TUESDAY 8 APRIL 2003

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Members present:

Rt Hon Gerald Kaufman, in the Chair
Mr Chris Bryant
Mr Frank Doran
Michael Fabricant
Mr Adrian Flook
Alan Keen
Rosemary McKenna
Ms Debra Shipley
John Thurso
Derek Wyatt

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Memoranda submitted by Manchester Evening News, Daily Record, Newspaper Society, Celtic Newspapers, Belfast Telegraph

and Wakefield Express/Yorkshire Weekly Newspaper Group

Examination of Witnesses

MR PAUL HORROCKS, Editor Manchester Evening News and member of the PCC, MR PETER COX, Editor of the Daily Record, MR DAVID NEWELL, Director of the Newspaper Society, MR PETER LONG, Editor-in-Chief of Celtic Newspapers, MR EDMUND CURRAN, Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and member of the PCC, and MR ED ASQUITH, Editor/Editorial Director of the Wakefield Express/Yorkshire Weekly Newspaper Group, examined.

Chairman: Good afternoon. I will call on Michael Fabricant to start the questions.

Michael Fabricant

The general perception that I have had in the past is that regional and local newspapers tend to be more responsible than the national papers, or at least some national papers, when it comes to issues of privacy and good taste. By the way, I do not know who is going to answer this question, but I note that publications in England and Scotland received 36 per cent of all the complaints to the Press Complaints Commission, that was back in 2002, and 50 per cent of those complaints related to privacy issues. Why do you think that is such a high proportion compared to the total number of complains received?

(Mr Horrocks) I also looked at those statistics. The first thing that you have to remember is that there is a perception that people complain about privacy; that may be celebrity led. I receive a number of complaints from ordinary members of the public but more often than not they are to do with issues that we are perfectly entitled to report but just happen to upset them, if they have been involved in court cases, if their names and addresses have been given at inquests, generally in official body proceedings. I think the reason for it might be that the regional and local press obviously have a greater breadth.

(Mr Newell) May I make the point that of course the regional and local newspaper sector is a very large one; there are 13,000 titles, which are read by 80 per cent of the population. Our readership reaches greater than the national newspaper sector. It should not be all that surprising, given the editorial independence exercised by those titles, that there is a certain number of complaints. I would go on to make the point that these local newspapers are reporting on the lives of real people on a daily basis. When those real people do come up against the courts or traffic accidents, there is always a tension line between the right to privacy, the right to freedom of expression, and also the public interest in having court processes held in open session. When that happens, some people will complain about the system. What I am pleased about in terms of today= s session is that you do have before you a range of editors from different types of titles. I do hope that you will look at the whole of the newspaper industry in all its varieties. I know that I have written on behalf of the industry to the Committee to make the point that the amount of time you appear to have given for oral evidence from national newspapers is significantly greater than the 45 minutes you are giving to our sector.

With the greatest respect, if you keep on talking, there will be no time at all to consult the editors.

(Mr Newell) I conclude my remarks, so that others can speak. I hope you understand the point I make.

I do. How do you characterise the difference between local newspapers and national newspapers in their attitudes toward protection of the privacy of an individual?

(Mr Long) The point has already been made to some extent that we live very close to the people who read our newspapers, and that imposes a very strict discipline on us. We cannot come in and go away. We are there, we are answerable every week, if you like. I think that discipline is one that has shaped the regional newspapers. It has made us the creatures we are. I think we are very responsible.

Derek Wyatt

Do you have a view on what Simon Kelner said, that you would like a back-stop power? Do you support that or are you against it for the PCC?

(Mr Horrocks) I am a newly-appointed member of the PCC. I have been mightily impressed by the robust nature of all the inquiries that I have seen made. When I joined, I wondered what the relationship would be like between the editors and the lay members. I did have some concerns and wondered whether or not the editors would be able to exert undue influence. That has turned out definitely not to be the cases. The lay members definitely take the lead. I feel that it is a very robust system and that were an ombudsman or a back-stop, call it what you will, to be appointed, I think it would be unnecessary. I think that 16 members of the PCC considering, researching and debating individual complaints is the right format.

(Mr Curran) Simon Kelner is a colleague of mine in the sense that I am associated with Independent News and Media and on this issue I too beg to differ with him a bit on this. I understand where he is coming from and I can see why. When people want to try and make the Press Complaints Commission even more effective, I think we should all have an open mind as to how we should go about doing that. From my own personal perspective as a member of it, I am not one of the big battalions there B Associated Newspaper, News International or Trinity Mirror for that matter. I am a member of Independent News and Media which I suspect would not be perceived as being one of the big battalions. Therefore, I tend to feel very independent. I know that Paul Dacre, for example, has given evidence here. To me, Paul Dacre is another editor. I do not feel intimidated by him or by any national newspaper editor. I am not a national newspaper editor myself; I am not associated with their groups. Therefore I feel that all I have to do when I go to the PCC is apply my own criteria; i.e. would I do what they have done in respect, for example, of something that they have been involved in on a complaint? I make my judgement on that basis. As far as the lay members are concerned, if I had one criticism, it might be that perhaps there are too many grandees amongst us. I have a few grey hairs myself. I think the Press Complaints Commission, and many other public organisations, could do with some younger people being involved in them because I think they would be more representative of our society in general. As far as the ombudsman is concerned, I do think that we are 16 ombudsmen. Once a week we get a file of papers from the Press Complaints Commission which sets out draft adjudications and we can decide to reject those, ignore them or make whatever criticisms we like. I think the lay members as well as the editors do that on a weekly basis and do it quite forthrightly and are not intimidated by any of these national editors if, for example, anyone feels that we might be.

(Mr Asquith) Amongst the body of journalists being trained at regional level, it is drummed into them that the PCC Code is very important; it is part of their training. The PCC Code is highly respected in the regions. Any reporters who do not stick that are called to account quite quickly. There is great respect for the organisation. As a regional newspaper representative, we generally feel that if we were called to account by the PCC, it would be a great source of shame. That does exercise a degree of accountability for us that is strongly felt amongst many of the editors, certainly within our group, and amongst many of the trainee journalists.

