Tories to strip Ofcom of responsibilities and abolish ownership rules

The Conservative party plans to abolish local cross-media ownership rules and take away Ofcom’s policy-making responsibilities if they win at the next election.

Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, said the media industry is in crisis as a result of “heavy-handed regulation”, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph.

“It is why no major international players have come forward to buy ITV and major US networks are not interested in investing in Britain,” he said.

“They are driven away by the top-down, paternalistic regulations which are strangling our creative media industries. We will strip away the regulations.”

If the Tories get in, they plan to change the media regulator Ofcom’s role to simply focus on areas such as “decency, impartiality and taste”.

Hunt also said the party is considering “freezing the [BBC’s] licence fee, or cutting it” if they win the next election.