Media: Ownership

Lord Borrie Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borrie]

My Lords, like many noble Lords who have already spoken and no doubt others yet to come, I welcome the announcement today by the Secretary of State, Mr Vince Cable. Good on Puttnam! Even before speaking a single word in the debate, he has won the basic argument. I wonder why we are sitting here this afternoon but perhaps it is because we would like to give some advice to Ofcom, the Competition Commission and whoever else is going to determine these matters in due course. If that sounds a bit vague, it is deliberate, because on Tuesday next we will be debating the Public Bodies Bill, which threatens either to abolish Ofcom or to merge it with other bodies. By the time an inquiry is finished, goodness knows who will be doing what. The Constitution Committee of the House of Lords has this very day published a most powerful criticism of the Government’s non-constitutional approach in introducing that Bill.

One phrase that has already cropped up several times is “plurality of ownership”. What does it mean? I should think that it means a plentitude or plentifulness, if not a profusion, of different suppliers of news and views. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, was correct in all the three points that he emphasised, in particular when he said that to develop from a percentage to 100 per cent ownership of BSkyB makes a world of difference. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, that it makes a difference legally, too. Moving from a position of so-called material influence into one of real control is bound to make a difference. Another closely related point that the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, made is that, after all these many decades of knowing about Rupert Murdoch and his methods, we need not query or discuss further whether Rupert Murdoch interferes with editors’ independence. One value of this investigation by Ofcom is that it can probe again—this was not properly probed in the past—what that editorial independence amounts to. That is especially the case, as the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, mentioned, when you want to know whether to support this or that party at a general election. The assertions by News Corporation about the high degree of independence of its editors need once more to be questioned.

One leading text on the subject of media regulation, by Mr Feintuck, and Mr Varney, rightly focuses on the law on,

“whether the proposed new company would have too powerful a presence across the media as a whole”.

That is what we want Ofcom and the Competition Commission to get at, and in due course what we want the Government to accept—that in this field there is an unduly powerful presence in the media by the News Corporation.

Some people have worried that a lot depends on the discretion of the Secretary of State. In so far as he has discretion, which I believe he does, he is exercising it in a sensible way today. It is a political decision. In other respects, one could perhaps argue that it has been done according to some party-political bias or influence, which some of us do not like. However, in this case, the discretion has certainly worked in a sensible way, in the direction of an inquiry. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, on bringing this about by his subtle methods before the actual debate began.