Examination of Witness (Questions 1020-1035)
Tuesday 4 March 2003
MR IVOR
ROWLANDS, MR
ISAAC IDUN
AND MR
BRIAN CLARKE
Q1020 Mr Bryant: So their response
is just nonsense?
Mr Idun: It is just totally incorrect,
the whole article is incorrect. It is probably not the right place
to go into details, but there were mistakes in the case, no doubt
about that. It warranted an article, not of those sort of proportions,
but when they criticise things they do not even take into account
the victims of crime, who sit there and read these articles. That
lady whose baby apparently had acid thrown at her, they did not
take into account her feelings or my feelings. It is just such
a shame that sometimes the press are in such a position to help
us professionally—and they do, every day, help us to solve
cases, I have briefed the press on numerous occasions about crimes
that we are investigating—that for the lack of a thorough
investigation—the same thing that they are accusing me of—they
have caused so much damage.
Q1021 Mr Bryant: They might, I suppose,
say that you are a police officer and so you are not a private
individual. Certainly, in your capacity as a police officer you
not are a private individual, you are a public figure.
Mr Idun: They might well do. Then
I will relate that to my colleagues and they will probably resign
en masse, because we do not join the job—any more than nurses
or doctors do—as public employees, so that if a problem
takes place we can be thrown into the limelight and the lions'
den. That is not why we join the job. We joined the job because
we honestly do want to do good, we want to help other people.
The feedback after that was this was a political thing, they wanted
to attack the Government and it was all on law and order. They
wanted to show bungles in the police, bungles in the CPS, bungles
in the system, and it was just unfortunate, on that particular
day, I was the right person.
Q1022 Mr Bryant: What seems to happen
is that we were told by Paul Dacre of The Daily Mail last
week, that even he is up for election every day that people either
pay 40p for his newspaper, or they do not pay for his newspaper,
and if he does not make his newspaper interesting, then he will
lose it. Most of us would argue, "Yes, but in the process
you seem to chew people up and spit them out the other end, and
human beings' lives are the raw material on which you make your
living."
Mr Idun: Yes, that is absolutely
right. Funnily enough, The Daily Mail linked to The
Standard refused to print the story the next day.
Q1023 Chairman: In addition, obviously
a police officer operates to a very considerable degree in public,
and you might well be regarded as a public figure, but everybody
around this table would agree that even a public figure has got
the right not to be traduced.
Mr Idun: Yes, definitely.
Mr Bryant: Indeed. I am just wondering
if I can, therefore, get it in under our media privacy and preventive
net. The issue of privacy is what we are looking at, but there
is also the issue of when something which is just untrue is printed,
which then has an impact on your private life and on the private
life of your family, that is an intrusion.
Q1024 Chairman: And his professional
life, too.
Mr Idun: Yes. That is the most
important thing because, at the end of the day, in my private
life I am surrounded by people and colleagues who know me and
they know this article was rubbish. The problem is that when I
go and stand in front of David Pannick, or any defence counsel,
and he is questioning me about a serious case he says: "officer,
have you ever caused any problems with a case before?" and
they do this, they bring out these little articles, and we lose
cases on the strength of them, not because they are true, but
because if we can be tainted, then it has the desired effect.
That is why really, as I said, the job is, as far as I am concerned,
possibly not or probably not the right job for me.
Q1025 Mr Bryant: Can I ask a different
question, and I am asking you to comment on others, rather than
yourself. It seems to be quite common that members of the police
will ring up newspapers to give them details when a public figure
has become the victim of crime, not the perpetrator of a crime,
and the newspapers will cover it—this happens to various
MPs as well—when the person has not committed a crime at
all. Is that common in the Metropolitan Police?
Mr Idun: If I knew anybody who
had done it, I would have no trouble in shopping them, no trouble.
That is why they are always named as "police sources",
because they slip information to the press—it does not matter
whether it is true or not—and that is wrong. We have a press
office that we go through. There is a very good way of doing things.
