Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)

My Lords, I always pay careful attention to the advice given to me by my Chief Whip. The advice—which I am not sure I am allowed to reveal—is that we should not support this amendment on the grounds that we do not vote for fatal Motions. I was very impressed by the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Fox. In fact, I agreed with every single word. That is a real first for me on something coming from the Liberal Benches. Until quite recently, I told people that I have never voted for a fatal Motion, but in fact I discovered that I did some six weeks ago, as the noble Lord pointed out. We had a fatal Motion, and quite rightly so, because it was on a matter that we thought was in the national interest: the position of the Government on their treaty on the Chagos Islands. So both I and the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, have voted for fatal Motions in very recent history, so I am a bit confused by the suggestion that we should deal with this matter on the basis of some kind of procedure. We have heard the nature and seriousness of the arguments. If this House now feels that it cannot vote on a matter of this seriousness because of some mythology about fatal Motions, what is the point of us being here at all? What is our purpose? This is a central issue. The other reason why I am a little confused is that, when we amended the legislation last year under the previous Government, my noble friend Lord Parkinson mentioned an amendment being made at Third Reading and said: “We will amend the media merger regime explicitly to rule out newspaper and periodical news magazine mergers involving ownership, influence or control by foreign states”.—[Official Report, 13/3/24; col. 2042.] I emphasise “foreign states”. He said: “Direct investment in newspapers of any size will be banned … We will therefore introduce an exemption for investments where the stake is below 5% of the total … This would apply to passive investments by … sovereign wealth funds, pension funds or similar”, not by foreign states. That was primary legislation passed by this House. There was no vote because there was unanimity across the whole House about the importance of banning foreign Governments from owning parts of newspapers. There was also consensus across the House for extending that to other media services, which the other instruments refer to. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, quite rightly points out that they would, I think, be supported by the House were it not for the fact that they change the ownership rules to allow foreign Governments to be involved not just in our newspapers but in other news media organisations. My noble friend Lord Parkinson also said that the Government recognised the “risks that foreign state ownership of … the UK’s newspapers and news magazines could pose to democracy and to free speech”, allowing them to “over time corrode trust in our media as a whole”.—[Official Report, 26/3/24; cols. 584-85.] What has changed in the past 12 months about those principles? The Government have changed, but that is not a reason to change one’s principles on this side of the House. This Government have sought to take secondary legislation and use it to change not just the intention but the effect of primary legislation. Now they are the Government—we lost the election.