Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to protect local media outlets from needing to consolidate.

This Government is committed to ensuring a healthy and plural local media, for the benefit of communities and citizens across the UK. We recognise the vital role that local media plays in scrutinising local institutions, and reflecting communities’ views and perspectives.

The actions in the Local Media Action Plan are aimed at helping local newsrooms across the country to innovate and adapt their business models for the online world, while incentivising and encouraging the production of high quality, trustworthy news.The Local News Fund, which is worth £6m in 2026/2027 and up to £6m in 2027/2028, will help the industry adapt in the short-medium term, before longer term measures set out in the Plan begin to take effect in helping enable a plural and thriving online local media ecosystem. Further detail on the Fund will be announced in the coming weeks.

The Secretary of State has powers to intervene in media mergers which she believes are or may be harmful to the public interest. For newspapers, she has the power to intervene if she believes the merger may be harmful for freedom of expression, accurate presentation of news, sufficient plurality of views and sufficient plurality of control. She has the power to define the market in which she considers the public interest tests, and can therefore consider the plurality impacts on a specific region in the context of a local news acquisition or merger.