Do any of you have readers= editors like The Guardian?

(Mr Curran) On the question of readers= editors, some of us have large enough newspapers to have someone who is a senior member of the editorial team, The Belfast Telegraph and possibly Paul Horrock= s Manchester Evening News, but the vast majority of regional, daily and weekly newspapers I do not think can afford to have that kind of luxury. I think the readers= editor idea of Alan Rusbridger works fine when you can afford to have that degree of manpower and the cost involved in maintaining it as well. I believe that the Press Complaints Commission acts on our behalf in a weekly and regional sense much more efficiently. Outside the big groups, I think that is the best means of going about things.

(Mr Horrocks) I do think, though, that newspapers have woken up very quickly to the need to have somebody who is a point of contact within the newspaper. I have an Assistant Editor who handles all complaints. We make sure that we respond to those complaints immediately by phone and then, within a few days, by letter. It is amazing how many complaints can actually be resolved both by a swift response and by a sense of fair play on both sides. I also think that is what the PCC brings to this whole debate: it is quick, fair and free. That speed of response is a message that I would like to give this Committee. If there is any advice that I would be giving to other newspaper editors from what I have learned, it is: react quickly and react positively. Very often you can find a compromise solution.

(Mr Asquith) The other key point in answering that particular question is that we are seen in the community. We do attend local functions and people can complain face to face, and often do so. There is a natural balance, which exerts an accountability on ourselves in terms of making sure that whatever we do as journalists is defensible. It is keenly read and we know if we get it wrong, our readers will not be shy in coming forward to say so, directly or indirectly.

(Mr Cox) The Daily Record is a peculiar hybrid. I do not know whether we form part of this particular evidence body or not because of course we do circulate nationally; we are a red-top tabloid; we are not localised in so far as the city goes. However, having said that, I have a Managing Editor whose responsibility I suppose is something like the Letters Editor. Possibly the majority of his time is as a fixer, making sure that we react as fast as possible to this. From my point of view, perhaps one of the greatest assets the PCC gives me is my ability to phone them at any time for advice, almost, if you like, as a pre-emptive strike. I have got Guy Black out of his bath in Wales to give me advice on things, and I find that extremely useful.

Chairman

Could I ask you about proportionality of response. I quite understand that, as Mr Curran explained, you may not have the resources to do things that major Fleet Street newspapers can, but where a compliant is acknowledged and accepted, one of the problems, it seems to me, is that, even if it is acknowledged speedily, there is not a proportionality of recompense. I am not even bringing in here the question of financial recompense, although I believe that it could be argued there is a case for that. Let us just say it happened to meet a case on a question of privacy and just say an appalling accusation is splashed across the front page of your newspaper about a person. That accusation is found to be absolutely groundless; the Press Complaints Commission intervenes. An apology is offered, but the apology is not the same splash across the front page as the incident; the apology is buried away in a few inches inside. If one is not even talking about financial recompense or fining the newspaper, ought there not to be a proportionality of acknowledgment of error?

(Mr Cox) I have heard this A buried away@ argument many times, and I do not think it is justified in fact. In the two and a half years I have been Editor of the Daily Record, I have not had any adjudication go against me, but when I was on the Sunday Mail I did have one go against me. It was on privacy and it involved Carole Smillie, the TV personality. I made a mistake and the picture that I used was on the front page. I put the adjudication on page 5 and I carried it at length. That is a very humbling experience. Many people think: what is the problem here, we are simply putting words on the page, but it has a great bearing on your career structure for the PLC. It is not a very pleasant professional experience to go through. That coloured my judgment for the next four and a half years. It has been better for me for that to have happened, but I certainly, as far as my paper is concerned, would correct in a fulsome way and in a prominent position.

That is very satisfactory. I wish more would do it.

(Mr Horrocks) I think the view has very much changed now, that you cannot bury away corrections or apologies. The public will not accept it; our own proprietors will not accept it, quite frankly. At my newspaper we try to make sure that the correction, apology or whatever, appears further forward than the original, shall we say, offending article, unless the reader has requested right of reply with in the letters= page. We cannot afford to offend the readers or the readership.

Rosemary McKenna

Mr Cox, can I ask you this question. The Daily Record and the Sunday Mail have a superb record of investigative journalism with recently some very successfully, high profile results, which I think we all appreciate very much. I would like to ask you a couple of questions about how that investigative work is carried out. Who decides, first of all, that it is in the public interest? What methods do you use and who decides what are acceptable methods for the kind of subterfuge that you have to use?

(Mr Cox) The three major campaigns that we have been associated with are: the anti-drugs campaign; pyramid selling; and loan sharking. All of those, through the publicity they received in the Daily Record, have led to changes in the law, so I think that is a good thing. Perhaps the Committee do not know this but before A naming and shaming@ became rather infamous, we launched a name and shame drug dealing campaign in which we did not take the convicted drug dealers, as happened on a rival= s paedophile campaign; we looked out for active drug dealers. We named 211 drug dealers. There were complaints from two out of 211, which were rectified. They were not substantive in that basically it could not be proved in a court of law, and that is where we went wrong. The very first one we named was in court last week; she was given 12 years. Her family, who were also drug dealing, got 33 years in combination. They were turning over , 1 million profit a year. Obviously you cannot be too sensitive to their personal privacy. I am very pleased that we broke their rights to privacy, otherwise they would not be inside now. What we did, quite honestly, was to encourage our readers who are in the sink schemes to name drug dealers who were operating on their estates. They came to us. Our first port of call was the police to see whether they were known to police; in many cases they were but not proven. We then used some methods of entrapment, once we had seen a deal go down. Yes, we saw a deal, then we entrapped, and that led to 211 cases without any recourse to law. That would be the way I would expect most campaigns to be run.

If, for example, when you were carrying out your investigation there was not a resulting case, or there was not a resulting story, what happens to the information that you have collected?

(Mr Cox) Nothing; we did not think it right or moral, if we cannot prove that, to hand it over to any police sources. It is left on reporters= tapes and notebooks. It is not recorded on any databank.

It is not kept in any way?

(Mr Cox) No.

