Unrevised transcript of evidence taken before

The Select Committee on Communications

Inquiry on

MEDIA PLURALITY

Evidence Session No. 12 Heard in Public Questions 339 - 363

TUESDAY 29 OCTOBER 2013

3.30 pm

Witnesses: Mr Adrian Jeakings, Ms Geraldine Allinson and Mr Ashley Highfield

Mr Robert Beveridge

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1. This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and webcast on www.parliamentlive.tv.

2. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither Members nor witnesses have had the opportunity to correct the record. If in doubt as to the propriety of using the transcript, please contact the Clerk of the Committee.

3. Members and witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Clerk of the Committee within 7 days of receipt.

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Members present

Lord Inglewood (Chairman) Baroness Bakewell Lord Clement-Jones Baroness Deech Lord Dubs Baroness Fookes Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill Bishop of Norwich Lord Razzall Baroness Scotland of Asthal Lord Skelmersdale ________________

Examination of Witnesses

Mr Adrian Jeakings, Chief Executive, Archant, and President of the Newspaper Society,

Ms Geraldine Allinson, Chairman, KM Group, and Mr Ashley Highfield, Chief

Executive Officer, Johnston Press

Q339 The Chairman: Can we get the hearing under way, please? I ought to declare and

put on record, which I have already declared in the documents, that I am chairman of the

CN Group, which is a member of the Newspaper Society. I will be conscious of that in the

role that I play chairing this Committee.

A very big welcome to Adrian Jeakings, who is chief executive of Archant, which for those

who do not know is the erstwhile Norwich Eastern Daily Press and East Anglian Daily Times

newspaper group, and president of the Newspaper Society. Also welcome to Geraldine

Allinson, who was the previous President of the Newspaper Society and is the Chairman of

the Kent Messenger Group, and finally Ashley Highfield, who is the chief executive of

Johnston Press. We have had short CVs of you so, unless you want to specifically say

anything about yourselves, I do not think there is any need to add more on that. I would like

to ask, because we are being recorded, each of you in order to tell us who you are, which

helps the recording process. Then I will ask each of you whether you want to make an

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opening statement. Do not feel, please, that everybody need reply to a particular question. It

is entirely up to you how you want to handle it. Starting with Geraldine Allinson, could you

tell us who you are and then pass on to your colleagues?

Ms Allinson: Yes. I am Geraldine Allinson, chairman of the KM Group in Kent.

Mr Jeakings: Adrian Jeakings, chief executive of Archant and president of the Newspaper

Society.

Mr Highfield: Ashley Highfield, chief executive of Johnston Press plc.

The Chairman: Do one or all of you want to say anything at the outset?

Ms Allinson: I would like to try to lay in context the sort of company we are, because we

are very local, based only in Kent. We have interests across different local media platforms.

We have nine paid-for newspapers and seven free titles and the readership of those is

around 457,000 readers a week. We also have very local radio stations, seven of those and

one digital station. There are 156,000 listeners to those each week. Then we have a website,

which is KentOnline, which has about 637,000 unique browsers a month. All that is in the

context of the adult population of Kent being 1.4 million. So we already have interests in

several different platforms of media, not just newspapers.

The Chairman: Just to clarify, is Kent in this context the current administrative county of

Kent rather than the traditional county of Kent?

Ms Allinson: It is Kent County Council area but also Medway Unitary Authority area, the

two added together.

Mr Jeakings: If I could just add to that, we are slightly more diversified. We cover a larger

area of geography than the Kent Messenger Group, but we would describe ourselves as

multilocal. Although we are present in most counties in England, we do not operate all of

that business as a single monolithic structure. We still regard ourselves as being very local.

We, too, are in many different media channels. We do a lot of exhibitions and events. We

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won one of the first local city TV licences, which will be going on air early next year and is

already available over the internet.

The Chairman: Ashley Highfield, do you want to say anything?

Mr Highfield: No. You have had the CVs.

The Chairman: Yes, and Johnston Press is a slightly different sort of local newspaper

group with lots of titles right across the country, is it not?

Mr Highfield: Yes.

Q340 The Chairman: As an opener, one of the things that we have heard a lot about

from the witnesses is that there are concerns, particularly in the context of local media, on

the one hand about media concentration, for all the obvious plurality reasons, and on the

other about the fact that journalism has to be sustainable, because if it is not you do not get

it. I would be grateful if you could summarise your response and attitude towards these

conflicting pressures and what impact they are having on you. Particularly as representatives

more widely of the local newspaper industry, how do you see the problems and probable

threats of the immediate future, and do you have any thoughts about them? Could I start

with Adrian Jeakings on the right?

Mr Jeakings: There has been a process of media fragmentation for many years. The arrival

of the internet accelerated that process and the more recent arrival of mobile, although not

in north Norfolk it has to be said, is further accelerating that process. That means that there

is now much more competition, both in content generation, although not all of it completely

professional, but also in people taking marketing budget away from commercial operations,

which previously might well have gone to a local newspaper business. There are myriad ways

to respond to that. Creating our own online assets is clearly one of them, whether it is

mobile websites, fixed websites, apps or any of those sort of things; more innovative and

integrated advertising campaigns, for example; content creation, e-commerce and a variety

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of things. While the easy days of the early part of this century are gone, we are very positive

about the prospects for our particular sector of media. We would define it as media,

incidentally, not just the press.

Ms Allinson: We have been hit by structural and cyclical change over the last few years and

this is the thing that our company has been challenged with, along with everyone else in the

industry. We have had to look at better ways of organising people and using technology so

we can do more with less, if that makes sense.

One of the ways in which KM Group has approached this is a little similar to the way Adrian

has described. We have three main areas of the business. One is the editorial department.

We believe in very good quality journalism. We have the sales teams, the commercial side,

and then obviously the rest we call business support. It is about trying to ensure that we

provide good services to consumers of our media but also to those that want to advertise

across our media. We have done that by reorganising ourselves so that the good journalism

is spread across the different platforms. It is not only used in the newspapers, it is put online

and on the radio stations, although in very small, quick bites. Also, we are looking at local

TV. A licence is being advertised in Kent as well. The skills have changed hugely in our

commercial department because people have had to learn to sell across the different media.

We still have specialists who sell just one type of media, but they help the generalists to go

out and speak to clients so that we can deliver a decent local audience across the different

platforms to local businesses. That is what we see that we need to be able to do going

forward into the future.

Mr Highfield: The last seven years has been extremely brutal for the regional press

industry. I think the industry came late to understanding the full impact of the internet and

was caught off guard by it. Now, the business that has gone to the likes of the American

firms, the Auto Traders and eBays and so on of this world—classified advertising has gone.

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People consume local press, whether in print or online, because they are interested in local

news and information.

While it has been tough, and this recession has been particularly hard, we are now at a level,

provided that we can cut our cloth accordingly, that is sustainable for the long term as we

move to the predominantly digital world. It means that it is a rather precarious recovery, but

it is a recovery that I think the whole industry is seeing. We are in a position now where

approaching 20% of our advertising revenue comes from digital. A year ago it was 10% and

the year before that it was 5%. Across the industry we are probably only a year or two away

from a tipping point where our digital growth will outweigh any further print decline. As I

said, it is rather a precarious recovery and I am glad that we have this opportunity to say

what the Government can do to help ensure that the recovery is sustained.

Q341 Lord Skelmersdale: Following on directly from that last comment, I was struck by

the Newspaper Society’s written evidence where you say that print still—I emphasise the

word “still”—accounts for around 90% and you say that it is slipping badly. What effect is all

that going to have on print and how long do you expect print to last?

Mr Highfield: It is slipping but I do not think that is bad.

Lord Skelmersdale: Well, you talked about the tipping point.

Mr Highfield: The tipping point is where we make more from digital than we are losing

from print, but that still means that our brands are relevant in the local communities they

serve. In fact, they are ever more relevant. In the last few months we have added 100,000

new net readers of our content every month, so digital growth is outweighing the print

decline by some considerable margin already in audience terms.

To answer your question directly about print, I am of the view, and not necessarily everyone

is, that we will carry on printing newspapers for many years, 20, 30, 40 years, because we

run a portfolio of some 250 papers. I was at the Galloway Gazette and the Carrick Gazette the

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week before last. These papers have circulations of 2,000 or 3,000 but they are still

profitable. One of the things that may be misunderstood is that all regional newspapers are

profitable. The ones that have been shut are some of the free newspapers that were open

during the boom times to complement a paid title, typically in the same market. They are

about the only papers that have shut. All the regional press is profitable and down to very

low volumes. It might not be huge amounts of profit, but I see no reason why you cannot

make a reasonable return out of very low circulation papers.

Another reason why I would want to keep printing in print is because a lot of trust is given

to you if you print because clearly an editing process has gone on. Therefore, people are

more likely to trust your website as well and a trusted website is better for advertising.

There is an incentive built in, even as we go into the digital future, to maintain a print part of

our business.

Mr Jeakings: New print titles are still being launched—one was launched today—and not

just by small companies. At Archant, we launched one a few months ago for a new town in

Devon. As Ashley said, it is not making a lot of money but it is at least profitable. Print is far

from dead. If the customers want a print product and are prepared to pay for it, that is what

we need to do as long as we can make a reasonable return.

