I think, dare I say it in the privacy of this Chamber—obviously no one will be reporting this debate—that local Members of Parliament are very good sources of advice; they know their area and their constituents and they are avid readers of their local newspaper, so it is possible to get feedback.

I will certainly take up the idea of a dual invitation, and consider it over Christmas and the new year. It will bring together Ministers from relevant Departments and local newspaper companies. I will happily discuss with my hon. Friend which Departments he thinks would be worth engaging with. I hasten to say that, having worked for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, his contacts with certain Departments are much better than mine. I am happy to convene that meeting on a cross-party basis. I try to conduct quite a lot of my work in that way because many of these issues go across the parties; we all have an interest in securing the future of local newspapers. It will be important to have a constructive discussion.

Most Members and the proprietors who attend the meeting will start with the basic principles that these are private companies making their own way in the world, but which, at the same time, have a very important role in local communities. It is, therefore, perfectly proper and valid for Ministers and Members of Parliament to come together to discuss their future and see what can be done to make a difference. It is important, though, that the future of local newspapers rests primarily with local newspapers.

My hon. Friend made an important point about Local World. Look at how local radio is adapting to the current world. It remains local but offers advertisers a national deal. A national company goes through one gateway and gets local coverage, but it does not have to deal with 30 different local radio stations. Similarly, it must be right that local newspapers, subject to competition law and other important aspects, are able to come together to make one offer to national companies which can then do a local advertising campaign but on a national basis.

Finally, I come to the issue of the Leveson report. It is certainly in the Leveson report, and echoed by the reaction of all of us to the Leveson report, that regional and local newspapers are different from the national press. My local editor has made that point time and again, saying, “Please do not tar us with the same brush.”

I welcome what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said about the Leveson report. It is important that we continue the cross-party talks. She raised the issue of whether fines should be based on turnover, which was an encapsulation of why it is important to have a discussion and to sort out the important details. I was not clear whether she was saying that there should a separate independent regulator for local newspapers, but I certainly echo her point that this regulator is not a punishment but a recognition that the previous system did not work. As the Prime Minister and my hon. Friend the Secretary of State have said time and again, the status quo is not an option. I certainly hear what she says about statutory underpinnings being irrelevant to whether any regulator is bureaucratic.

The Society of Editors was present at the round table meeting that was convened by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and attended by the Prime Minister, and it was certainly an important part of the debate. The national press is moving quickly. It has heard the message loud and clear. I can only say, based on reports on The Guardian website—if it is in The Guardian it must be true—that it sounds like the talks at the meeting of national editors this morning were very constructive.

The debate has certainly been timely. I notice in The Burton Mail, which has telepathic powers, that we will have a debate on this matter in the main Chamber at some point, driven by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton. The debate has encapsulated the fact that all hon. Members are passionate about their local papers. They recognise their place in the local community and in our local democracy. We want to work together with local newspapers to explore their future. The Government will consider how they can help, but I hasten to add that there is no prospect of our writing cheques for local newspapers, and that is not something that local newspapers would want in the first place. We also need to consider how local Members can feed back and engage with such newspaper groups about how they are changing and adapting to the digital environment.