News - World: The Guardian newspaper reported that British Members of Parliament (MPs) have attacked the proposed UAE-backed takeover of the Telegraph newspapers, warning that it is impossible to “separate sheikh and state” and calling for further investigations to be launched before the deal “turns into a disaster for the government”.

The newspaper mentioned that Julia Lopez, the UK Minister for Media, was grilled in the Commons after the submission of an urgent question raising concerns over the Barclay family’s complex deal to transfer control of the Telegraph and the Spectator to RedBird IMI.

It pointed out that RedBird IMI derives most of its funding from Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the vice-president of the UAE and owner of Manchester City football club, and is paying the £1.16bn in debts that the Barclay family owed to Lloyds bank with the intention of swiftly converting the loans to full ownership.

Foreign State Takeover

“The concern is not foreign ownership, it is foreign state ownership,” said Alicia Kearns, the Conservative MP for Rutland and Melton, expressing concerns about editorial influence at the titles. “You cannot separate sheikh and state.”

Kearns said newspaper assets did not fall under one of the 17 sectors listed in the National Security & Investment Act (NSIA) that allows the government to investigate and potentially block deals relating to nationally important British assets.

However, she said the government’s move last week to exercise the act to investigate the proposed merger of Three UK and Vodafone UK, due to the UAE-backed Emirates Telecom owning a stake in Vodafone, set a precedent for intervention in the Telegraph deal.

John Nicolson, a Scottish National Party MP and member of the cross-party culture, media and sport committee, warned of the prospect of the Telegraph becoming a “loss-making PR arm of a foreign state with access to our daily news cycle”. “That is unhealthy in principle for our democracy,” he said.

Lopez said that while she agreed as “a principle [that] I would be concerned about government ownership [of any media asset]”, she could not give specific comment on the Telegraph deal and risk prejudicing the process being run by the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer.

“If I should say anything in this chamber that prejudices this process, that would be regrettable,” she said.

According to The Guardian, several MPs, including Iain Duncan Smith, renewed calls for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to launch a third investigation into the deal looking at the structure of the debt deal that underpins it.