Ms Allinson: It is a good way of knowing whether the content is still relevant. If people go

out and buy it, obviously your content is relevant and they want to have it, whereas online

you can put things up and—

Baroness Bakewell: Do your audiences differ on your different platforms very much?

Ms Allinson: My editorial director believes that although our online audience is going up

really fast at the moment, most people who go on our website already have a relationship

with us, have bought our newspapers at some stage or listened to the radio station, but we

do not measure that. It is a hugely expensive thing to try to measure how many people—

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Baroness Bakewell: I was interested in the demographic. Do the old follow the newsprint

and the young follow the digital? Does it break down like that?

Ms Allinson: With the print, for us it depends on the different parts of the paper. We have

a section called “What’s on?”, and quite a few young people read that. It is difficult to

generalise about it but, yes, I would agree that more older people buy the print products.

Baroness Bakewell: But it does not affect the market?

Mr Highfield: No, we are mostly in the market of weekly papers and weekly papers are

broadly complementary. The web audience comes on a daily basis to see local football

results, news, weather, traffic and travel. They have a different need online to the weekly

papers that we have predominantly in the market.

The Chairman: We will have to go and vote, which is very discourteous but that is what

we are here for. Will you forgive us while we retire and then we can pick it up where we

left off? I hope it will not happen too frequently.

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

Q342 The Chairman: Shall we go on? Did we conclude the response to the last

question? Is there anything else you want to add?

Mr Jeakings: I do have some data because we have done some research.

The Chairman: Right, then you can tell us, please. Thank you.

Mr Jeakings: Absolutely. This is just for our daily papers, of which we have four, actually our

morning papers, which are the bigger ones: the Eastern Daily Press and the East Anglian Daily

Times. We have found that the number of daily users on the websites is about 25% of the

average issue readership for print. It is much harder to measure print readership, for

obvious reasons, than it is digital, but if you look at the number of people who look at the

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website over a month, it is four times the print average issue readership. There is a

difference in frequency of usership, we think. About 10% to 15% of people who read either

read both the online and the print. In print, the average age group is 55-plus, demographic

ABC1, although that does not mean much these days, and virtually equal male and female.

Online, the largest single age grouping is 35 to 54, again ABC1, and 60% male, 40% female.

There may be a slight bias in that because of football, but we do have separate football

websites so it is not completely explainable by that.

The Chairman: Women like football too, you know.

Mr Jeakings: Yes, I do know that.

Q343 Bishop of Norwich: I think of our family as EDP readers, whereas my son goes

online to read the EDP but does not bother with the newspaper, and I wonder how you are

ever going to make money out of him. Is the theory that when he becomes mature he will

graduate to taking the newspaper when his parents do not provide it? He is in a sort of EDP

culture and wants to see how Norwich City are doing and looks at the news on the EDP

website, but he does not give you much income.

Mr Jeakings: There are a variety of answers to that. How do you monetise that online and

will the younger online users ever graduate to print? I think some of them will and the

reason why I think some of them will is that the media are different. There are different

characteristics in print in what you can do and the way you do it compared to online, and

indeed compared to mobile. The one thing that slightly disturbs that very neat little equation

for newspaper companies is the advent of tablet devices, which I think may accelerate the

substitution of print because they can do some very similar things to print newspapers. That

is part of the answer.

How do we make money out of him? First of all, I am delighted that he is a reader, I should

say. There are all the conventional ways of making money from people who consume

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content online, such as display advertising, making things available for them to buy and then

taking a share of the revenue. Then there are newer ways of monetising that content that

people like the Times and the Financial Times have tried such as putting in place a pay wall,

which is a dreadful term—imagine if you had a supermarket that said “pay wall” on the

wall—but basically getting people to pay for that content. That is proving to be slightly easier

with tablet device delivery than conventional fixed web.

Then there are indirect ways of monetising that relationship. We are working with Google

and a local Norfolk company as well, using consumer surveys. If somebody wants to look at

an article, they have to answer a question and people pay us to ask those questions of the

users of our sites. Another variant of that is putting in place an option to watch a video,

which is effectively advertising material, and that has generated some money for us as well. I

do not think there is a single solution to this. I think there are multiple solutions and we are

still very much at the experimentation and trial stage, certainly at Archant.

Lord Clement-Jones: You talked about sites. Do you have apps as well?

Mr Jeakings: Yes, we do. The way we think about it is that you have print, which is self-

evidently what it is. You then have fixed web: that is, websites accessed from usually a

desktop, although clearly a tablet or any other mobile device can do it. You have mobile-

optimised sites, which are sites that present the content in a way that is best for a smart

phone, so small screen. You have tablet sites or apps—it does not make that much

difference these days—that take advantage of the specific capabilities of the tablet. Then you

also have what we call facsimile editions, which are really just an online version of the print

product, identical in every way except that you are looking at it through a bit of glass or

plastic rather than on print.

Ms Allinson: But they are a bit smarter, are they not? For example, if someone is advertising

or you put a link at the bottom of a story, if someone wants to find out more they can on a

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tablet click on that link and that takes them through. It is a bit smarter than looking at the

print.

Mr Jeakings: A little bit smarter than print, yes.

Q344 Lord Razzall: If we look at the national position, I suppose you can characterise us

as living in a world where the broadcast media, who are quite heavily regulated, are trusted

and certainly have a requirement to be fair in the provision of news and current affairs. Then

we have the print media, who have no obligation to be fair, and I am not just talking about

the Daily Mail. There is a clear distinction between the broadcast media and the print media.

If you look at the local and regional newspapers in the context of our questions on plurality,

do you see the same distinction between broadcasting and print or do you think that the

similarity is not the same as with the national media?

Mr Jeakings: I think there is a fundamental characteristic of the local press or local news

media that is different to national in that we describe ourselves as being community media.

We work in the communities. We have to be trusted by the communities that we publish

for. We go out of our way when we do it right, which is most of the time, to see both sides

of the story, to be balanced. We are not regulated and I would not encourage any

regulation, but because of that symbiotic relationship with the community, if we were to get

it wrong we would not exist any more.

Mr Highfield: I think that is the point. We rely on the trust of our community for our very

existence.

Lord Razzall: But all the national newspapers would say that. The Daily Mail would say that

they rely on the trust of their readership.

Mr Highfield: No, I do not think they would. They rely on the patronage of their readers to

buy the paper, but the person who buys the News of the World does not necessarily believe

in what they are reading and nor do they feel that when they take apart somebody in the

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community that that is an outrage. We live and die by supporting the people in our

community and being seen as a trusted source of information, holding local government,

local councils, to account. From a purely commercial point of view, we get advertising

revenue. In the future of this business, I have a quite strong view that I do not think we will

ever create a paid-for world on the internet. It will be an advertising-funded future.

Advertisers want to advertise with us because we are a trusted medium. It works because if

you advertise on our websites, the click-throughs are much higher than on the Mail on

Sunday website, for example, because we are in a trusted environment. If we lose that trust

then we lose the commercial revenue. I would say we are fundamentally different from the

national press in that regard. We live and die by the trust our communities have in us.

Lord Razzall: What you are actually saying in answer to my question, looking at issues of

plurality, which is what this Committee is looking at, is that you do not see a local distinction

between the broadcast media and the print media in the way that obviously exists at the

national level.

Ms Allinson: I think at the local level we are more highly trusted as brands in our local

communities than other local media.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: Is the point that the local community basically knows when

you are telling them a lie? They know the schools and when you get it totally wrong they are

able to say, “Well, actually, I know the headmaster. He is a decent person, contrary to what

the newspaper says”.

Mr Jeakings: Yes, and that has happened. Yes, absolutely.

Ms Allinson: Yes, and they know when we have spelt someone’s name wrong and they

know when we put the wrong name under a photograph. None of this is done intentionally,

but we are all human and we always apologise.

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Q345 Baroness Deech: I think much of the answer that I am expecting has come

through already in what you said about the relationship between newsprint and internet.

How would you describe the relationship between the papers and hyper-local websites,

often run by a local authority or volunteers? Would you say that they complement each

other, compete or are parasitic, feeding off each other? Personally, if I want to know what

schools are closed—not now any more—whether it is snowing or whether the trains are

running, I would tend to go to the local website.

Mr Jeakings: The local news website?

Baroness Deech: No, I would probably go to my Vale of the White Horse website.

Mr Jeakings: I think it depends on where you live. Often the difference between some of

the hyper-local websites and some of the websites run by local newspaper companies is in

the quality of the journalism, and I would not describe it as journalism. It is not professionally

created content, which means that while getting the time of the trains and whether they are

running or not is probably okay, anything much beyond that poses a bit of a problem.

Archant’s view is that there is a place for hyper-local websites. We have some of our own.

We work with other people who run both networks and individual hyper-local networks.

For example, in Epping Forest there is a guy who has a local website. We do a print version

for him and we share the revenue together. We have also invested in something called

Streetlife, which is about hyper-local street level social media, so really, really local. I would

say that there is a strong element of complementarity to them.

