Media Plurality: Communications Committee Report

Lord Patten Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the committee in its recommendation that Ofcom is at present the best vehicle to conduct any plurality reviews, and it is as plain as a pikestaff to me at least that great issues such as media foreign ownership or the overwhelming dominance of the BBC must not be allowed to dominate plurality reviews. Not just regional but local plurality is very important, as paragraphs 169 to 172 of this report suggest. Local plurality is rather a different animal from the big Westminster village issues that doubtless my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood and other noble Lords will address in a moment.

While local areas may have just as many aspiring citizen journalists powering the new media as there are on the national stage, in the older print media, locally it is a fight against extinction for what is often now one survivor. In my part of the West Country, in Dorset and Somerset, dairy farmers and the print media alike are going fast out of business. In that particular area just one local paper—as it happens a very good, prize-winning one—is left in the paid-for field, so it has come simply by inheritance to hold a monopoly position. Monopolies are generally bad, but in this case no local paper would be there at all if it went out of business. In fact, if it did there would be just one free-sheet magazine, supported by advertising in the local area.

Therefore in any local assessments, this survivorship monopoly is not a bad but a public good. The picture is so different from the national. In local media assessments the first principle must be to preserve localism where possible and to see that to that end supportive cross-media ownership locally is not just a good—it may well be vital.