That was very successful. There have been a couple of others. I have a very open mind on the whole issue, but the thing we seem to keep coming back to B and the Chairman has already referred to it B is those ordinary people who feel their lives have been distorted or really seriously disturbed in some way. We are not talking about celebrities but ordinary families. To be fair, it does seem to be more the national press than local press. Does anyone feel there is anything that the PCC could do internally to improve the situation in terms of making people feel better when they have an adjudication in favour of them and against the newspaper?

(Mr Cox) I do not think we can go down the fines procedure because what those people want, as you rightly point out, is some kind of redress and the record set straight. I think that most of us here are quite happy to do that as fast as possible.

(Mr Curran) As a member of the PCC, certainly I do not want to waste my time, and I am sure neither do all the other members, by getting an adjudication perhaps criticising an editor of a newspaper, and then finding that they do not actually tell their readers what we have done. I feel that they probably do and that there is a requirement on them to publish the outcome of an adjudication in full. It might be that under the new Chairmanship of Sir Christopher Meyer that procedure could be looked at, perhaps strengthened. I cannot see how we could possibly get to the point of insisting that all the newspapers in the area carry a report. I think that might be very difficult to achieve, but it might be well wroth monitoring how effective the existing adjudications are in terms of the publicity given to them, with regional and national newspapers.

(Mr Horrocks) I think the PCC also could encourage newspapers, and they should take up this issue, perhaps to write about and discuss within their own pages issues of privacy and media intrusion and have that debated within the newspaper. There is a lot more public interest in that issue. At one time, it may have been regarded as an in-house difficulty; that is no longer the case. I also think that it is useful for members of the PCC, either commissioners or full-time officials, to get out into the regions to talk to local newspaper editors, as they did recently when we had the Director, Guy Black, come to talk to about 25 editors at Preston about issues of privacy and media intrusion. It is positive to have it more and more debated by ourselves and within our newspaper columns.

John Thurso

May I say first of all that it is rather nice to have panel of editors giving us such considered evidence after some fo the carpet bombing we have endured in earlier session of this Committee. May I ask about two points that have already come up. Mr Cox, you mentioned the ability to ring Guy Black in the bath, which sounds very tabloid. The concept that you have somebody that you can ring, all of you, and you can discuss and therefore get advice as to whether something is appropriate, or all of it is appropriate, seems to be very beneficial. It also implies that there is an understanding within the PCC itself of perhaps more than we have understood to date of where the lines might be. Could I ask any of you to elaborate on that, anyone who would like to, because it clearly could be, properly used as it has been, something that could be a helpful tool in this whole evolving concept.

(Mr Cox) When I go for advice, as I do on a fairly regular basis, it is always made totally clear that this is an interpretation of the Code of Conduct and there is no guarantee B as there are 16 minds on that Committee B that they are going to come and agree with the line of advice. However, there are certain parameters where it is useful. For example, where we are looking at children, and I have four of them so it is uppermost in my mind, it is about the exposure of children to hard news stories. Therefore you have to think to yourself: does a picture of a three year old equate with a picture of a seven year old, and which is worse? It is that kind of advice that you have to get from the PCC immediately. Then of course, and every editor is different here, they have to make their own minds up whether they want to follow that advice or not, but that is where I find it useful.

(Mr Curran) My sense of living in the regions is probably a bit different from that of a national newspaper. I think it is a slightly more lonely existence being an editor, probably even more so on a weekly newspaper than on a large regional newspaper, and you really greatly appreciate the opportunity to pick up the phone and phone almost anybody B phone a friend B to try sometimes to come to a conclusion. That is where it is very valuable to have the PCC. From time to time, we all take legal advice but the reality is that particularly in the regions there are not an awful lot of solicitors and lawyers who have a great knowledge of the world in which we exist. I know one or two but there are many areas where there are not any at all. It is very valuable to have that opportunity. From reading some of the earlier evidence, there appeared to be, I thought, a slight misconception that the PCC was entirely reactive. My understanding is that it is occasionally proactive, maybe not perhaps as the Select Committee wishes it to be. I do know that in the case, for example, of the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland, and I think in Dunblane and various other major tragic stories, advice was proactively offered to the media on how those situations should be handled. I think maybe we should do more of that.

(Mr Horrocks) I find that the advice, guidance, call it what you will, is extremely useful. I used it before I became a member of the PCC. I have used it since. I encourage the Assistant Editor who handles all the complaints also to use it. I have also found it very useful to be able to take the adjudications from the PCC, from the website, and e-mail them to all journalists each time there is a new adjudication. We have weekly meetings in different departments. I then get each department to discuss the adjudications and what decisions we would have made in those circumstances and actually to run through the same scenario again. That focuses everybody= s mind very quickly on the issues.

(Mr Long) To echo what Ed Curran was saying, it can be very lonely being editor of a weekly newspaper. I have a group of nine weekly titles. I can think specifically of one occasion when there was a question of a child= s photograph and whether we should publish it. Like many other members of this group before you, I think that children do receive particular care from us. We really think very carefully about that. I simply could not come to a conclusion on this and decided to ring the PCC and just see what they had to say. In fact what they had was quite a bit of very useful case history that they were able to inform me about; they faxed me over their various adjudications. After I looked at that, directly as a result of the help they have given me, I decided against carrying the picture. It is very useful from our point of view to have that service available.

It does seem to me therefore that if we were minded to make any recommendations which the PCC may or may not see fit to pay attention to, more awareness of that proactive, preemptive approach might be one beneficial area to which we could address ourselves.

Ms Shipley

Mr Cox, your drug dealers= initiative was very interesting. How would you deal with the naming and shaming of the paedophiles?

(Mr Cox) I would not have done it, personally, but that is every editor= s decision.

May I ask the others, each of you, how would you have dealt with it?

(Mr Curran) I would not have named and shamed.

We are talking about a strongly suggested group that was not charged.

(Mr Curran) I have particularly strong reasons for not doing so. The real risk in my environment was that some of these people would move out of the area in which we exist within the United Kingdom and would into another jurisdiction where they are actually not subject to the same degree of monitoring.