Mr Highfield: I think the important thing is to not see them as a replacement or ultimate

substitute for local press, because there is fundamentally no business model. They do not

scale, normally, the amount of revenue they can make if they are trying to run as a

commercial entity: that is, to employ a journalist to work for them on a salary. You will end

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up with a lot of these people doing it for the love of doing it, but that is not necessarily a

scaleable business.

The route that we are taking is to engage with a lot of these people and then get them to

submit copy to us. That is not terribly radical. I have brought along one of our newspapers; it

could have been any one. If you read a local paper, you have pages and pages of this. It is

called “Down Your Way” in this paper, but it is hyper-local news, pages and pages of it, all

contributed by people in the community who usually write it for free. They may occasionally

get a stipend from us or some small amount. Moving that into the internet world, I see that

as being a sustainable model where we aggregate and act as the curator for a lot of voices in

the community. I do not really care whether you call them micro bloggers or whatever, but I

think that our role going forward, therefore, is just as important as it has ever been in print.

Lord Clement-Jones: You are absorbing those hyper-local bloggers, in a sense, are you

not? Is that not part of your strategy?

Mr Highfield: It is to give more voices an opportunity of getting a larger audience. If we

have an audience already of a quarter of a million people reading our website in the

Sunderland area, we can bring a large audience to content that we think passes a quality

threshold. That is all we would do. The opinions of micro bloggers are their own, unless we

bring them into print, in which case they then have to pass the tests of our editor. I think

that is a scaleable, sustainable model.

Increasingly in regional press you need hyper-local at one end but you also need to be able

to scale businesses, particularly if the future is predominantly advertising-based. We would

like to get a greater share of national advertising revenues, which means that we need to find

ways of working together ever better, being represented by bodies like the Newspaper

Society, but I believe the framework is going to be one of increased consolidation within this

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sector. It does not mean there will be a loss of plurality of voice, but it does mean that the

commercial viability of papers will last for many years to come.

Lord Clement-Jones: Are you relying more and more on that kind of semi-volunteer

addition to the material that you produce professionally?

Mr Highfield: I would definitely say so, yes.

Q346 Baroness Scotland of Asthal: This question is probably primarily for Geraldine

Allinson. You have doubtless seen the recommendation that this Committee made in the

Future of Investigative Journalism report, which came very much out of the experience that you

have. There was a hope that that recommendation would be subsumed within the

Communications Bill, which that has not come about yet. Do you agree with that

recommendation about strengthening Ofcom’s role—I assume that you probably would—

and do you think it would be possible for what happened with the KM Group in 2011 to

happen again? What lessons do you think have been learnt, if any?

Ms Allinson: Ofcom did play a role, and I support the recommendation of this Committee

wholeheartedly, but I do not think things have changed a great deal. To be fair, I do not talk

regularly to the OFT, but there are a few other things that have been looked at by them and

it appears to me that they still have a very narrow definition of local media. If it is a

newspaper acquisition they are looking at—and they have published nothing to say that they

have changed the way they look at this—they have not yet broadened the definition of the

platform they are looking at. I truly believe that they do not believe that we compete with

the internet still, and for us that is a hugely difficult thing.

Another example is in the radio sector. We are in the radio sector and obviously these

things are of interest to us. Global have been told to disinvest themselves of some of the

stations they bought from, I think, the Guardian Media Group. That definition is exactly the

same. It was because they were very local radio stations and they felt that Global would own

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too many of those in a narrow geographic area. I personally do not believe that they have

broadened the way they look at local media and I think it is very restrictive, so whatever you

can do to help in that regard would be great.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: Is there any additional recommendation you think would

assist to help them to better understand?

Ms Allinson: The problem for us is that we are such a small organisation and we do not

have the people employed internally to be able to provide the sort of data they were

requiring to get proof. I do not know whether the Local World deal has helped with that in

any way, but we felt very much that they were expecting us to provide things that we

absolutely did not have, could not have and would have cost us hundreds of thousands of

pounds to get. We are just not in that remit. I would request that they look at our industry

and see that over the last five, six years we have lost 50% of our revenues. I would question

whether it was relevant for the OFT even to look at the belief now that it is dangerous to

have a monopoly in a certain area within the very closely defined newspaper print sector.

The Chairman: Do either of you have anything you want to add to this?

Mr Highfield: Our competition is not my colleagues sitting here. It is just not. I am two

years into this industry, having spent my career in the internet and broadcast industry, and I

look at this industry as a bit like the cable industry was in the 1990s: a bunch of franchises

that need to come together and of course have now come together. The ITV industry is a

bunch of regional franchises that needed to come together and have now come together. I

am not entirely sure why the press is quite so different. I see the move that Local World and

Iliffe have done and the approval of that should be the benchmark for future transactions. It

is true to say that the commercial viability will have such an obviously profound impact on

media plurality, and therefore you have to have a commercially viable press industry if it is

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going to be any local voice. To have that, there needs to be allowed consolidation within the

industry, whether it is on a big scale or a smaller scale of title swaps and so on.

Mr Jeakings: The only thing I would add is that my reading, which is admittedly a layman’s,

of the OFT conclusions on Local World is that nothing has changed. We are in exactly the

same place as we were in when we, Archant, had to fight them back in the early 2000s when

we bought some newspapers in London and we were referred to the Competition

Commission. We won that case in the end but only by taking out members of the panel and

showing them on the streets the competition for our newspapers. The academic approach

just does not work.

Mr Highfield: Who is our competition? Our biggest declining revenue lines in the last

decade have been around property and motors, property through Rightmove and now

Zoopla and motors because of Auto Trader. It is not each other. It is the internet.

Mr Jeakings: And Google coming up on the right flank.

Mr Highfield: Google and eBay and Gumtree and Monster—and, and, and. That is the

world we live in, and to judge us by an analogue world when we are all working and living

and suffering in a digital environment is just out of date.

Q347 Bishop of Norwich: If we can turn to Ofcom’s proposal for a new model for

plurality policy based on periodic reviews, their supplementary advice was that, given the

commercial pressures you have been describing, local and regional media should be exempt

from this. Of course, I believe you think that is the right approach, but would it not be more

sensible to include, provided any review is sufficiently sensitive to commercial sustainability

in reaching its conclusions, rather than to exclude the local and regional media entirely?

Mr Jeakings: A huge amount of time and effort is taken up with any such review by any

government body and I think it would be a major distraction to be included in one. Since

Ofcom itself feels that we should be excluded, we are very happy to go along with that.

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Bishop of Norwich: Is that not a sort of relegation of social and political and economic

significance? Is that a wise thing?

Mr Highfield: What, not to be regulated in the same way?

Bishop of Norwich: Yes. Well, it is not so much regulation, is it? It is to be excluded from

a consideration of plurality, because it seems to me that the local and regional media add to

the plurality of the media offer in the country as a whole. To exclude you narrows down in a

rather unhealthy way, or could do, the very review that Ofcom is proposing should take

place periodically. I can see why you do not like being reviewed—most schools do not like

Ofsted coming in—but it does not help necessarily to be excluded.

Ms Allinson: I think this is a hugely difficult thing. At the moment, there are a lot of

consultations going on and our businesses have been through such difficult times. We need

to be free to get on and run our businesses and compete in the best way we possibly can

with the new competitors that we have, which are online. To be involved in things like tests

on plurality, I understand what you are saying completely, but if we are going to be fit to

compete things like this will have a bearing on how we run our businesses in the future. This

plurality test concerns me, because I am not sure if we are completely clear what the

definition of plurality is exactly—

The Chairman: You will be after you have read our report.

Ms Allinson: Oh good, that will help greatly—and how exactly it is to be measured, because

if we are to be included then all the ultra-local magazines that exist in the areas that we are

in as well should be included and the BBC should be included. I would find it much easier

knowing that we are excluded because, for example, we have to make a decision on local

TV. A licence is being advertised in the Kent area at the moment. KM already exists in

newspapers, radio and online. We have 90,000 Twitter followers. Are we adding another

platform, TV? If we were to bid and be successful, would that be judged later on to have

18

limited plurality in our area? I have to find a way with my team to have a good commercial

business model to compete with these other people. To me, probably because I do not

know enough about it and how it is going to be measured and so on, it just feels like another

layer of bureaucracy that I will have to deal with that people like Google or Auto Trader or

whoever will not.

Mr Highfield: I think I can square the circle. We do not have a problem with the idea that

we would be included in the look at UK-wide media plurality, which was your point about us

surely not wanting to get left out because we contribute, insofar as it would be looking at us

with a view to the overall plurality of the UK or a devolved nation. What we do have an

issue with is looking at local and the burden and the overhead on us for what benefit.

The Chairman: Can I just come in there? You own titles stretch from the Scotsman to the

Galloway Times, I think.

Mr Highfield: Yes.

The Chairman: I do not think that the Galloway Times is going to have much bearing on

national plurality. Would the Scotsman?

Mr Highfield: I think the Scotsman is possibly the most competitive landscape of any one of

our titles.

The Chairman: But you see the point I am making?

