Category: Public Affairs

Neil Gray MSP is the Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development at Holyrood, and this meeting follows a conversation between the PPA and Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Culture Angus Robertson MSP last year. Gray undertook a degree in politics and journalism, and was a producer and reporter with BBC Radio Orkney from 2003 until 2008. The SNP politician represented the Airdrie and Shotts constituency in Westminster until 2021, before being elected to the Scottish parliament in that same year.

The PPA emphasised the key role that the specialist publishing sector plays in informing and entertaining the Scottish people with highly trusted content, created by journalists that are experts in their specialist fields. As the digitalisation of media allows citizens to seek out ever more focused sources of information online, the trusted content produced by PPA Scotland members has never been more important.

The PPA also voiced concerns that specialist publishing, sitting as it does at the confluence of the creative industries and press and media sectors, can sometimes be overlooked in the policy-making process. This makes the need for focused sector support all the more urgent, particularly as rising print and paper costs and pressing skills shortages continue to present serious challenges for publishers.

Going forwards, PPA Scotland is committed to engaging in the policy making process as the Scottish Government sets out its plans for independence, as well as building a stronger dialogue with more regular engagement with Holyrood. This will ensure that PPA Scotland member’s voices are heard, and our sector recognised as a key cultural and journalistic asset which underpins Scotland’s global reputation.

Royal Mail states that it was “well-developed contingency plans” but cautions that they cannot completely replace frontline workers, adding that customers should expect significant disruption. With the exception of Special Delivery, Royal Mail will not be delivering letters on strike days.

With the CWU warning that deliveries and collections will be shut down in large parts of the UK, Royal Mail has admitted that the four days of strike action will cause the company to make a loss in the current financial year.

The CWU has stated that Royal Mail’s offer of a 5.5% pay increase only amounts to a 2% increase due to inflation. Royal Mail believes that significant operational change is required to make the business sustainable in the long term

In a statement provided to the PPA, Royal Mail said: “After more than three months of talks, the CWU have failed to engage in any meaningful discussion on the changes we need to modernise, or to come up with alternative ideas. The CWU rejected our offer worth up to 5.5% for CWU grade colleagues, the biggest increase we have offered for many years. In a business that is currently losing £1 million pounds a day, we can only fund this offer by agreeing the changes that will pay for it.

“We are ready to talk further with CWU to try and avert damaging industrial action but, as we have consistently said, it must be about both change and pay. We have contingency plans in place and will be working hard to minimise disruption and get our services back to normal as soon as we can to keep people, businesses and the country connected.”

The PPA will meet with Royal Mail this week to discuss how the impact of industrial action on our members can be mitigated and minimised, and better understand Royal Mail’s preparation for the strike. We will impress upon Royal Mail the serious impact that the strike action will have on members’ subscriptions businesses, and the urgent need for the dispute with the CWU to be remedied as swiftly as possible.

The DMU requires statutory powers to introduce new anti-competition regulation for tech giants such as Google and Meta. The new regime will create benefits across UK’s digital economy, with potential benefits for publishers including a fairer digital advertising market.

Following an open letter from the PPA and a coalition of media industry organisations, including the News Media Association (NMA), BBC, and ITN, the Government committed in May’s Queen’s Speech to bring forward draft legislation, but without a timetable for implementation.

Last week, Sunak promised to table DMU legislation, saying publishers deserved ‘fair terms’ in negotiations with large platforms. This commitment was matched by Liz Truss, who told the Eastern Daily Press: “I will keep those commitments”.

The PPA is pleased to see both candidates for Conservative leader recognise the urgent need for fair competition in digital markets, and the need for Government to support publisher sustainability. Crucially, the commitment to bring forward legislation expeditiously will reduce the chance that the UK will fall behind other jurisdictions.

As well as pushing for the regime to become operational as soon as possible, the PPA also continues its work to ensure that the detail of the regulation will be effective in rebalancing the relationship between large platforms and publishers.

In a City AM article, recognising the huge benefits of the regime for businesses and consumers across the UK, Mordaunt wrote: “This will help ensure fair dealing for smaller businesses that have to use services like Google, Amazon and Facebook to reach their customers. It will also create benefits for users by allowing greater choice of how and where they access different services. Improved competition can also reduce prices for consumers.”

