Contribution
My Lords, I support the principles behind this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, which has attracted widespread interest from both within and without your Lordships’ House.
At its heart lies a simple question: how do we ensure that the public continue to have clear, independent and accessible routes to information about the decisions made by their local authorities? For a long time, local newspapers have played a vital role in this. Our local journalists are there not only to report news; they scrutinise local decision-making, as we have heard, and act as guardians of local democracy. They are often the only regular observers of the workings of local government. In many parts of the country, it is only local journalists who regularly attend council meetings, who probe and challenge, and who ensure that decisions are brought to the attention of residents.
As the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said, all of us here who have been in local government have been at the end of the pen of many journalists—sometimes in a positive way, but often in a negative way. Local newspapers have always been the starting point for many young journalists who have gone on to be better and more successful journalists. As a local council leader, it is always interesting to watch that progression. I have always been pleased to give as much support as possible to local journalists learning their trade.
The requirement for councils to place statutory notices in local newspapers has long been one of the practical mechanisms that enable this transparency and accountability. It ensures that important matters handled by local authorities reach their residents where they are most likely to see them. Crucially, they reach residents through an independent medium—not one controlled by the authority. That independence is a safeguard we should not discard lightly, even in part.
It is true that the local media landscape is changing. Many local news organisations now operate both in print and online or only online, and audiences increasingly access their news digitally. However, as we have heard, the answer to such change cannot simply be to remove this duty—altogether, in some instances—and, in extremis, to see people rely solely on council websites. Many residents seldom visit council websites, as we all know. Some find them difficult to navigate. They are not used to being widely used as a source of day-to-day information on their local authorities. If statutory notices are placed only there, this would be not modernisation but invisibility. There is evidently concern, as reflected in the broad support for this amendment, that the Government’s current proposal would weaken transparency rather than strengthen it.
I listened with interest to the compelling cases in this debate, and I cannot help but wonder whether there is another way. If this policy requires updating, modernising or broadening, why do we not consider doing precisely that? Rather than the Government removing the requirement completely, allowing publication
“in such manner as the local authority thinks appropriate”,
would they consider expanding its scope instead? It could be broadened to include reputable independent local news websites, trusted digital publishers and recognised social media channels, operated by established local news providers. I defer to those who know the industry better than I do, but would this not reflect the realities of contemporary media consumption while preserving the more core democratic principle that notices should be published through independent and accessible outlets?
Above all, we must avoid a future in which councils become the sole gatekeepers of information that should be publicly available, easily accessed and subject to external scrutiny. The partnerships between councils and local media remain essential to the health of our local democracy, and we consider that any move to weaken that would be a big mistake. For these reasons, I believe that the principle of the amendment deserves serious consideration and I hope the Government will reconsider their approach.