Mr Highfield: Well, sort of, but the Scotsman does not speak for Scotland, it speaks for

Edinburgh really, much as I would like it to speak for Scotland. The competitive landscape is,

of course, the Scottish versions of all the English daily nationals. It is a highly competitive

landscape because we are competing not only with the Glasgow Herald, and indeed other

online websites, but against every single English national that sells newspapers in Edinburgh.

As I say, we do not have an issue with looking at how we contribute to the overall plurality

19

on a national basis, but to start to go down to a level of granularity would not be in anyone’s

interest.

Q348 Lord Dubs: Are you saying that if it were done at a local level, the thing you are

rejecting, that would impose too much of a burden in terms of dealing with it, or is it

philosophically improper to do that? Which of the two is it?

Ms Allinson: I think we need to understand exactly what it is being done for. Why is it being

done? Sitting here, I think my understanding is probably not as great as it should be. I do not

understand why. What is the reason for doing it? I read a review that Ofcom had done a

while ago, which said that people are using more and more sources to source their news. I

think the average for most people now is three different providers of information. If that is

going up, if that is on the increase, why is there a concern about measuring plurality? If

Ofcom does that annual review and the areas or the different sources that people go to to

get their news and information are increasing, why do we need to start measuring it? Does

that make sense?

Lord Dubs: I am not sure I can answer your question either. Just suppose that somebody

really dominated in a local area. Despite all the competition that you say exists, suppose

somebody had a total dominance of the area. Would that not make you want it looked at?

Ms Allinson: I am not sure that ownership necessarily would dominate the plurality issue.

We have different editors for each of our newspapers. We have different people producing

the radio news. In a set area, for example to take one town in Ashford, we have a local paid-

for newspaper, a local free newspaper, a local website and a local radio station. Different

people choose the news to go on those things. It does not mean that the owners dominate

the news agenda at all. I suppose I am struggling to understand why there is a necessity to

measure it.

20

Q349 Baroness Bakewell: On a national scale that would be quite considerable. The

ownership of major national newspapers could represent a very strong hold on the news

agenda of the country.

Ms Allinson: It depends how an organisation is run.

Baroness Bakewell: But ownership can have a huge sway.

Ms Allinson: I would argue that in local media ownership does not dictate the news agenda

at all, or views. I am chairman and a very small owner of our organisation, and I have no

editorial control whatever. The company has been run in that way for many years.

Baroness Bakewell: Then you have a very good explanation to make, but the reason for

the issue to be one that matters nationally is because if it were not so and you were not an

honourable person in the role that you have, you might be culpable of controlling the news

outlets in your power.

Mr Highfield: The news outlets in the small towns are not political.

Baroness Bakewell: I was simply explaining why the whole business is—

Mr Highfield: I think this goes back to the earlier point that we are kept honest by the

community in which we operate. Within that community, the people who buy the paper will

come from all spectrums and political hues and therefore the papers, by their nature, cannot

start to have strong opinions. That is not what local media is about. In many towns anyway

there is only one local newspaper. Coming up with a conclusion that in an ideal world you

would have two competing paid-for newspapers may be well and good but it is not going to

happen.

Baroness Bakewell: No, I agree. I think you have a very strong case. It is just that plurality

is an abstract issue in media terms and we are considering at which point it becomes

absolutely relevant. In your case, it seems not to be relevant.

21

Mr Jeakings: I can see that it is important at national level, but if you just take our business,

we have 80 newspaper titles, somewhat smaller than Ashley’s, somewhat bigger than the

Kent Messenger. We have 80 magazines, over 200 websites. No shareholder owning more

than 1% is employed by the business. It is totally inconceivable that the owners could

interfere with the news agendas of any of those titles. I understand the national argument

completely, but it is very different to our business.

The Chairman: Can I just intervene? We have run over time, thanks to the Division. I

would like to continue this if you and our next witness are happy. We do not want to

squeeze him out. Are you happy that things go on until towards 6.00 pm?

Mr Beveridge: Yes.

The Chairman: Yes, fine. Sorry.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: One of the interesting things that Ashley raised is the

difference between the national and the local position. It is very difficult to come to an

informed decision about what you should do for UK wide without taking into consideration

potentially how the decisions you may make nationally will impact either favourably or

negatively on regional and local newspapers, if you come to the view that regional and local

newspapers are a valid and important contribution to deliver plurality. That is my anxiety. If

you say that Ofcom does not have to take into account local and regional and you put your

area in a separate box, you may get a perverse imbalance because they then fail to take into

account adequately, or at all, the decisions that they are making that may impact negatively

as opposed to positively.

Mr Highfield: It is our view, and the view of the Newspaper Society, that at a national level,

when they are reviewing the national landscape, it is okay then to take regional players into

account, but it does not mean that you then look at plurality on a region-by-region basis.

22

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: No, but the current recommendation would appear to

be—I am a horrible little lawyer—that if you exclude something you cannot take it into

consideration. That is why there is a bit of anxiety about excluding it because it says then, “It

does not matter whether it is negative or positive. We are not looking at it. It cannot impact

on our consideration. We cannot exercise our discretion to take into account any positive

or negative”.

Q350 Lord Clement-Jones: We have briefly discussed the point about the caveat that

Ofcom makes so that it can take into consideration the contribution to plurality of local and

regional newspapers when it looks at the level of the UK or the devolved nations, and we

talked briefly about the Scotsman. What do you think it means by that? Do you think there is

a potential impact on UK plurality? Is it not rather peculiar that it talks purely about the

contribution, the positive aspect, when I suppose there could in theory be a detriment if all

the regional newspapers, say, were in the hands of one company?

Mr Highfield: No, because not all the regional newspapers have a national agenda. That is

the thing. All the regional newspapers have a hyper-local message, hyper-local journalists and

a hyper-local editor. I cannot stress this strongly enough. It is the same message you are

getting from all of us no matter what our size is. We have no control editorially over the

message at a local level, so it does not really matter if you own one, 10 or 100 papers. You

could not corral them all into a “vote Tory” agenda. It is not the way the local press works

and it is not the purpose of local press, and I do not think there has ever been a headline

that would look anything like that anyway. I do not think that at a national level you would

need to look at ownership as being a detriment to plurality.

Baroness Deech: Is it not the case that local papers spend a lot of time on schooling,

education, transport and planning, and all those things from time to time are very political at

a national level?

23

Mr Highfield: But we always take a local view.

Lord Clement-Jones: Do you agree that therefore we must only talk about the positive?

As Ofcom are really saying, if they do not have this review at local or regional level but they

do take the regional media into account when it comes to looking at UK plurality, that is

only taking the positive aspects into account?

Mr Highfield: I think the Scotsman adds to the plurality of media in Scotland. In the absence

of the Scotsman, you might deem there to be enough other players there in the market, but I

do not think an over-burdensome framework on the commercial side that caused us to stop

publishing the Scotsman would be in anyone’s interest. We are on the edge of a very

fragmented, fragile recovery here and I think we are all, to be honest, very frightened of

anything, whether it is Leveson putting in place a regime that could cost us dearly in

vexatious claims or a regulatory overhead or any burden.

Lord Clement-Jones: Or local television, indeed.

Mr Highfield: Indeed, any state intervention that has an inadvertent detrimental effect on a

very fragile recovery in the regional media.

Baroness Fookes: Could we now look at plurality policy from a totally different angle? Let

us assume you are standing outside of these requirements. Do you have any views, as

regional and local media, as to how it should operate at the national level? Do you have any

views as to how it might be reformed? We have had lord only knows how many suggestions.

Mr Highfield: I do not.

Mr Jeakings: I am afraid there is a very blunt answer to that, which is no, I do not.

Ms Allinson: I really do not think I know enough about it.

Mr Jeakings: It is way outside my area of expertise.

Ms Allinson: There were a list of options here, but I would not know enough to really

comment, I am sorry.

24

Baroness Fookes: If you were not prepared to offer any suggestions as to how these

reforms might be put through, do you have any ideas about who should be responsible for

whatever regime is put in place, such as a Minister or a regulator?

Mr Highfield: Personally, again, I do not have a view on that.

Ms Allinson: The problem is that there are several different regulators, are there not, for

different media? So I am not sure there would be any one regulator that could do it.

Baroness Fookes: No. There could be a new regulator altogether who does not fit any of

the current arrangements, but I think I can see that you are not happy on this, so maybe we

should move on.

Ms Allinson: I am sorry.

The Chairman: I sense there is some reluctance to commit a view on something you do

not feel is directly relevant to your evidence, so shall we move on?

Q351 Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill: You have argued strongly that you believe that

the local media plays an important role and will continue to exist, which is good. There are a

number of evidence submissions, such as that from the Media Standards Trust, that argue

that there is no evidence to suggest that the decline in local and regional media will be

reversed, except in specific areas such as large cities, without some public, private or third

sector intervention. How do you respond to the proposal that plurality policy should focus

more on positive promotion of diversity and market entry than prevention of merger, and

are there any good examples of this working? How do you guard against state influence?

That is a rather long question.

Mr Highfield: I would definitely support the loosening of any burdens that stop us moving

forward to commercial arrangements to consolidate the industry. I do not know whether I

speak for my colleagues, but I am not sure that state intervention would work or is needed

in the regional newspaper industry.

