Lord Inglewood (CB)

My Lords, I have been listening quietly to the debate, and I think I am the first person to rise who has actually chaired a newspaper company, albeit a small regional company, in this country. It is my view that, where someone has 15% control, they have a presence in the boardroom; it depends on other circumstances exactly how that presence may work out. But nobody, with the possible exception of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has really addressed what is a very serious point, which is that people who own things—and everything has to be owned by somebody —can change their minds. There is an underlying assumption behind much of what we have heard this afternoon, that if you are a foreign state, you can say, “I won’t use my ownership to exercise influence”, or you might be one that thinks, “I want to promote my own country in the receiving country”. Of course, the problem we face is that the investment market for media is international and most media, particularly some of the papers we have been discussing this afternoon, are essentially nationally focused. There is a disjunction between the regulatory regime and the realities of the capital markets that lie behind a lot of these projects. All I would say is that it behoves us to be very cautious. As the Queen said before the Scottish referendum, “Be careful”.