It does happen, it has happened in my cases before, and it is
one to be condemned.
Q1024 Mr Bryan: They get paid for
it, presumably, do they?
Mr Idun: I should imagine that
they do it for the particular reason of payments. I would like
to see, particularly in cases where the "police source( is
not named, there should be some forum where they can be named
later.
Q1027 Mr Doran: Just following on
that last point, it is more by way of a statement by me. A very
close friend of mine, who was also a public figure, his son died
from a heroin overdose, and prison records, medical records, housing
records and police records were all sold to the press and we were
able to prove that. It is an appalling situation and I do not
want anyone to think it is just the police, it happens everywhere.
All the stories that you tell are remarkable and depressing, but
at the same time they are not unusual. That, I suppose, is the
saddest thing about what we are hearing today, because every day
there are people in the same position as you, your colleagues
and institutions are in. Just listening to the evidence and having
read through the submissions, there are a number of common threads;
you are all public servants in one shape or another. Professor
Southall clearly comes into that category. There seems to be a
lack of ethics in the way in which the press approach the job
and a lack of, what we would all call, professional standards.
One thing that does worry me though, it is a little bit away from
our own inquiry, but I think it is relevant, given that you are
all—and Professor Southall is a public figure in some respects—part
of a public service, there seems an appalling lack of support
from your superiors. Just listening to your situation and reading
the report that you have submitted, Mr Idun, for example, it is
arguable that your superiors made the situation worse for you,
because their immediate response was discipline. Professor Southall's
report, the newspaper headline you are holding up, Mr Rowlands,
the hook that that story is hung on, is the inquiry.
Mr Rowlands: Yes, the inquiry.
Professor Southall was actually suspended by the Trust because
of the complaints. As you may know—and it is possibly an
indirect aspect of your deliberations—the National Audit
Office is actually looking at the moment into the way in which
suspensions are used by the National Health Service. With regard
to the suspension of these two doctors, I have their reinstatement
statements here if you would like to know more.
Q1028 Mr Doran: I do not want to
go into too much detail about individual cases.
Mr Rowlands: The point I am making
is that according to their reinstatement statements both doctors—Dr
Samuels and Professor Southall—it was not merely that they
were not found guilty, but they had no case to answer. The complaints
were without any basis whatsoever. Their statements went back
to emphasise that they had both been very good doctors with the
best interests of children at heart. Now, you do not get that
sort of add-on to a public statement.
Q1029 Mr Doran: In the meantime,
in the press, I am probably back to the comment adopted of: "You
appear guilty until proved innocent".
Mr Rowlands: Right. The point
is they had been suspended for about two years at a cost of, they
say, £750,000 to the Exchequer, but if you add on the indirect
costs, the estimates are that it has probably cost about £2.5
million, for no purpose whatever.
Q1030 Mr Doran: Okay. I will move
on. It is important for us to know the extent of the cost to individuals
in the public sector who, you feel, are easy targets effectively.
It is quite clear from everything that all three of you have said—although
you were a little bit more complimentary to the Press Complaints
Commission, Mr Idun—that you are very concerned about the
effectiveness, about the delay and the lack of remedy, I suppose.
We have heard lots of other complaints about various deficiencies
in the Press Complaints Commission. One of the things that is
clear to us, as politicians—and my colleague, Derek Wyatt,
mentioned this—is it is very unlikely that any Government
in this country, certainly if recommended, is likely to pass a
Privacy Statute. The last Government looked at it and would not
do it, and it is very unlikely that this Government will. So if
we are going to change the system I would be interested to hear
what you three with your individual experiences can tell us. Do
you see a remedy in, for example, a beefed-up, hardened-up Press
Complaints Commission or do you think that the PCC is not part
of the solution? If, for example, it could deal with things quickly,
if it were prepared to investigate, if it could impose fines and
impose proper sanctions on newspapers, would that improve the
situation or do you think we need to look somewhere else completely?