25

Mr Jeakings: I am quite clear that we do not want state intervention at Archant. We do not

feel that would be helpful and we think it would be fraught with all sorts of dangers.

Mr Highfield: There are things you can do to help.

Mr Jeakings: There are. Relaxing the merger regime for local papers, for example, and

getting the OFT to take a broader view of who competes with whom would be very helpful.

Stopping some of the BBC’s more adventurous forays into local media would also be helpful.

Mr Highfield: And a clearer relationship—

Mr Jeakings: And a much clearer relationship, yes.

Mr Highfield: —where they would help by carrying content from us on their products, on

their news sites, on their local radio, and where they would link to us, so a very symbiotic

relationship. In fact, it was something that was recommended under the Philip Graf review

and subsequently but has never really come to pass.

Mr Jeakings: It has proven to be very hard to make it happen.

Mr Highfield: It has, but that is an easy win, a very clear set of guidance on the BBC as to

where they should not park their tanks but where they should collaborate. We can be the

hyper-local engagement vehicle for debate, for plurality of voice, feeding that up into the

BBC, and they can bring some national and larger regional attention to issues and then drive

traffic down into us. There is the provision of local council newsletters.

Mr Jeakings: Exactly, and stopping local council newsletters competing unfairly with us,

which Eric Pickles made a statement on yesterday, I think. We do not feel that we get our

fair share, whatever that means, of government and public body advertising.

The Chairman: Can you say what that is?

Mr Jeakings: More than we get at the moment. As we have said already, we are a very

trusted medium. There are surveys that indicate that we are the most trusted medium in the

26

UK, and yet we get less than we would expect of government advertising. I do not have a

precise number so I am going to stop waffling, but we feel it should be higher.

Mr Highfield: But since the COI was broken up, the government spend with regional press

has fallen quite considerably.

Q352 Baroness Deech: I am a bit puzzled as to why you object to the BBC and other

journals or websites. Are we not all in favour of plurality?

Mr Highfield: Why do I reject them?

Baroness Deech: Yes. You just said, “BBC, get your tanks off our territory”, and so on.

Mr Highfield: No. In their review they have been guided by the BBC Trust to up the quality

of their local sites. Having been at the BBC on the board for eight years, I know that the

BBC’s response to that quite often is to get in the tank and put your helmet on. What we

would like them to do to improve the quality of their sites is to engage with regional media

so we can provide more of the granular content that their sites could have with links to us.

Then everyone wins: the quality of their sites goes up and we get traffic driven from the

BBC. The alternative is that they think it is their role to get hyper-local and granular down

from the 50-regional level that they operate at into the several hundred regions, but that is

our territory. At that point, they could bring quite a damaging impact to our nascent

websites, which we are pinning our future on. That is all.

The Chairman: Thank you. We have gone on much longer than we had originally planned,

so thank you for being tolerant about that. We are coming to an end, but I would like to ask

each of you whether there is anything you would like to say to us that you have not already

said that you think is important from our point of view. I just wanted to give you a chance to

say anything that we have not covered before that you would like us to hear.

Mr Jeakings: I think the key messages are that we have been through difficult times. We

think there is a strong future. We employ more journalists across the country than any

27

other medium and we have growing audiences, contrary to the propaganda that you read in

the press.

The Chairman: Anything else?

Mr Highfield: Yes, reports of our death are much exaggerated. There is a role that we can

play to help a number of government initiatives, whether it is Digital Britain or any other, but

we do not need intervention help. We do not need state handouts, but there are certain

things that could be done to help the regional press maintain that level of plurality and keep

doing what we do so well, which is holding local elected officials to account and giving

people a voice in their community.

Mr Jeakings: And certain things that could not be done that might be done.

The Chairman: Right. Geraldine, do you want to say anything?

Ms Allinson: No. I was just going to say thank you very much for listening to us and thank

you for looking at this.

The Chairman: No, not at all. Thank you very much for coming and giving us the benefit of

your considered and extensive experience.

28

Examination of Witness

Mr Robert Beveridge, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China

Q353 The Chairman: May I extend a very warm welcome to Robert Beveridge?

Mr Beveridge: Thank you, my Lord.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for coming and for waiting so patiently at the back

of the room. I hope it will not cause you any inconvenience. You are, I think I am right in

saying, visiting professor at the University of Sassari and a senior tutor at the Nottingham

University at Ningbo in China.

Mr Beveridge: That is correct, my Lord.

The Chairman: I have been there briefly once, not as a student but I visited it. We have

asked you here particularly to concentrate our minds on the issues that are specifically

Scottish or how Scottish issues might affect the United Kingdom. I know you have kindly

produced a paper that touched on some of that, and Alan has been in touch with you about

the kind of things that we are interested in. Before we start, can you just tell us who you

are? Then if you have an opening statement, we will be very pleased to hear it.

Mr Beveridge: Thank you. I am Robert Beveridge. I am a professor at the University of

Sassari in Sardinia, currently a senior tutor at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo in China,

and I undertake some tutoring work at the Scottish Media Academy.

My opening statement is brief but it is really to say thank you for the invitation. You are a

House of Lords Committee that makes a report and recommendations, so your powers may

be said to be limited, but please do not underestimate it. I referred in my statement to the

importance of the arguments advanced by Lords Puttnam and McNally during the passage of

the Communications Act 2003, and the House of Lords did an excellent job at that time. As

29

my paper makes clear, I also wish to commend this Parliament, which set up the BBC and

Channel 4. In some ways, the BBC and Channel 4 addressed and partly solved problems of

media plurality, at least in television. As Tony Judt said, the best future entails recovering

good pasts and I commend this to you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. Can I begin by reminding the Committee—I

daresay you do not need it—that the Ofcom Advisory Committee for Scotland said in their

evidence into the Ofcom inquiry on media plurality that, “The Scottish public has a dual

relationship to news. It consumes news that is specifically Scottish and that is relevant to the

conduct of the Scottish political institutions and the Scottish public domain more widely. The

Scottish public also consumes news that has a wider UK focus and that is relevant to Scots

as citizens of the United Kingdom”. Is that an analysis you would accept? Could you perhaps

tell us a little about the way and where Scots turn when they are looking for news,

particularly on those two levels?

Mr Beveridge: Despite reports of its demise, linear television is still dominant, but the

balance between Scottish and UK news remains a problem. I will try to give an example of

this. When Chris Hoy wins his gold medals at the Olympics, it is all over the UK main

network, and then “Reporting Scotland” begins at 6.30pm and we get exactly the same thing

again. That kind of duplication or a double dose is irritating to viewers and listeners in

Scotland.

Secondly, news about health or education policy in England is interesting but it is not strictly

relevant to the interests of citizens in Scotland. Although it is now better labelled,

particularly as a result of the BBC Trust King report on impartiality a few years ago, it is still

a problem.

Thirdly, when stories about Scotland appear in the UK news, they do not always get it right

because it is coming from south of the border and they do not always understand the

30

nuances of the Scottish context. Obviously the referendum may be changing this but

afterwards my belief is that it will sink back. Therefore, I believe the problem is structural

and needs to be addressed by having a Scottish Six and/or a Scottish digital network or, if we

go back to the idea that Ofcom put forward some years ago, a public service publisher.

Q354 Lord Skelmersdale: To change the subject, Professor, Ofcom’s definition of

plurality is to bring about two desired outcomes: first, ensuring that a diversity of viewpoints

is available and consumed across and within media enterprises and, secondly, preventing any

one media owner or voice having too much influence over public opinion and the political

agenda. My first question is: would you agree that these desired outcomes apply to both

news media aimed at Scots as Scottish citizens and news media consumed by Scots as UK

citizens, if you see the difference?

Mr Beveridge: Indeed so. Certainly I agree with Ofcom’s definitions there and, again,

because Parliament and the regulation system have some influence over broadcasting, much

less over newspapers, we do have some plurality of voice. A very good example of that is

BBC Alba, which was set up recently and provides a voice for the Gaeltacht, which is

obviously a voice for a minority.

I would turn around to you, my Lord, and ask how would you feel if there was going to be a

referendum on Britain’s or England’s membership of the European Union and the press

reporting on it were mostly in favour of Britain or England staying in the European Union

and were owned and controlled from outside this country. I think there would be an

enormous furore if that took place. That is the position Scotland is in at the moment. Most

of the newspapers that are read in Scotland are owned and controlled outside Scotland.

Despite Rupert Murdoch’s late conversion to being supportive of Alex Salmond and the

support of the Scottish Sun for the SNP, I think there is an imbalance of voice when it comes

to the Scottish media as a whole.

31

The Chairman: Do you think that therefore all Scottish media should be owned in

Scotland, whatever that might mean in the world of global capitalism, or do you have a

positive proposition as to what is desirable?

Mr Beveridge: No, I am not a supporter of Scottish nationalism per se, although I see it as

civic nationalism as opposed to ethnic nationalism, so no one would turn around and say that

all the media need to be owned in a particular country. But within the UK there are big

questions, for example about the BBC, as to whether the BBC Scotland is Scotland’s voice in

the BBC or whether BBC Scotland is the BBC or London’s voice in Scotland. Therefore, it

seems to me to be very important that when we look at impartiality, balance and accuracy in

broadcasting, organisations that are still dominant, even more dominant than newspapers,

pay attention to the need to have reporting that reflects the diversity of the UK. I have

raised this with Ofcom. I got in touch with them and said, “Perhaps you should look at ITN

news and Channel 4 news and see whether it is learning the lessons of the BBC Trust King

report”, but I did not get very far with Ofcom in Scotland on that issue.