(Mr Horrocks) We have a protocol with the local police forces in Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire whereby, if we were planning to do any story about a convicted paedophile living in the community, we would consult with them first. We would always then retain the right to come to our own decision, but we have that protocol laid down.

Actually you would name and shame, or you could?

(Mr Horrocks) In certain circumstances, if we thought there was a risk to public safety and that parents and children were unaware, I could see a possibility that we would do that. However, I would have to say that would be very much a last resort action. We would then have to think very hard about it, but I am not saying never.

(Mr Long) Very much like Paul, you never say never to anything but the protocols that are in existence up and down the country between newspapers and the police forces, and which involve also probationary services, are very good and useful instruments in these cases. It has never happened to me and so I could not give you a straight answer on it.

But it will. It will come your way.

(Mr Long) It may well do but my first instinct would be to go and talk to the police about it.

(Mr Asquith) We would not name them unless there were particular reasons for doing so. We would certainly consults with probation officers, social services and the police before doing so. We had an example last week where we were aware of some parents protesting and raising particular concern about an acknowledged paedophile in the area. That was not something we were going to publish without further investigation. Generally, even after that investigation, we probably would not name but we certainly may carry the story in terms of local concern but without being very specific as to who was being referred to.

How did The News of the World manage just to do it then? If you have all the codes in place and all the protocols and all of you are more or less in agreement, how did The News of the World manage to do it?

(Mr Horrocks) That was their issue and their campaign. That was their decision.

The vast weight of your opinion here suggests they should not do it. It is a very serous one because it can lead to very serious mass mob mentality reactions. You do not think really they should have done it.

(Mr Cox) That is one newspaper. There are thousands of newspapers. It is a very significant newspaper and one editor. If that is the decision, that is the decision.

Can you understand that a lot of people find that really very worrying, if a large number of people like you give a very reasoned answer that basically they should not have done it, yet they do it? There is no stop or anchor on them and no requirement for them not to do something but the majority of you, and certainly those who represent the PCC, cannot stop them.

(Mr Cox) We have to deal with something like 120 different stories per day. With every single story they think PCC. If they do not think PCC, and it is written into the reporters= contracts, then they will be for it if they make a mistake. Every single story requires a decision: do we publish or not? One newspaper took a line that was not particularly against any PCC guidelines and that was their stance. I respect that stance. It is not my stance.

So there is no PCC guideline, but you think there is a protocol. The vast majority of you think they should not have done it, yet there is no recourse to stop them doing it. Can you understand why we might start saying there should be some back-stop powers to the PCC?

(Mr Curran) I think there is a very large number of people in the United Kingdom who actually supported The News of the World campaign. I was not one of them. We might not necessarily be in the majority within the United Kingdom, even though the five of us for example here do not share Rebecca Wade= s view. I personally think that one of the great virtues of the place where we live is the diversity of opinion and we should defend the fact that we have a range of newspapers that covers views we ourselves do not necessary share. I was not a member of the PCC when this issue of the paedophile originally arose, but I do think that simply because a group of us share a particular view does not necessarily mean that every editor in the United Kingdom has to share the same view.

When it comes to public safety, arguably when you are dealing with paedophiles who are named and shamed but they are not charged B we are not talking about people being charged here B that then has to come down to politicians because it could very clearly be a matter of public safety for those individuals. In the end, you are handing it over to us as politicians to make a decision because you cannot do so, because you have said one thing and now you are arguing the other way.

(Mr Horrocks) There is a big issue here about those people who have been charged, put before the courts and C

We are not talking about those; definitely we are not talking about them. They are guilty, fine. We are talking about those where we do not know and that is what the problem was with The News fo the World. It was not about the guilty ones, those charged.

(Mr Horrocks) Really was it not that they trawled back through records and looked for people who had been before the courts and may have served their sentence?

It is not new news. It is in the past, people who have served their sentence and are living in the community, and something has to be done with these people.

(Mr Horrocks) The only advice I would give there is that newspapers should have a protocol of their own in conjunction with the probation service, police and local authorities.

I totally agree. Why I am hammering away at it is that the PCC thinks it should not be practised; you have more or less it should be. On this issue it could not understand that there was a problem, and it put that in writing. There is a problem. Paul Dacre identified there is a problem. The PCC should be proactive. You are right, it should have strong protocols. There should be more dialogue but the PCC says: A It is not up to us to be proactive. Give me specific individual examples and I will deal with that but I am not dealing with the whole issue.@

(Mr Newell) If I may make one point, I am not an editor: I am a lawyer and director of newspapers. My understanding of the situation in The News of the World case was that all those that were named were convicted, to start off with. Second, if a person who is not a paedophile is represented as being a paedophile in a newspaper, the law of libel takes care of that.

Ms Shipley: Can you answer the question I have just asked?

Chairman: That was your last question.

Ms Shipley: You have let them off the hook though, for they will not answer!

Alan Keen

Is there any one of you who perhaps thinks it would be better if there were no professionals on the PCC at all, that it should be comprised of lay people? After all, the PCC is hopefully looking after the interests of people who have been offended by things that newspapers have published. Does any one of you think that they should all be lay people on the PCC?

(Mr Curran) You will probably say I am biased because I am a member of the PCC. I have been a member for about a year now. I do think there is some virtue in having some editors. By the way, I am not so sure about the argument of one of my colleague= s as to ex-editors, which I might come to. In my experience over the past year, there has been a number of occasions when issues have arisen where an editor round the table has been able to explain, a bit like us explaining to you today, what it is that goes through our little heads when we arrive at some of the conclusions at which we do arrive and put in our newspapers. I think the lay members in that respect have found that valuable. I certainly would not like to think that the lay members would feel browbeaten by any individual editor or editors on the PCC. I absolutely subscribe totally to the idea that there should be a majority of lay members on the PCC and that our basis for being there is to be representative of the existing industry, both national and regional, which I think we are.

(Mr Horrocks) I think the current editors are aware and conversant with current issues. The difficulty with a previous suggestion about having ex-editors is that you would not have people on the PCC who are actually dealing hands-on with live issues.

