Local and Regional News debate – House of Commons March 19

19 March 2009

Mr Speaker,

I would like to use this debate to highlight my concern at the decision by the Guardian Media Group to announce 150 job losses at the Manchester Evening News and its 22 weekly newspapers, including the extremely successful Stockport Express, which serves my constituency.

The weekly newspapers will continue to exist but their offices will be closed and the papers will all be written and designed at head office in Manchester by a remote "pool" of journalists.

This development chimes in with an unwelcome national trend towards centralisation of services and people. Sixty local newspapers out of 1,300 closed last year, according to the Newspaper Society.

I do not want our weekly newspapers in the Manchester area to end up suffering the same fate.

Local newspapers, like the Stockport Express which has been going since 1889, play an absolutely essential role at the heart of their communities. This is because they are written by journalists who are constantly out and about and know the local area and its people well.

Local newspapers strengthen democracy and community life and hold local government and other organisations to account. They also provide a forum for individuals and organisations to speak to each other.

Unlike many other newspapers, locally and nationally, the Stockport Express is bucking the national trend and is gaining new readers all the time.

The Stockport Express is the only paper in the North West to have increased its sales. The latest ABC figures show the circulation has risen by 1 per cent – while every other title was down, in most cases by more than 5 per cent.

In fact the Stockport Express was one of only 25 paid-for weekly papers in the whole of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to have seen an increase in sales.

So it is very sad, that instead of building on such a great success story, the Stockport Express is about to be weakened by having no editorial presence in the town.

The rise in sales of the Stockport Express, under the able editorship of Mandy Leigh, has been accomplished by the paper's reputation as a trusted, honest and open community newspaper.

The paper is successful because it is very grassroots. It understands the community and gives it what it wants, which will not happen if the editorial staff are all based in Manchester.

The Express has six very popular district pages devoted to small areas of the town. These are the pages that readers often turn to first and people tell me that it feels like they know exactly what is happening down their actual road. Each small area has its own dedicated reporter.

The paper also runs hard hitting campaigns, like the one to save Stockport's only theatre, the Plaza, which is now going from strength to strength. It has exposed countless stories of wrong doing and has good sports pages, which are often devoted to coverage of Stockport County, our local football team. Readers have been avidly following the financial ups and downs of the team, as well as its success in the league. Each week there is another episode in this long running saga.

The paper provides a vital voice for the "man or woman in the street". People feel that they can turn to it if they have an issue or problem to air. So if they unhappy with the care an elderly relative has received they feel comfortable picking up the phone. They feel confident the local paper will give them a fair hearing and not willingly misrepresent them.

Highlighting individual cases also brings to the attention of policy makers, both local and national, wider cases of injustice and this can help to bring about change.

I remember one such incident which began with a Stockport Express story about the neighbour's complaints about noise and anti-social behaviour from a small children's home. It transpired that there was no need for such homes to be legally registered and so after a successful campaign, legislation was introduced in 2000 to require small children's homes to register, which allowed for bettering monitoring.

I can think of many such examples over the years which illustrate the important part that local newspapers play in the democratic process of bringing about change.

Research shows that people trust their local papers far more than the national ones to tell the truth. An impressive 82 per cent of UK adults still read local newspapers, a level of penetration matched by no other medium except television. This is despite the economic downturn and a drop in advertising.

The Stockport Express, has, over the years, been a prolific winner of awards and was the last holder of the Guardian Media Group best paid for weekly award and is the current How-Do Weekly newspaper of the year. Several of the journalists, including the chief reporter Peter Devine, and photographers have won national awards.

If the Guardian Media Group proposals for 150 job cuts go ahead and the Stockport Express is produced in Manchester then face to face contact with the town will be lost. There will be no on the spot journalists – and the paper will, like the other Manchester weeklies, be produced remotely.

The upshot will be that the bond between paper and town will be loosened, which can only damage the future prospects of the paper.

When I gave my maiden speech in the House of Commons in May 1992 I praised our good local press, which then comprised of six papers. Since then all the papers have closed – apart from the Stockport Express and its sister free sheet the Stockport Times.

It is ironic, that the Guardian began in Manchester as a successful, independent, community newspaper and yet the Guardian Media Group plans to take this drastic centralising action.

CP Scott, the Guardian's most famous founding father, said in 1921, that a newspaper was "much more than a business". It had a "moral as well as a material existence. " He said it "reflects and influences the life of a whole community". The same still holds true today.

I would urge the Guardian Media Group to think again about its proposed cuts and not to rush into weakening its valuable and irreplaceable local weekly newspapers.

Local newspapers provide a documented record of our social history that cannot be replaced by social networking sites and the internet.

Local newspapers are a record for generations to come and to lose one would be like a town losing its collective memory.