The Chairman: Do you think that the BBC does though? I am sure it would tell us it is

trying. Do you think it achieves that?

Mr Beveridge: No, I do not. The BBC’s own research on purpose gaps clearly indicates that

there is unhappiness among viewers and listeners in Scotland about the representation of

Scotland. Again in my paper, one of things I drew attention to is the soap “River City”.

“River City” costs a lot of money. It is a welcome investment in creative industry production

in Scotland. It is good cultural representation. I am from Edinburgh, as you might tell from

my accent. “River City” is Glasgow, so I do not watch it all that much, but my belief is that it

should be shown south of border. It should be shown on the network. I once asked the then

controller of BBC One why it was not being shown and did not get a satisfactory answer.

Why do we not have “River City” on the BBC One network across the UK so that viewers

32

in England can get a better sense of Scotland? Obviously the BBC has a responsibility to help

people in England to understand Scotland and vice versa.

The Chairman: This is as slightly frivolous point, but we could see “Rab C Nesbitt”.

Mr Beveridge: Yes, that is true, but there is history of programmes not making it on to the

network. Again, one of the things I am arguing in my paper is that there should be devolution

max for BBC Scotland. BBC Scotland should have control of its own schedules, of the

amount of money raised in Scotland in the licence fee. Incidentally, that would be good

business practice: ensuring that the BBC became less centralised and trusting its executives

and managers in Scotland much more.

Q355 Baroness Deech: I think I am treading on eggshells here, but I remember in the

past discussions about showing “River City” south and I think it was a market or artistic

decision that it would not be widely watched. Conversely, I have just checked my iPad copy

of the Times and the print one has a whole chunk on Scotland every day. I think that the

argument you are making is not really about diversity of voices. The view that you are

presenting—I do not think it is your view—is that the Scottish media and the English media

are not giving sufficient attention to Scottish separatism. That is a question of the different

drives of the newspapers. The answer is that if you do not like them then do not buy them.

Mr Beveridge: I think that is true for newspapers but, as I said, if you were faced with a

referendum on EU membership and the way in which it was being presented and the agenda

that was being set owed much more, arguably, to the owners than to the readers, you might

have a different view.

Baroness Deech: Conceivably you can make that argument in England and Wales in

relation to the European Union. There is not a lot of European news, they say.

Mr Beveridge: That is true.

33

Baroness Deech: When the referendum comes, the papers may point one way. In fact it is

already said they will point pro Europe, so we are familiar with that argument.

Mr Beveridge: I am sorry, are you saying that the newspapers in England would be pro

Europe?

Baroness Deech: I read that it is often said—I am not sure I can judge this—that the

English and Welsh media are pro Europe even now, long before we get to the referendum.

Mr Beveridge: No, my understanding is that the English press in particular is much more

heavily Eurosceptical, and that would of course be in tune with the ownership of whatever

News International is called now.

Baroness Deech: Yes. There obviously can be reasonable opinions about this, but I

suppose you buy your paper, pay your money and take your choice.

Mr Beveridge: That is absolutely true for press. It is a very different ballgame when you

start talking about public service broadcasting.

Lord Skelmersdale: Could I go back to my question? Following on from what you have

just said, do I assume that you believe that the Ofcom Advisory Committee for Scotland is

suggesting that there should be an extra component of plurality, that Scotland be adequately

represented within the UK, as should be the case with all other nations?

Mr Beveridge: Absolutely. I would go further and say that I am very disappointed in the

Scottish Government, and Alex Salmond as First Minister as well. The Scottish Broadcasting

Commission came out in 2008, under Blair Jenkins, with a proposal for a Scottish digital

network that would cost around £75 million, £80 million a year. What was important about

that was that it was accepted by the full Scottish Parliament. It was not an SNP gambit. The

Liberals, the Conservatives, the Labour Party and the SNP, the whole Parliament

unanimously accepted the report and its recommendations. I suppose there might financial

or political reasons why they have not gone ahead with it, but I personally think that a

34

Scottish digital network should be set up by the Scottish Government, with adequate

safeguards for independence and so on, and keeping the politicians away. That would

immediately have a significant influence on plurality because it would be available on digital

terrestrial television and available to viewers south of the border, as indeed BBC Alba is.

The Chairman: Is this something that you think the UK Government should do, because it

could do it equally well?

Mr Beveridge: Yes, indeed it could. I suppose, given the political constraints, that might be

very difficult for the UK Government. I do not see why the UK Government could not do

that except they would be seen as pandering to Scotland.

The Chairman: You would probably have to do the equivalent for Wales and Northern

Ireland.

Mr Beveridge: Indeed so, yes.

Lord Skelmersdale: It would have to be post referendum too, Chairman.

The Chairman: Now, yes, but that is not that far hence.

Mr Beveridge: Although Ofcom, to their credit, did recommend the public service publisher

back around 2005 or 2006.

The Chairman: So the basic proposition behind your evidence is that Scotland is not

getting a terribly good deal at present?

Mr Beveridge: Yes, absolutely.

Q356 Baroness Deech: We have had some discussion about this. Would you say that

the proper place for making sure that Scotland is represented in UK-wide media is in the

public service media but that you cannot really force non-public service media to represent

Scotland adequately?

35

Mr Beveridge: I agree entirely with that, yes. The price for being designated as public

service media, having a reduced price or no price in the spectrum, should be that you have

to abide by certain codes, rules and regulations. That goes without saying, I think.

Baroness Deech: Would you say that the public service media as we have it, in particular

the BBC, does not represent Scotland adequately at the moment?

Mr Beveridge: There are a variety of views around this. I am a critical friend of the BBC.

BBC Scotland does what it can, but I draw your attention to the point I made earlier, which

is that I think that BBC Scotland should have control over its own resources and the licence

fee raised in Scotland, and have the ability to opt in rather than opt out of the schedules. I

suppose I am arguing that the BBC, and indeed the governance structure for the BBC, needs

to become more federal. I was very interested to see what the leader of the Conservatives

in Wales said the other day about that aspect. I am quite clear that the BBC needs to be in

step with devolution. In 1998 the BBC governors turned down the idea of the Scottish Six

by saying that the BBC needed to be in step with devolution. My belief about cultural

representation—although that is in a cycle like the British film industry; it is good one year,

bad the next year—and certainly about governance is that it is out of step with devolution as

it has happened.

Baroness Deech: There is a Scottish governor, is there not?

Mr Beveridge: Yes, there is. Bill Matthews.

Baroness Deech: Trustee rather.

Mr Beveridge: Yes, Scottish trustee. That is right.

The Chairman: While on this subject, although it is not directly relevant to what we have

said in the immediate past, there is a clear relationship between the devolved powers that

the Scottish Assembly has and the powers that are retained in the UK.

Mr Beveridge: Forgive me, my Lord, the Scottish Parliament.

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The Chairman: Parliament, I beg your pardon. But there is a difference between powers

and influence. Do you consider the Scottish Parliament to have more influence than it has

strict legal powers, particularly in respect to broadcasting? It has very little direct legal

capabilities in respect to broadcasting.

Mr Beveridge: If I may turn it around to you and this Parliament, I would ask why, when the

Scotland Act was passed in the late 1990s, it was decided to keep broadcasting as a reserve

power alongside foreign and defence policy. Why did the British state and the UK Parliament

consider that policy on broadcasting to be so important that it could not be devolved to the

Scottish Parliament? I would suggest that even in the event of a no vote next year in the

Scottish independence referendum, devolution max will be on the agenda and there will be a

case for a federal BBC perhaps being considered as an option in the forthcoming BBC

charter review.

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill: Could you say whether you think there is a problem

to address on the fulfilment of Ofcom’s two desired outcomes on that front: diversity of

viewpoints available and prevention of too much influence—which I think you already think

there is—accruing to any one voice or media owner? If so, could you elaborate on this or

these, and would you say that there are different concerns to address across the various

media, newspapers, broadcast and online?

Mr Beveridge: Absolutely, although I think that the voters, the citizens of the United

Kingdom, are not stupid and they see that the major problem in our country over the last 40

years or so, outlined by Harry Evans in his evidence before you last week, has been that one

particular company, one particular family, one particular person ended up with far too much

influence. Regrettably, but one understands why it might have happened, the political class

ended up being very afraid of this company and this person and paid court to this person.

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The way in which you deal with it is very simple. I think you make sure that one company or

family or person does not own more than one daily newspaper and one Sunday newspaper.

That might seem simplistic. I am talking at the national level. I am not talking at the regional

level, I am not talking at the local level, but at that level that seems to me to be quite

appropriate. Stanley Baldwin, who was a Member of this House back in the 1930s, said press

barons had power without responsibility. That has remained the case throughout the

decades and it is time for this Parliament to do something about it, please.