Mr Rowlands: I think you have
got to get rid of the editors on the Commission as judges. They
can be there as advisers surely but in the evidence I have likened
the present Commission to a situation where if somebody who is
had up before them is a secondhand car dealer he finds he is in
front of a jury of 15, seven of whom are his mates. I just do
not know of any tribunal that is composed in such a way. It is
just bordering on the absurd really.
Q1031 Mr Doran: Mr Clarke?
Mr Clarke: I suppose greater rigidity
putting the process into a more clearly defined box with time
schedules, with penalties, with fines could work but I cannot
see quite what that formula would be. Maybe it is a menu of issues
and if you are in breach of this one—who would be the judge?
We keep getting back to quis custodiet all the time. Maybe
one could put in some sort of guardians above the process who
are genuinely independent.
Q1032 Mr Doran: Do you see that as
a job for the state or do you see independence as being important?
Mr Clarke: I think independence
is very important but for so long we have been saying this and
for so long the problems have continued and my experience of it,
very limited though it is, is still there is a sort of smugness
and an arrogance and a "we are untouchable" sort of
feel about it. So it is a job for the state I suppose is the answer.
Mr Idun: I think I am more tolerant
because I am used to working within a court system where it can
take a year or two years to bring somebody from arrest all the
way down to final prosecution. I think that is why I am more tolerant.
I always see gradual improvement in any organisation as better
than a knee-jerk reaction and sudden new powers. I think the PCC
should be and can be improved along the lines of what I said earlier,
giving them more teeth, more power to act. You do not get results
unless you are really scared and the editors of newspapers are
not bothered too much about the PCC because there is nothing that
they have got that can scare them. If you gradually improve it
by them having more things—the power to fine immediately,
the power to enforce a right of reply and things like that—then
I think that could probably work and it may be the job of the
Government to ensure that they take on those sorts of powers.
Q1033 Alan Keen: You have answered
some of the points I was going to ask about. Just following on,
if we were going to keep the PCC, surely it needs somebody who
is going to be antagonistic towards the press? The Chairman should
be a barrister or somebody who is going to investigate properly
and you can see a need for lay people on it to get an overall
feeling for what is right and what is wrong. Have any of you built
up a picture of how the PCC operates, for instance, and how the
lay people operate? You said it was like a dining club.
Mr Clarke: Yes, that may be misinformed
but that is the impression I get—that it is too cosy, too
confident, too familiar and there is not enough of that creative
tension that stimulates people looking to what they are doing
to make sure it is right.
Q1034 Alan Keen: Have you two built
up a picture of what happens?
Mr Rowlands: Some of the judgments,
for example, this one which I think seems very plain to me, the
fact their decision was that they could not judge a publication
until some inquiry, which might happen some time, issues its report,
which may or may not be issued some time in the future is just
legally perverse. If I had had the means of going to judicial
review a court would have thrown that out. You cannot possibly
judge a publication other than by the information available on
the day on which it is published and to maintain anything else
is just idiotic.
Mr Idun: My knowledge of the PCC
is very limited, not through a lack of wanting to know about them
but simply because they were the only forum that I had so whatever
system was in place was the one that I was going to have to work
within. As I moved higher and higher up the level of things that
could be done for me, the Commission was that big thing in the
sky that I hoped we would never have to reach but if we did I
would prepare myself when I got there, but it was never going
to come, was it?
Q1035 Alan Keen: It is an illusion?
Mr Idun: You get to the top of
the steps, you are looking around, and "it" is not there.
Chairman: I am very grateful and the whole Committee
is very grateful to you for coming here today and one thing I
would reflect on as I have been listening to you is that here
you are, three highly articulate people who have encountered frustration
and worse in this situation, but what happens if you are not articulate
and you are still placed in a comparable position? That is one
of the things this Committee will have to consider. Thank you
very much indeed for taking the trouble to come here.
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