Would you agree with me that the whole aim of the PCC is to get justice for people who have been offended? What have the difficulties of modern newspapers got to do with whether somebody has been offended or not? It might be very difficult getting the paper out quickly but in the end it is what is printed there and whether somebody is offended by that which counts, not the problems that editors may have in coming to that decision to print.

(Mr Horrocks) That is making the assumption that we as editors B and yes, I am one and I sit on the PCC B are incapable of identifying with the treatment or injustices that people feel they have suffered.. We have all been in the newspaper business long enough to know basically what is right and what is wrong. The debates are usually pretty short because it is often very clear where the answer lies but, as Ed Curran points out, the lay members are in the majority. The other valid point of having editors on the Commission is that they are able to explain certain points sometimes on straightforward issues as to why you put the names and addresses of people who have been found guilty in a court case in the papers; why are witnesses named at inquests; why are people identified when they do not want to be in a public hearing. That happens because it is the law. Lay members may not always be fully aware of that.

(Mr Cox) Having said that, and I do agree entirely with it, my view is that to go above 16 would make it slightly unwieldy, but I would certainly have weighted it slightly more towards the lay members.

Paul Horrocks has made those comments and you are inferring that you need professional advice. Take a panel of three magistrates. They make the decision. The person in the dock listens to the decision that they have made and might be unhappy about it. The legal advice comes from somebody who is not making the decision. You seem to take a different view. You think that the professionals on there should be part of that decision-making process.

(Mr Horrocks) The professionals there are giving advice to lay members. Yes, we are part of the decision-making procedure but we, the editors, are in the minority. My experience B and I have only been on the PCC a few months B is that often it is the lay members who lead the discussions and make the final decisions. If there is ever any issue when we cannot agree, the lay members then decide.

Finally, why do you think it is then that OFCOM are not going to put professional broadcasters on their complaints panel? They think it would compromise them. Those were the words, and if they did not come over they were mouthed by the Chairman of OFCOM he thinks that having professionals from the broadcasting industry on the panel would in fact prejudice the result. Why do you think they think that and the newspaper industry thinks completely differently?

(Mr Curran) I do not know. Maybe broadcasting or whatever is a slightly more transparent discipline than the newspaper industry and the problems associated with it. Certainly in the course of the year I have been on the PCC B and I do not think I could have carried all the documents from Belfast B the amount of paperwork that actually crosses our path is incredible. It covers such a vast range of issues, way beyond privacy. The complexity of the newspaper industry itself and the range of issues that we have to deal with make it valuable to have editors available to give their considered view on it. I do not think we are prejudicing, at the end of the day, the ultimate decision. If one looks at the make-up of the lay members, their independence and stature, they are not people who are likely to be prejudiced.

(Mr Horrocks) I also think it makes you a better editor. Being involved in that whole procedure and seeing complaints at the sharp end and discussing them and understanding the issues that really upset the public makes you a better decision maker when you go back to your own newspaper. I do not know whether it would be possible but I think it would be advisable that any editor who is invited to be a member of the PCC should take up that offer and quickly, because you learn a lot.

In a few week= s time, I have to make a decision on this matter. It is strange that not one person from the newspaper industry to whom I have asked that question thinks that the PCC should be composed only of lay people and yet OFCOM takes the opposite view. I am less likely to be convinced because there have been no differences in view.

(Mr Newell) Of course, OFCOM is a statutory body and it is a statutory system with a tradition that OFCOM is taking over in terms of dealing with complaints about the broadcast media, a licensed medium. The PCC system is a self-regulatory system. We have always believed that there should be a minority of editors involved in that process. Some of the things I think we have heard this afternoon about the buying that goes on within the industry that delivers self-regulation for the readers of newspapers and delivers standards for the readers of newspapers comes about precisely because of the involvement of editors in a minority on the Press Complaints Commission. From my perspective, I would see that it is something that has actually made the system work and be tangible on the ground with individual newspapers and the way in which complaints are handled by individual newspapers.

Chairman

I do not want to prolong this because we have other witnesses, but Mr Curran has said something on which he acknowledge that things are less than perfect. The point Mr Keen makes is important, that we do seem to have heard a very monolithic series of replies over the weeks of the inquiry from editors and people involved with the PCC, namely that the system is working so very well that it scarcely needs any adjustment at all.

(Mr Newell) With respect, I do not think that is the position you have heard this afternoon and, reading through the evidence that has been given to you by the Press Complaints Commission and others, I have seen that people have said that if there are ideas for reform, they will be looked at. Indeed, the Press Complaints Commission in the C ode has not been static. There have been changes and involvement over the years and I would see, from my perspective, that the standards within the industry have improved significantly over the years.

It is one thing to say we listen to suggestions by other people; it is quite another thing to say we ourselves, having operated this system, believe that there are rectifications that should be made. After all, this House of Commons is an extremely imperfect organisation but it is constantly looking at the way it proceeds to see if it can improve. My own beloved political party has adjusted itself over the year to what it has acknowledged, sometimes with pain, as errors. It just seems to me very interesting that you and the colleagues who preceded you all seem to believe that any suggestions for improvement ought to come from somebody else and that you have not any suggestions for improvement yourself, except for you, Mr Curran.

(Mr Curran) Could I deal with one or two points, if I may? I do think also, if I may, that Sir Christopher Meyer in his comments this week had a very open mind, which I think some of us, if not all of us among the editors, share. One aspect that he did dwell on, which I think we probably all agree with, is that there should be far greater publicity given to the PCC= s operations and the public in general should be much more aware of what they are doing and of the way in which we can go about making complaints. I suspect that actually that is not still the case even after ten years. A lot of us would take the view that there have been great improvements and adjustments and changes in the PCC, but it is far from perfect. We do want a system in which the public can have confidence. If you individuals, for example, do not have total confidence in that system, never mind the public, then I think we are entitled to listen to be listened to and we should look at the way in which we can improve.

Chairman: That is very good of you, Mr Curran. As I say, you have heard some ideas this afternoon. When you say you are ready to listen, I very much hope that, whatever conclusions we come to, and I have no idea what they will be, they may be listened to. When National Heritage conducted a similar inquiry eleven years ago, and we for example recommended that the Press Complaints Commissions Code of Conduct be included in journalists= contracts, the Press Complaints Commission told us that was utterly unworkable and could not possibly be done. It took a while before it was done. I do hope that when you say that we will be listened to, it will happen. In thanking you for being here, may I thank you, Mr Curran, in particular, not because of any superiority you may have over your colleagues but because you have a very big story at home and the fact that you are here we regard as a very great compliment to us. Thank you.