Q357 Baroness Scotland of Asthal: Coming on from that, you know that we have

heard many views in relation to plurality, whether we should have caps, thresholds, metrics

to use in setting them up, automatic divestment, public interest obligations and so on. Do

you have your own view on how to reform plurality policy that could address some of the

concerns that you have raised regarding the news media consumed by Scots as Scottish

citizens? I very much take into account what you have just said to Lady Healy, which is a very

straightforward form of reform, but would you like to add to that? How in particular would

you respond to Ofcom’s proposal for periodic reviews of the UK media plurality, including

plurality at the level of nations? Could that form part of the system?

Mr Beveridge: Periodic review is certainly a good idea. However, I do not take the view,

despite my unhappiness with the propaganda that we sometimes get in the national

newspapers, that you should be interfering in the press more than you are already doing, I

hope properly. I support the idea of a royal charter with statutory underpinning for

independent self-regulation of the press. For me, the most important thing is beyond that,

which is that with broadcasting, including broadcasting online, you have an absolute red line

on impartiality, accuracy and balance in reporting, whether it be radio, television or online.

There is then an interesting question, which you were looking at in your report on

convergence, as to how you regulate online, including online newspapers. But as long as the

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brand is there, as long as it has the kitemark of being a public service broadcaster, whichever

platform it is on, that seems to me entirely proper.

I do not think you should get into the problem of trying to tell the press that they must be

accurate, balanced and so on. That is for them to do through their own regulator. I do not

think you are going to get diversity of pluralism in that way. It is for the market to deliver

that. For example, I wish there was a Scottish newspaper that supported independence, and

for the right reasons. I wish there was a press in Scotland that was not putting the boot into

the argument for independence but was, as John McCormick, the electoral commissioner,

has said, providing voters in Scotland with honest information that enabled a proper decision

to be made. I think the press are certainly letting down the people of the United Kingdom

and Scotland in that context.

The Chairman: Are the broadcasters, given their impartiality requirements, doing the job

more or less as you feel it should be done?

Mr Beveridge: They are doing better than I had expected.

Baroness Deech: But how much did you expect?

The Chairman: Not much by the sound of it.

Mr Beveridge: Well, Jim Naughtie being on “Good Morning Scotland” on BBC Scotland is

fine. My problem is slightly different because I am a citizen of Scotland but I am also a citizen

of the United Kingdom and I have concerns about the ways in which the media as a whole

are enabling voters in England to understand the issues and what is going to happen. I think

for our democracy it would be useful if that was done more and better.

The Chairman: As a flanker to this one, you will have heard Ashley Highfield, I think,

talking about the competitors to the Scotsman being the Scottish editions of the English

papers.

Mr Beveridge: He is absolutely right about that.

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The Chairman: I wanted to ask you about that. Are they Scottish or are they English?

Mr Beveridge: They are English. Sometimes they have a bit of a kilt on them but they are

absolutely English.

The Chairman: They are Englishmen in kilts, is that—

Mr Beveridge: More or less. But can I raise something about Ashley’s evidence that

disturbed me greatly? He said, on the record, that the Scotsman was an Edinburgh

newspaper, not the voice of Scotland. The Scotsman is selling around 28,000 copies a day

and, despite his evidence, it might well be in danger of going out of business or alternatively

having to merge with the Herald. I think that would be a major problem for diversity in

Scotland. However, I am not clear myself about what one might do about that. In my paper I

produced one or two ideas about that and I have talked a little bit about a technology fund,

because the other thing I was concerned about when I was listening to the previous

witnesses was that newspapers, especially local and regional papers, are fine, but newspapers

are in immense decline. I can see that and I have seen it for years in my students. I think this

Parliament needs to help newspapers to get the poetry right for them but it is for you to

help with the pipes, as in Lord Carter’s analogy or metaphor in his report Digital Britain. If

newspapers go it is bad for our democracy, so I hope you will have a look at my

recommendation and see what you think of it, in 10(5) I think.

Q358 Bishop of Norwich: One of the questions we are asking everyone—this is a UK-

wide question as much as a Scottish one and follows on from the previous question—as part

of any new plurality policy, who do you think should have ultimate responsibility for making

interventions? Ought it to be the Secretary of State, Ofcom or some new specialist plurality

commission, or do you have some other ideas of who ought to hold the responsibility?

Mr Beveridge: I have the utmost respect for you as politicians, believe it or not. However, I

remember the part played by Lord Birt some years ago when he was director-general of the

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BBC in stopping the proposal for a Scottish Six and how he compromised the BBC’s

independence at that time by getting too close to New Labour, which was utterly shameful. I

am also very clear about how unhappy many people are with attempts to bully the BBC by

politicians over the years. It is not confined to any one political party, sadly, and the recent

outburst by Grant Shapps is yet another example of this.

One further point, if I may. Some years ago I was in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia at a media

conference and I always remember a former high commissioner to this country from one of

the Asian countries saying, “The BBC is so important to the world, should we leave it in the

hands of the British?”. I think the behaviour of Lord Birt and the behaviour of Grant Shapps

in the last few days is clear evidence over the years that politicians cannot be trusted when it

comes to the BBC and therefore there has to be a regulator that is independent.

Bishop of Norwich: Since you support, in another sphere, the Leveson hybrid, would that

be the sort of option you would go for in relation to plurality?

Mr Beveridge: As I was sitting outside waiting to come in, I thought when I had said

Leveson hybrid that the answer would be yes, but it still gives power to the politicians and

maybe it is better with a regulator. But let me add this. As you will see from what I said

about the possibility of taking Ofcom to judicial review, the regulator also has to play its part

and there has to be the will in the regulator, in the case of the citizen interest, to advance

that rather than to choose among the varying competing clauses that are in a Bill like the

Communications Act.

The Chairman: Those who have advocated to us the involvement of Secretaries of State

and Ministers have argued that it is very important that there should be accountability. I

entirely understand you are saying that independence is the most important quality. Just so

we are clear, what you are telling us—and I am not making any comment about whether I

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think you are right or wrong—is that the independence is more important than the political

accountability in this context?

Mr Beveridge: Yes, I am, very definitely. Having said that, one would want the people at the

regulator to be appointed according to Nolan principles, and therefore what you are looking

for is people to do a good job. The democratic accountability then comes when the

regulator presents its report and appears before various Committees such as yours. That is

the kind of two-step process I would seek.

Q359 Baroness Fookes: Professor, you clearly have very strong and lively views on all

these matters. Could I ask you to turn your mind to the promotion of diversity and whether

you have any suggestions that will be useful to us in this regard?

Mr Beveridge: Better regulation, I am afraid, Baroness Fookes. For me, it is as simple as

that. I talked about Tony Judt. If you go back to the early 1980s, coincidentally at the same

time as Mrs Thatcher and Mr Murdoch were coming to their deal, or allegedly coming to

their deal, Mrs Thatcher went ahead and set up Channel 4. Channel 4 was a fantastic

example of diversity of supply and content and it invigorated the creative industries in the

United Kingdom, including the film industry. I do not see why, if that model worked in the

early 1980s, we are throwing the past out and forgetting the good things that were done in

the 1980s, or indeed in the 1920s, just because this thing called the internet has come along

and everybody says it is going to change everything. Every communication technology was

new at some stage. It disturbed the economic, political, cultural and social balance of power

and states found a way of dealing with it.

The UK in particular gave public service broadcasting to the world. I think we should

continue that kind of model and that is why the public service publisher, or in particular in

my country the Scottish digital network, with a requirement to provide diversity would be

useful. For example, in Scotland we have many people of the Polish diaspora. In fact probably

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more people in Scotland now speak Polish than speak Gaelic. So there is a case, I have

heard, for having programmes in Polish on television in Scotland. Why not have a Scottish

digital network that reflects the diversity of voices in Scotland?

Baroness Fookes: That is one very interesting thought. Do you have any others while we

have you before us?

Q360 The Chairman: Can I follow up about the Channel 4 point? Partly because he was

my MP, partly because he was a friend and partly because I admire him a great deal, in fact

Willie Whitelaw was the creator of Channel 4, was he not?

Mr Beveridge: That is right.

The Chairman: He was a Scotsman.

Mr Beveridge: Yes, the Cumbrian MP, I think.

The Chairman: Yes, that is it. But the point about Channel 4 is it was very cleverly

configured financially in that it is effectively paid for by advertising. I think there is a real

problem for the future because there is a very finite amount of advertising about.

Mr Beveridge: That is why Ofcom were clever to call it a public service publisher and the

Scottish digital network was clever. But, forgive me, Channel 4 ended up subsidising ITV.

The Chairman: Yes, but the point I am making is that if we are going to see more publicly

funded initiatives, do you think taxpayers’ funding is going to pay for it? I cannot quite see

where else it might come from.

Mr Beveridge: I am constitutionally unhappy about top-slicing the BBC licence fee, for a

whole variety of reasons.

Baroness Fookes: Could any money come from Scotland itself?

Mr Beveridge: Certainly for the Scottish digital network, yes, it should come from the

Scottish Government—I am clear about that—which goes back to your earlier point.

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Forgive me, my mother is 83 years-old and she tells me there is nothing on television to

watch and I should tell you people this. So I have now done it, Mum.

