My Lords, I sense that this debate is coming rapidly to a close. The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, has doggedly pursued this issue with others and I wholeheartedly congratulate her on her determination to ensure that we maintain a free and fair press without foreign intervention.
This amendment takes the noble Baroness’s critique of foreign state ownership a stage further by seeking to review the impact of the measure on UK broadcasters. Obviously, government should always keep under careful consideration and review the impact of particular policies. This will, I suspect, be a feature of debate from time to time. We need to consider the impact of foreign ownership on all news media outlets, not just the press, and we need to understand, and protect our press from, undue interference. We have made it clear on our Benches, throughout the debates on the future of the Telegraph Group, that we are fully committed to upholding press freedom and the independence of all news outlets.
We cannot tolerate external interference in the politics of our country; that does not really need underlining much more on a day like today. At a time when the media are often being attacked by the exercise of deepfakes, this vital principle takes on a new importance. We need to ensure in the future, as much as we can, that our democracy is protected. A free and independent press and broadcasting sector is key to that, so I hope the Minister will give a considered response to that point.
I particularly pick up on the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, about regulations relating to the amendments we recently passed to another Bill. I do not think they are otiose, despite the calling of an election. They will be important in the future, and she is right to insist that work should be carried on to ensure that they are properly and correctly drafted so that they can be reviewed when a new Government are in place. Her point on the Ofcom review of ownership rules, which is to commence in November, is an important insight and one that we clearly all need to concentrate on and give some thought to while we go through the electoral process.
I am going to go slightly off-piste here before we conclude this debate and thank the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, for the time that he and I have spent together across the Dispatch Box and for the courtesies he has extended to me, my noble friend Lady Thornton and other colleagues during the passage of this legislation. I particularly enjoyed the contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and, although she is not in her place, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, for her continued and assiduous interest in this. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, who is a powerful and important voice in your Lordships’ Chamber.
I suspect we will not have much more debate on the Media Bill, wash-up being the vicious process that it is, but we on these Benches have been happy to support it in the main. I am sorry we will not have the opportunity to give it a bit more detailed scrutiny on Report, but
that is the nature of how we do our business. I thank the Minister for his attention to this, and I look forward to listening to his response.