Memoranda submitted by the Periodical Publishers Association and NOW Magazine

Examination of Witnesses

MR IAN LOCKS, Chief Executive of the Periodical Publishers Association, and MS JANE ENNIS, Editor NOW Magazine, examined.

Chairman

Chairman: May I welcome you here this afternoon and congratulate Jane Ennis on her appointment to the Press Complaints Commission. Without any reflections on anybody else, may I say that it is very nice to have a woman as a witness because the whole of the rest of the afternoon is mono-sexual!

Michael Fabricant

Following on from that introduction, could you explain the process by which you are appointed? I am curious about how people are appointed on to the PCC? Is there a rota? Do they say, A We want so many magazine editors, so many national newspaper editors and so many regional editors@ ? How much time do they say you are going to have to spend working on the PCC and not on NOW Magazine? Can editors say, or did you say, A I would like to serve on the PCC@ , or is it like the freemasons where someone sort of sneaks up to you and whispers in your ear in a dark alley? Perhaps you could explain?

(Ms Ennis) The approach came through the PPA B the Periodical Publishing Association. I was just told that my name had come forward and would I like to do it. My main worry was the amount of time it might take up and whether I would be able to devote that amount of time to it. I had several meetings with Guy and with Ian to try and find out what it would involve. What it does involve is looking through papers that come on a weekly basis, which I have sent to my home. To look through those thoroughly and make any sensible notes of them does take a couple of hours a week. On top of that, there are the regular meetings, and they would really wipe out a day because to look at the paperwork before the meetings C

A day a week or a day a month?

(Ms Ennis) There are nine a year. You really need to spend the morning going through the paperwork and then the afternoon is devoted to the meetings. On the grounds that that is the amount of time it would take, I agreed. I have only been to one meeting so far. I have had lots of packs come through to me but I have only been to one meeting.

Why do you think you were chosen? Was it because of your personal background or because of NOW Magazine not getting many complaints or maybe because NOW Magazine gets lots of complaints?

(Ms Ennis) I do not know. I have a long background in journalism, newspapers and magazines. I suppose NOW Magazine is the one that might quite often be a cause of complaint. Some magazines are completely blameless and never receive a complaint in their lives. I suppose those two things made me a prime candidate.

Did you think, when you went on to the PCC, that it might be helpful in respect to complaints made against NOW Magazine? Be honest.

(Ms Ennis) No, not at all. Those are not at the forefront of my mind. We have about two a year and all of them have been settled quite amicably. Even though we do get them, we do not get very many of them. No, I did not go into it with that in mind at all.

You did say in your submission that you turned down stories and phonographs?

(Ms Ennis) Yes, all the time.

Is that because of the fear that it would be breaking the law if you were to publish those photographs or you thought there might be civil action against you, or was it because of the PCC Code? Which is the stronger?

(Ms Ennis) There is a whole mixture of things. Some of them break the Code; some of them might bring you into trouble with the law; and with others of them, you feel the readers would be disgusted if they saw them. Public taste is a great dictator of what pictures you may or may not want to use, but you do get a vast variety of pictures coming through.

There is one area I want to ask you about. The European Court of Human Rights, as you know, has held in a judgment in the Geoffrey Peck case that it was unlawful and it was wrong to use photographs of him, stills taken from a closed circuit television camera of his attempt to commit suicide. There is now this great balance going on as to whether or not we should enshrine in British law rights of privacy. How would you feel about that? There is going to be law one way or another. Would you prefer to see law that evolves through case law like this or would you feel more comfortable with statute law, which is more clear and defined?

(Ms Ennis) I would prefer case law. I would like to point out that there is a magazine exactly like mine in France called Voici, which is a celebrity gossip magazine and operates breaking the French privacy laws on nearly every page. It has to run apologies on nearly every page, including the cover sometimes, and it sells a damn sight more copies than I do.

And the editor has not been guillotined yet?

(Ms Ennis) No. I have met the editor a few times. He has had some death threats and he does walk around with a bodyguard. The magazine is still out there. All the laws in France that stop you taking photographs of people even walking down the street do not stop this magazine running. I think they just write it into the cost of doing business. They see it as some kind of strange stealth tax, I think, and it does not stop them publishing, so I do not really know how effective privacy laws would be really.

Michael Fabricant: That is because they have some strange Napoleonic Code, but we will not go down that route, Chairman!

Chairman

I would be grateful if you could elaborate on why you would prefer case law to statute law. Statute law, after all, is there, it is published, it is debated, it affects everybody, whereas case law is something which is random, subjective, depends upon cases being brought, depends on cases being brought often on grounds which are less clear than statute. Mr Fabricant has pointed out that cases are now being brought under the European Convention of Human Rights, as codified in the Human Rights Act, and that they are individual ones, but you can even have cases which seem to be based B and I am not a lawyer B on common law where people with sufficient means can take a legal action on the basis of something as nebulous as breach of confidence. Would it not be better for the journalists to know where they stand rather than be subjected to the whims of the judge?

(Ms Ennis) I suppose the reason I prefer case law is because I cannot think of any two cases involving privacy that are ever the same or ever have quite the same issues and I cannot imagine what kind of statutory law you could come up with that would cover every single case. I cannot see how you would ever manage that. I cannot imagine what this statutory law would be like. Can you give me an idea of what you are thinking of?

Quite a number of states in the United States seem to manage perfectly well with the statute law and freedom of speech in the United States is, if anything, more unfettered than it is in this country.

(Ms Ennis) Certainly American publications are a lot less bothered by privacy than English publications.

It is very interesting, for example, that this Mr Perle was written about in The New Yorker and had to resign his position as a result of that, but what I have been told was that he did not regard there being any point in suing in the United States because the laws in the United States were so much in favour of free speech and he was considering suing The New Yorker as published in this country. So, the Americans really do not have any very great problem with freedom of speech and yet several states do have statutory privacy laws.

