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 ensure the (a) independence and (b) integrity of UK (i) newspapers and (ii) news magazines from foreign state (A) ownership, (B) influence and (C) control.

Maintaining a free and thriving press is a top government priority. Newspapers and news magazines play a unique role in our democracy, by providing accurate news and information, helping to shape opinions and contributing to political debate. The purchase of UK news organisations by foreign states runs the risk of undermining faith in our free press.

To address this we will table government amendments to the Digital Markets, Competition & Consumers (DMCC) Bill at Third Reading to explicitly rule out newspaper and periodical news magazine mergers involving ownership, influence or control by foreign states.

We will amend the Enterprise Act 2002 to create a new Foreign State Intervention regime for media mergers to work in parallel with the existing Public Interest Considerations regime. Our focus here is not on foreign investment in the UK media sector in general, but is targeted specifically on foreign state investment of newspapers.

Under the new Intervention regime, the Secretary of State would be obliged to refer cases to the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) through a new type of intervention notice, where she has reasonable grounds to believe that “a foreign state newspaper merger situation” has been created. This situation will arise where a merger involving a UK newspaper or news magazine gives a foreign state or body ownership, control or influence over the newspaper enterprise.

If the CMA concludes that the merger has or would result in foreign state ownership, influence or control over a newspaper enterprise, the Secretary of State will be required to make an order to block or unwind the merger.

We plan for the changes to take immediate effect upon Royal Assent of the DMCC Bill.

This policy is still in active development, but we want to ensure that the new measures do not have any undesired effects on wider foreign investment in UK media or on passive investments made by established investment funds.

The new measures will only apply to foreign states, foreign state bodies and connected individuals, and only to newspapers and news magazines given the unique role these publications play in contributing to the health of our democracy by providing accurate news and information, helping to shape opinions and contributing to political debate.

The UK has a strong track record for encouraging foreign investment which has been critical to growth within the media and wider creative industries. The Government remains committed to encouraging and supporting investment into the UK and we recognise that investors deploying capital into this country rely on the predictability and consistency of our regulatory regime. The UK remains one of the most open economies in the world, which is key for the prosperity and future growth of our nation.