Monopolies and Mergers Commission (Membership of Groups for Newspaper Merger References) Order 1982 (Hansard, 22 December 1982)

§ Lord Lyell

My Lords, I beg to move that the Monopolies and Mergers Commission Order, the draft of which we have before us, be approved. Your 1082 Lordships will be interested to know that we hope that this order will improve the workings of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in the case of newspaper mergers, by making two quite small changes in the content of the group which carries out the inquiry.

I hope that I may briefly explain the present position. I see the noble Lord waiting to spring to his feet, but I shall not be very long and we must wait to hear his expertise. Your Lordships will be aware that newspaper mergers involve similar economic issues as in general mergers, but they also involve some special issues—for example, expression of opinion and, above all, the accuracy of reporting. For this reason special arrangements were set out in the Fair Trading Act 1973. The group of members investigating a newspaper merger may have its members—I stress "may"—drawn from two different sources in order to cover the different issues which have to be examined: regular commission members selected by the chairman of the commission and a number of additional members, who may be appointed by the Secretary of State and are drawn from a special merger newspaper panel. The present position is that at least five members must come from the commission and three, four or five additional members may come from the newspaper panel. In practical terms this leads to a fairly large and what we regard as a somewhat unwieldy group of at least eight members.

The order that we have before us today makes two changes. First, while leaving the total number of the group at a minimum of five, it would allow the five members to be made up of a combination of regular and special members. The second small change that the order makes is to allow the number of special members appointed to be one, two or three instead of the three, four or five as at present. The combined effect of these two changes is that the overall minimum for a newspaper merger inquiry is reduced to the same number as that for other merger references, and that is a minimum of five. It can contain a combination of regular and additional members as would seem appropriate. There is no doubt that this more flexible arrangement will help the commission to execute its task more effectively without in any way altering the principles which govern the investigation of newspaper mergers. With that brief explanation I commend the order to your Lordships' House. My Lords, I beg to move.

§ Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede

My Lords, I rise briefly to thank the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, for explaining this order. The noble Lord did not appear to mention that the order had been considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and in its fourth report had no comment to make on this particular order. As the noble Lord so eloquently explained, the purpose of the order is to vary whether the members of a merger panel are regular or additional members. It allows more flexibililty in the composition of the panel and reduces in total the number of members of the panel to five, but it does not alter any principle relating to the consideration of 1083 mergers in the newspaper industry. Therefore, this is an order to which we do not object.