(Ms Ennis) Well, they have it written into their constitution.

They have First Amendment and that is why a proper Freedom of Information Act in this country wider than what we have now might provide the same protection as First Amendment.

(Ms Ennis) I would like to see what you are talking about, really. I think that is too brief for me to be able to say that I would go for it.

I could provide you with copies. We looked at a great many of these acts when we were doing our report the first time around

(Ms Ennis) I would be interested to see them.

Derek Wyatt

Can you tell me how you would like to improve the PCC.

(Mr Locks) I would like to speak to that. I declare something of an interest because I was very closely involved in the movement from the Press Council to the structure on which we based the current self-regulatory system and we chose to go down the route at that time of the ASA because we felt that that was a very robust three-legged stall model. One of the things that has come through to me in looking at the transcripts of this discussion is that there does seem to be a focus on the PCC and that is absolutely right, of course, because that is the outward-facing part of it, but, as you have also heard, there are other dimensions to it which mean that we have a very robust model. That is not to say and I would not be a defender of the fact that we have reached a stage of perfection and I think it is right to say that, over the last ten years, not only have we moved from a very discredited press council which tried to be policeman, legislator, judge, jury and executioner to a quite different model where editors define the rules and boundaries within which they operate, publishers - and I represent the magazine publishers in this case - show a great commitment to the process, not only by providing funds but actually by looking to have a system which stands up to scrutiny such as from this Committee, and then an independent adjudication which is the PCC. So, within those boundaries, the things that come through to me most clearly are firstly the suggestion that there should be some sort of audit process. We had not previously thought of that to my knowledge. If we have, we have not acted upon and I think that is something that we might have to raise with the PCC if they have not already picked that up. I suppose the other thing that has come through to me very clearly is the transparency issue. We may feel that what we do is transparent. It is quite clear that others are not perceiving it that way and that is another issue that I think we ought to address, particularly at the review stage where, on occasions, possibly, the PCC itself might admit that things have not gone entirely right or that new evidence has come to bear that does require a method of looking at it.

Would you support as much as possible being put into the public domain, even taking hearings in public?

(Mr Locks) I am not sure about that because I think there is a step beyond the process that we have which then engages lawyers and takes it down a completely different avenue and prolongs the process and, as many have said to you and what Calcutt recommended, was that this should be a quick, inexpensive, in fact free to the user remedy and, if you make it a public hearing, then you have a quite different dimension involved and you have to have representation, I suggest. I cannot see the PCC in its present form operating in that way.

(Ms Ennis) I have only been to one meeting but it seems to me that publications could put the details of the PCC on their letters page or somewhere in the paper in order that people would know how and where to complain. They could run something. I do not know whether newspaper editors would be in agreement to that, but I certainly would not mind doing it. I do not think that most magazine editors would find that a problem.

Like a warning on a cigarette packet?

(Ms Ennis) Yes. There must be some better way, when papers promise to perhaps not repeat something again or not use a photograph again, of getting that information around to the people who work on the papers because, having worked on papers, everything is so fast and furious and somebody makes a promise and then, three days later, somebody breaks the promise because it somehow has not reached them. There might be some argument for having some kind of simple e-mailing system that was common to all newspapers where latest judgments and matters that newspapers had agreed to were readily available, so people could have a look at what those matters were before they made decisions. There must be a better way of getting the information circulated than at present. So, those are a couple of simple things.

Alan Keen

I will obviously have to ask the same question that I have asked of other people and you have just said that working on newspapers is a pressurised job as against working on periodicals. One of two answers we have had over the past few weeks have been an attempt to excuse editors because of the pressures under which they work, but do you not agree that the PCC is there to protect the people who are alleged to be offended by newspapers and is it not wrong therefore to say that account should be taken of the pressure the editor was under when he made the decision? Is that not completely wrong?

(Ms Ennis) No, I think you are quite right. All I am suggesting is that perhaps better systems could be put in place in order that people under pressure can quickly access the information they need in order to make the decisions. I think that is often what the problems are. Particularly on national papers where you have vast staffs working on a kind of rolling-shift system and it is very, very difficult to pass information down the line in any way and I am just thinking that there must be a way where papers could access important information very simply. It would be easy for them to set something up.

When we begin to look at the evidence we have received in the last few weeks more carefully, I want to look back and see exactly what the answer was on this pressure issue because I am pretty sure that the answer we had from one of the editors - and I think somebody else concurred - was that it was important to understand that editors worked under pressure and that it was important to have editors on the PCC in order that they could say, A We were under pressure. That is why we printed that@ as if to say, A What do the public expect? If we work under pressure, they have to expect that we will be nasty to them now and again.@ Do you think that is really the way in which it should be judged?

(Ms Ennis) No, I quite agree with you, but the fact is that newspaper editors and magazine editors work under a lot of pressure, so it behoves them to have systems in place that ease their problems and help them disseminate important pieces of information.

Not excuse them but help them?

(Ms Ennis) Yes.

Mr Locks, are you able to give me an answer as to why OFCOM think it would not be a good thing to have professional broadcasters on their complaints committee and yet the press think it is a good thing to have interested parties making decisions?

(Mr Locks) I would like to express a view on the second part of your question; I cannot answer the first. With regard to the second part of your question as to why the press think it is a good idea, I would offer the thought firstly that I think there is an intrinsic difference between broadcasting and the press. Broadcast operates within a licensed framework. The job of the press is to be free to express itself in whatever way it chooses. The self-regulatory system that we have, as you have heard, is about consensus. The Press Council did not have acceptance by and from the people whom it was seeking to govern. I believe that what we have put in place is a system that does have compliance or a willingness to comply, which is not of course the same as saying that people will not from time to time break the code. They will given the circumstances and the vast and infinitive variety of situations people are put into on which they have to make judgments. Due to that difference, I do think that a key decision early on and inherited from the Press Council was that editors do have to be part of that process; they have to be seen and they have to be in the position of judging within their peer group and it is that that is a very important part of that consensus. Take that way, put in place people who are not part of that process, sit them in judgment and I think we will be back down the road of the Press Council and the press would take a view about the Press Complaints Commission that would not be as compliant as we have at the moment. I think that Jane Ennis= s suggestion about what happens in France is a completely different situation because everything is governed by law and there is very often a much greater willingness to break that law and put it right afterwards. I suggest that is not the situation that we have.