Mourdant, who is facing stiff competition from Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to be the UK’s next Prime Minister, also promised to create a news bargaining code along the lines of what has been introduced in Australia. Such a code would mean that major platforms would be required to “reach a deal with news publishers to compensate them for their content being freely distributed across those services”. Should agreements not be reached, they would be settled through independent arbitration.

If given the keys to Number 10, the MP also stated she would create a a single Digital Department that would bring together teams that work across government on issues like online safety, digital competition, cyber security and data privacy. Mordaunt has also committed to supporting the Online Safety Bill.

The PPA welcomes this commitment to bringing forward the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill, and will be monitoring future hustings debates to better understand candidates’ positions on digital competition.

The Committee did not come out with a clear alternative to the BBC licence fee, but it noted that the binary argument around its continuation should be broadened.

The committee was also clear that the licence fee is viewed as regressive, but its use will continue, at least for now, as it is regarded as the 'best worst' option. However, an alternative funding mechanism is viewed as being necessary in the long term.

It also notes that using it to raise funds to the level the BBC requires would ‘hit the poorest hardest’.

The report rules out substituting the licence fee entirely for an advertising-funded model as this would provide insufficient income whilst decimating the revenues of other public service broadcasters.

The committee states that a full subscription-based model would likewise deliver inadequate revenues and face technical hurdles and accessibility barriers. Furthermore, a Government grant would risk undermining editorial independence and is explicitly not recommended by the committee.

The report notes that some form of public funding is required for the BBC. Potential alternatives explored by the committee include:

1. A universal household levy linked to council tax

2. A ring-fenced income tax

3. Reforming the current licence fee for low-income households

The committee also called for the BBC to publish a ‘bold new vision’ which will outline a strategic purpose that will allow it to navigate the challenges presented and contain costed options for future funding mechanisms, along with their impacts.

The PPA is currently in the process of feeding into the BBC Mid-Term Charter Review, and will actively engage in the debate around BBC funding to ensure that any licence fee alternatives that are adopted will not adversely impact the revenues of commercial publishers.

The review found that these safeguards continue to be the best way to protect people and businesses that use the universal service.

In its statement, which cited PPA evidence several times, Ofcom disagreed with suggestions from the PPA and others that price caps and binding efficiency targets should be introduced. Ofcom argued that as competition increases and the postal market continues to evolve, Royal Mail should have the commercial flexibility to deliver efficiency improvements and modernise its operations.

However, the regulator has strengthened its monitoring requirements (a proposal the PPA welcomed) to gain a deeper understanding of the financial sustainability and efficiency of the universal service. Ofcom states that its new framework provides a stable regulatory environment, and ensures that Royal Mail competes on a level playing field, allowing competition to drive benefits to postal users.

The PPA was pleased to see that, in her response to the consultation, Helen Hayes MP raised the issue of poor quality of service experienced by Mark Allen Group, a publisher in her constituency. As Hayes noted, significant subscription cancellations often correspond with unreliable postal delivery services.

The PPA will continue to engage with Ofcom as it develops its plans to strengthen monitoring requirements for Royal Mail.

It was expected that the Bill, which imposes a legal duty on online platforms to keep users safe, would finish its passage through the House of Commons on July 20 before going to the House of Lords.

However, the Bill will now not be allotted parliamentary time until September 6 at the earliest, which is the day after the UK parliament returns from recess. This has given rise to speculation that the Bill could be heavily amended or even scrapped entirely, with leadership candidates voicing concerns about the legislation.

Meanwhile, Damian Collins MP, the new Minister responsible for the Bill, reaffirmed the Government’s current position that specialist publications would not get the protections offered to general news publishers.

In response to a question from Press Gazette, the Minister said: “It is news providers, rather than specialist journals or magazines, that are within scope. We considered this during the joint committee on the bill actually, this matter has been discussed quite a lot.

“I think there needs to be a reasonably tight definition of what a news provider is in this case otherwise I think it could be extremely broad”.

This is an interesting development, given that the Joint Committee which scrutinised the Draft Bill, and which was chaired by Collins, specifically recommended that the Bill be amended to protect specialist publications.

The PPA looks forward to working with the new Minister and peers in the Lords to ensure that the landmark Bill will not restrict the UK public’s access to all forms of trusted, independently regulated journalism.