The Chairman: I hope you go back and tell her you told us straight.

Mr Beveridge: However, my belief is that, rather like Channel 4, if you funded a Scottish

digital network or a public service publisher initially, like Channel 4, with a requirement to

be different, innovative and all the rest of it, that would add to choice and therefore that

would then be successful by definition. When we got digital television we got more channels,

but I do not believe we have more choice.

Baroness Deech: I agree with you about top-slicing and I agree with your mother.

Mr Beveridge: She will be pleased to hear that, Lady Deech.

Baroness Deech: Just on the Polish question, I have lived through this debate before and

there is an argument to be made as follows. I believe there is an Asian channel and that there

is a Pakistani radio programme somewhere. The argument goes that it is better in the long

term for everyone who is here to learn the language and share so they can discuss things

around the water cooler and so on rather than providing, let us say, a Polish programme.

The argument applies to Scotland, too. You lose that unifying effect. Therefore, what you are

putting forward has huge political implications. You are really saying that Scotland is a

separate nation right now in whatever sense you want to understand that. Maybe that runs

contrary to at least the European movement: we are all one and national boundaries do not

matter and so on. I just wanted to raise that with you. I see an analogy between the Polish

issue and the bigger Scottish one.

Mr Beveridge: I think you make a very powerful point, if I may say so. Having said that,

there are around 60,000 people who speak Gaelic but they get around 300,000, 400,000

people watching the programmes even though they are in a different language. Part of that is

because they are producing quality programmes, for example the one-hour documentary,

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and BBC Alba is a great success story. Citizens of Scotland who happen to be of Polish

ethnicity are also licence fee payers and therefore they deserve something in return for

paying their licence fee. I agree with you that 99% of that should be in English but maybe

some programming, just the odd programme from time to time, in Polish might work, or

something that addresses the concerns of being a Pole in Scotland.

Baroness Deech: I take it it has not been tried yet?

Mr Beveridge: There may have been one or two documentaries of which I am unaware, but

they would have been in English rather than Polish, I think.

Q361 Lord Skelmersdale: On a linked subject, can I rather cheekily ask you in which

languages you teach when you are abroad?

Mr Beveridge: I am extremely lucky that the University of Sassari in Italy provides me with a

translator for my lectures, and at Nottingham University in Ningbo all the lecturing is in

English and the Chinese students are working very hard. They are going to be very

competitive for us in the future. I do not speak Gaelic, although I wish I did.

The Chairman: What about Chinese?

Mr Beveridge: A little, not much.

The Chairman: Ofcom has said it would like to conduct some sort of plurality reviews.

Are there any particular facets of what they should be doing that are particularly important

for Scotland or that you think might not apply if they took a purely anglo-centric view of the

thing?

Mr Beveridge: I do think there needs to be an all-Scotland licence for whichever the licence

holder is. Currently STV has STV North and STV Central. I have concerns about the

provision that is going to be made for viewers in Scotland in the Borders. As I said again in

the paper, one of the things that happened was that I believe that Ofcom and Ofcom

Scotland did not meet the citizen interest. They allowed ITV to get rid of the Border

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Television news programme. I think that was a disservice to viewers in that area and to

citizens both north and south of the border. Ofcom accepted the commercial arguments

that were being made by ITV, which was, “It is a very small audience, lots of sheep in the

Borders, if I can put it that way, not many people watching, and therefore we cannot afford

to put this programming on”. It caused political problems and eventually Ofcom reversed

that decision, and good for Ofcom for reversing that decision.

The Chairman: What you are really saying is that there should be a single Scottish licence

for Channel 3?

Mr Beveridge: Absolutely. There have also been problems between STV and ITV in the

recent past. Hopefully they are now working much more in partnership with each other, but

92% of Scottish Television’s programming comes from south of the border. It does a very

good job, better I think than the BBC, because it has STV Edinburgh and STV Glasgow and

so on. But if ITV decided, for example, just to sever connections with STV, STV would lose

90%-odd of its programming and would just become a small production company. You can

already get ITV London by satellite in Scotland.

The Chairman: You can certainly get it by IPTV.

Mr Beveridge: Yes, that is right. Maybe Ofcom, and indeed this Parliament, might want to

look at the relationship between ITV and STV for the future.

The Chairman: Thank you. We are getting towards the end of our session and we move

on to the last question.

Q362 Bishop of Norwich: You have mentioned the referendum in Scotland on a number

of occasions. In what ways is that affecting the debate in Scotland about the media? You have

given your own opinions about it. Is it creating a much more focused debate about plurality

in the media, ownership of the media in Scotland itself?

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Mr Beveridge: The danger is, of course, that it is becoming party political, as indeed the

BBC charter review might well be in the run up to the charter review because we have the

UK general election in 2015. I have a very great fear about the media and the referendum,

and it goes along the following lines. I think it will be a close vote. My gut feeling is that it will

be no, but the problem then comes afterwards because if the media have not done a

professional enough job in helping us to have an informed electorate, they are going to get

the blame for that result. I do not think that would be good for the BBC or for ITV. I am not

convinced it would be good for the press either, and I do not think it would be good for our

democracy. So I would really want the media to use another Scotsman’s holy trinity: inform,

educate and entertain. Certainly they need to do a better job of informing and educating

than they are doing at the moment. I do not have research evidence to back this up, but I am

clear in my own mind that the press are almost uniformly hostile to Scottish independence

and therefore they are not doing a good job for democracy there either, because people

need to be informed. John McCormick, the electoral commissioner for Scotland, has made

this very point in a report.

Bishop of Norwich: In relation to that, David Elstein, speaking to us, said that a channel

run by Scots, for Scots and funded by Scots is overwhelmingly overdue. Do you agree with

that?

Mr Beveridge: I agree with him 100%. It was very interesting to me to hear David Elstein,

who I do not normally associate with those views, coming out with those views. Having said

that, that would be a Scottish digital network. There is another way of solving it and that is

to give BBC Scotland devolution max/independence.

The Chairman: Were you to do that, do you think that the licence fee should be

differentiated?

Mr Beveridge: You mean a different amount of money?

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The Chairman: The English would pay one amount and the Scots would pay another

amount.

Mr Beveridge: That would be a matter for the people in charge of it, would it not?

The Chairman: It would, but I was wondering what you would do.

Mr Beveridge: We are heading that way in universities, are we not? You differentiate

between the prices you pay for different courses.

The Chairman: No, I am just interested to get an opinion from you.

Mr Beveridge: I do not see an objection in principle to that, but I can see that it would have

political repercussions.

Q363 Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I was very interested to hear in various comments

you made that sounded to me as if you were pro the Leveson recommendations. I know

that Alex Salmond had indicated that he would have accepted them in full from the Scottish

Parliament’s point of view. Has Scotland done anything towards making the Leveson type of

scenario a reality as far as you can see?

Mr Beveridge: The Scottish Government commissioned the McCluskey report. I agree very

strongly with the McCluskey report. It had Ruth Wishart, a serving journalist, on it but it

went much further than Leveson and much further than you are attempting with the royal

charter. Alex Salmond on this occasion, I think, decided that discretion was the better part

of valour, and so unusually they decided to go in with the UK system. I wish the UK system

and this Parliament every success in going down that road, because it is not statutory

regulation. It is independent self-regulation with statutory underpinning. I think the way the

press have been treating you and this Parliament on this issue is nothing short of disgraceful

and a vested interest.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: But you would go the McCluskey route?

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Mr Beveridge: Personally, yes, but I can see the political problems with it. I am a strong

believer in public service broadcasting. I like the culture of balance, accuracy and impartiality

that we have in broadcasting. I wish the press would do the same kind of thing, but I guess

they are probably not going to, so we stay with a mixed economy.

The Chairman: We are drawing to a conclusion but before we finally wrap it up, is there

anything else you would like to say to us that we have not touched on that you think is

important for us to understand about the Scottish scene or you think is important for us to

throw into the debate about what is going on in Scotland?

Mr Beveridge: Thank you, my Lord. I have three points, if I may. First of all, stop bullying the

BBC. It shoots itself in the foot enough. It is a great British success story. This Parliament

should celebrate it and be a critical friend, but please stop doing it down. Secondly, if I may

say this—and I know this is direct—I think you should all have the courage of your

convictions. You are here to represent the public interest, not your own or Rupert

Murdoch’s. This Parliament set up the BBC and Channel 4 so you could do it again.

The Chairman: If I could just stop you there. One thing I do not think anybody on this

Committee sees themselves doing is representing Rupert Murdoch or any other proprietor.

Mr Beveridge: I am delighted to hear that, but I was talking broadly about the Parliament.

The Chairman: I appreciate that.

Mr Beveridge: That is a very important distinction. Thirdly, whatever the result of the

referendum, I think we should all do well to remember that Scotland is a nation, not a region

of the UK, and that it needs media policies and practice that reflect that.

The Chairman: That seems a very good way to conclude. Thank you. That is very helpful. I

know you are shooting off to China shortly.

Mr Beveridge: At 10.30 this evening.

The Chairman: It was very good of you to come to see us. Thank you.

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Mr Beveridge: Thank you very much.