Alison Hume

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) for securing this important debate. According to the Press Gazette, nearly 300 local papers have closed since 2005. We are at a tipping point. The Public Interest News Foundation estimates that 12.5 million people live in areas where there is only one local paper, while 5.4 million people live in news deserts. Local papers provide reliable information at a time when misinformation runs rampant online. My constituency is lucky to have The Scarborough News and Whitby Gazette, which publish a quality weekly paper with a small and dedicated staff. Regionally, we have the York Press, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), and the campaigning newspaper The Yorkshire Post. On the air, we have This is the Coast, Coast & County, and of course BBC Radio York and BBC Radio Tees. However, journalists have told me that they are increasingly worried about their own survival—and these journalists are veteran survivors. They have raised concerns about Government proposals to remove the legal requirements to publish alcohol licensing notices and notices on local authority governance changes. The National Union of Journalists has highlighted that local papers remain the main source of news for the digitally excluded. One local editor put it plainly when he said that “denuding print audiences of the right to know what is happening in their community does not feel like community empowerment to me.” I agree with him. Taken together, the changes would deliver a double blow to an already fragile sector. They would deprive titles of reliable revenue, potentially putting papers at risk and impeding the flow of information in our communities. The Secretary of State has committed to publishing a local media strategy to ensure that there is trusted local news across the UK. Ahead of the publication of that strategy, I urge the Minister to consider the impact on these valued and trusted titles of proposed changes to the requirement to report notices. If we value local media and the democracy it sustains, we must legislate to protect it.