My Lords, we now move on to the other contentious sector: the media, and in particular the media sector dealing with news provision.
Amendment 24P simply argues that any special provision in the financial and media sectors needs to be reflected in the interim provisions as well as the basic provisions. In one sense, I will say no more about that because there will be a consequential amendment if the Minister agrees. The key amendment in this group is Amendment 25EA. When it comes to the media, particularly the news media, much wider issues are relevant with regard to market structure than those of size, market share, abuse of market power or unfair trading.
It will not have escaped the Committee’s attention that over the past few months there has been considerable attention on this area, with a fair amount of debate on the role of newspapers and media ownership over our national life and a huge range of aspects of public interest. As I said before, a rather oversubscribed debate will take place in the Chamber shortly. We will no doubt return to this issue. But most of that debate is not concerned about the issues relevant to this Committee and Bill. It is concerned with issues of press’s behaviour, privacy, the freedom of the press, possible regulation as against state control and so forth. That has nothing to do with what I am talking about here.
The issue that lies behind these debates—I will not be pontificating on it today as I cannot speak in the Chamber at the same time as I am speaking here, although I see that my noble friend Lord Stevenson is able to do so, if he is able to speak at all—and the reason why the press has been in its own headlines for so long, relates to the structure of the market and the structure of ownership. I am gingerly stepping into that debate today; I fear that we will almost certainly return to it.
A truly free press requires diversity of opinion, and that requires plurality of ownership. I am not one of those who thinks that the Murdoch empire is uniquely evil or that its journalists are uniquely scurrilous or unscrupulous, although one or two of them seem to be pitching for that title. The issue is that it is uniquely powerful and dominant in market terms. That is an issue for the Bill, where the issue of state regulation is not the same as is being debated in the Chamber, because there has always been regulation in the Competition Acts, the Enterprise Acts and the Communications Acts of the structure of the media sector, as of others.
Lord Leveson looked at that and made eight recommendations right at the back of his report which have received very little attention but are relevant to the Bill. Towards the end of the Statement on Leveson, I asked the noble Lord, Lord McNally, whether the Government will take advantage of the Bill, going through the House as it is, to add to it provisions implementing those relatively uncontroversial recommendations of Leveson. As I said, that is nothing to do with state control or a free press but concerns plurality and competition.
In his response, the noble Lord did not say no. He said that it was above his pay grade. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was sitting next to him, so apparently
it was above his pay grade as well. I suspect, with regret, that it is beyond the pay grade of the noble Lord, Lord Marland. It cannot be beyond everybody’s pay grade. Those eight paragraphs at the back of the summary of Leveson are bang in this area. They focus on plurality, how you measure it, the need to cover related sectors such as the internet as well as the press, the need, as we discussed in relation to the financial sector, for a different threshold of intervention, the role of Ofcom, periodic reviews, public interest, and so on, and the role of the Secretary of State.
Those are areas of interest to which the competition authorities will eventually have to pay attention. Unless the Government consider that the structure of the news media requires entirely separate legislation on the market structure front, which I think would be a dangerous road for them to go down, it is relatively easy for them to consider it in the context of the Bill. I would rather advise them to do so.
My Amendment 25EA concerns the least controversial, I think, of the Leveson recommendations. We could have come up with a whole lot of amendments attempting to implement them all, but I think that that is the Government’s responsibility. The ball lies in the Government’s court on this. They have said that they accept all but the contentious dimensions of Leveson. They have not objected to these provisions. My amendment simply states that, before any intervention by the Secretary of State, there has to be consultation on media issues. That is uncontentious in itself but, put into the wider context, it provides a base for some intervention in this area.
Whoever it is—at whatever pay grade—who decides these things, there needs to be an early decision on whether we are going to use the Bill to implement the plurality recommendations. I think it would be easier for the Government to do it in the Bill and I rather advise them to do so. I am sure that the Minister cannot tell us today the answer to that, but if not today, then by Report—which will be towards the end of January, at the earliest—we should know which way we are going. That will mean providing either significant amendments to this part of the Bill or a clear indication of an alternative approach. The delay, buck-passing, and so on, cannot go on that long. I do not expect much from the Minister today, he will be gratified to hear, but I do expect the Government to come back on this one and I am putting the ball clearly in their court. I beg to move.
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