It was expected that the Bill, which imposes a legal duty on online platforms to keep users safe, would finish its passage through the House of Commons on July 20 before going to the House of Lords.

However, the Bill will now not be allotted parliamentary time until September 6 at the earliest, which is the day after the UK parliament returns from recess. This has given rise to speculation that the Bill could be heavily amended or even scrapped entirely, with leadership candidates voicing concerns about the legislation.

Meanwhile, Damian Collins MP, the new Minister responsible for the Bill, reaffirmed the Government’s current position that specialist publications would not get the protections offered to general news publishers.

In response to a question from Press Gazette, the Minister said: “It is news providers, rather than specialist journals or magazines, that are within scope. We considered this during the joint committee on the bill actually, this matter has been discussed quite a lot.

“I think there needs to be a reasonably tight definition of what a news provider is in this case otherwise I think it could be extremely broad”.

This is an interesting development, given that the Joint Committee which scrutinised the Draft Bill, and which was chaired by Collins, specifically recommended that the Bill be amended to protect specialist publications.

The PPA looks forward to working with the new Minister and peers in the Lords to ensure that the landmark Bill will not restrict the UK public’s access to all forms of trusted, independently regulated journalism.

In a worrying move, this will allow for the free commercial use of content for the purposes of TDM, without an option for publishers to opt-out – as there is in the EU.

TDM means using computational techniques to analyse large amounts of information to identify patterns, trends and other useful information. TDM is used for training AI systems, amongst other uses. It also has uses in research, journalism, marketing, business analytics and by cultural heritage organisations.

PPA has argued that a greater promotion of existing licencing structures is the right course of action to encourage AI innovation. A full exception could encourage global companies to take advantage of the investments that UK publishers make in content at no cost, whilst reaping the commercial benefits. Further, no evidence was presented to Government consultation indicating that the licensing structures currently in place are acting as a barrier to innovation.

The Government states that publishers will be able to control and charge for access of their content, yet publishers will not be able to make additional charges for the ability to mine them. There is also a danger that organisations engaging in TDM will regard the exception as overriding the contextual protection normally required to access content.

PPA is working with allied organisations across the creative industries to make the case that existing licences provide fair and reasonable contractual protections for publishers. We will encourage the Government to work with rightsholders to promote the benefits and ease of application of the licensing structures, rather than making a change which could curtail investment in high quality content.

The proposals will be put into a Data Reform Bill, which is expected in the current parliamentary session. Here, PPA asks and answers the key questions about what the post-Brexit changes will mean for publishers:

What will it mean for the GDPR accountability regime?

The Government is proposing to replace the GDPR accountability regime with ‘privacy management programmes’ (PMPs), promising that organisations that are currently complaint with the UK GDPR will not need to ‘significantly change’ their approach if they do not wish to take advantage of the new regime’s additional flexibility.

The requirement for a data protection officer (DPOs) will be removed, with businesses having to appoint a designated senior individual overseeing the PMP. Organisations who wish to retain their DPO will be able to do so, as long as there is oversight from the senior individual.

Mandatory data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) and records of processing activities (ROPAs) will be removed. Businesses will continue to have to identify and manage risks, and document their processing, but in a proportionate manner. The government believes that this will give SMEs more flexibility.

What will it mean for cookie banners?

The Government intends to remove the need for websites to display cookie banners to UK residents. In the short term, businesses will be allowed to place cookies on a user’s device without explicit consent, but only for a small number of non-intrusive purposes.

In the future, the Government intends to move to an opt-out model of cookie consent. This means that cookies could be set without consent, but the website must give the user clear information about how to opt out.

Will the Government’s plans impact the data adequacy decision with the EU?

There have been fears that some of the Government’s proposals, particularly those which could result in an erosion of the ICO’s (the UK’s data protection regulator), could put the UK’s data adequacy agreement with the EU in jeopardy. The government believes it is perfectly possible and reasonable to expect the UK to maintain EU adequacy as it designs a future regime.

What happens next?

The Government is currently drafting the Data Reform Bill that will put these proposals in the law. PPA will be monitoring the development of the legislation closely to ensure that it does not result in unnecessary burdens for publishers, and ensure that the data adequacy agreement with the EU is retained.