You may not be happy to answer this question, but do you think that some of the editors who were aggressively defensive when they came before us damage the case for retaining the PCC unchanged and why do you think that they were so defensive? We did not start off intending to attack the press in any way. We just wanted to look at the present situation and see whether there was a better way of doing it.

(Mr Locks) I would love to be able to answer that question but I just cannot offer you an answer. I read Harry Roche= s approach and Sir Harry has been a great steadier of the development of the process that we now have and I think he indicated a willingness - and I believe that there is a willingness - to review what we do and how we do it. There are areas where we do not agree, clearly, with the sort of avenues that we might be pushed down, but there are other areas where I do believe that we are willing and have proved to be willing to find ways to improve the system that we have.

Chairman: Sir Harry Roche was the absolute model of what a witness to the Select Committee should be.

Mr Bryant

Which is not to say that you are not being, obviously! I have one question about photographs because, Ms Ennis, you said in your submission to us that you turn down a number of photographs. Why would you turn down a photograph? What kind of photographs do you turn down?

(Ms Ennis) Photographs involving children in circumstances where perhaps their parents are going through a messy divorce or there is some story that would be very negative to the child and photographs that offend public decency.

Have these come from professional photographers?

(Ms Ennis) They come from paparazzi photographers. The agencies that supply them are professional agencies. These pictures go round all newspapers and there are a number of photographs that are turned down.

Are there photographs that you have turned down which you have then seen elsewhere?

(Ms Ennis) Sometimes I see them elsewhere, but quite often you do not see them at all.

If the paparazzi are producing these photographs, is that because there is a general over-supply of photographs or is it because they are ...? I do not understand why there is market failure here.

(Ms Ennis) I think they could sell them in Italy even if they could not sell them in Britain sometimes.

So they are basically trying to find an additional market?

(Ms Ennis) They are just looking for markets, yes.

Another organisation that is in some regards similar to the PCC is the ASA, the Advertising Standards Authority, which is similarly self-regulated and it operates slightly differently, but one of the major differences between it and the PCC is that the PCC, as far as I can see, seeks to prevent getting to the point where there is an adjudication and, as far as possible, to provide some kind of reconciliation between the two parties rather than get to adjudication, whereas the ASA seems to try to get to an adjudication as often as possible because that is the only way that everybody knows what the game is or what the rules are. Do you think there might be benefits of moving to that model rather than always to try and avoid adjudication?

(Mr Locks) I am a little thrown by the question. I do not have the statistics in front of me and presumably should have but that is not my impression. I think that in both cases there are many, many more complaints than are actually adjudicated upon by the Commission. It may be that the ASA have a different process and I am sure that Guy Black could answer were you to recall him. The ASA may well pass in front of the Commission itself more adjudications, but I do not think they would discuss many more as a proportion. However, if you are right, then there may be an area there that we might look at. I think the important thing is that our customers feel that they have been properly and efficiently dealt with and I think the research carried out this year does raise some concern, I think the level is good but not good enough, and I hope that we would see our way to repeating that research on an annual basis as part of the audit process to see whether your point is right and that more should be adjudicated upon. My impression is that most people are reasonably happy.

As a commission - I know you have said that you have only been to one meeting and therefore it is a little difficult to judge from that - is it your impression that you only see the cases that have not been reconciled, if you see what I mean, and that you only see the ones on which there needs to be adjudication, or do you see every single complaint?

(Ms Ennis) No. In our weekly packages, we see the lot, we see everything in some form or another but, when we have the meetings, we just look at the ones for adjudication.

I just have one plea: the PCC website is about a year-and-a-half out of date on cases or at least I could not get anything from the last 18 months up on it. Could you feed that back?

(Ms Ennis) I will.

Ms Shipley

Ms Ennis, may I say what a breath of fresh air to have somebody saying that they might be able to do that or that they could do this. We met a stone wall with the other PCC people until today. How nice! Could you go out and suggest that some of your mates who might have other creative ideas come forward and start to sit on the PCC. Moving on to the appointments, Mr Locks, you have said that some ideas have come up so far and that audit would be a good idea and that transparency would be a good idea, but I would suggest to you that two other things have come up on which you did not comment. One is pro-activity or the lack of it; the need in big serious areas for the PCC to be pro-active. The other one, which the Secretary of State raised last week, so I am surprised you have not commented upon it, was the appointment system to be transparent. The present system was robustly defended by the PCC; the Secretary of State thought it could be a lot more transparent; what is your view?

(Mr Locks) I would probably agree with the Secretary of State because if her perception is that the system is not transparent, that is her perception and that is uncomfortable for us. I do not think, to be fair, that there is actually much wrong with the system we have apart from the fact that people do not perceive it to be transparent. I did not intervene when Mr Fabricant was talking earlier about how Jane Ennis was appointed but, with the industry appointments for example, the request would come from the PCC to ourselves as the organisation of magazine publishers, I would refer it to our editorial public affairs committee which is about 10/12 editors, and they would choose the name of somebody they felt would represent their interests in terms of providing a balanced view as a commissioner. So, that is how the industry appointments are generally made. The public appointments, the non-professional appointments in this case, are handled, as far as I am aware, properly through an appointments commission, but clearly that is not sufficiently well known.

It is interesting. You are both PPA, that is where your position came from on the PCC, and you have been the most willing to see that there is room for improvement. So, I would suggest that you are doing something right that perhaps the others could learn from.

(Mr Locks) I would hesitate to say that. We are different in that we are representative of six per cent share in complaints. So, our industry is certainly different. It is less timely in the main in terms of daily publication. We have huge diversity from 3,000 publications, most of which probably do not even know about the Press Complaints Commission except for having read about it somewhere because they have never been involved with it.

That in itself is a very interesting answer. As it happens, I have quite a lot of dealings with the PPA and I know about how you cover things. That is a very interesting answer because you said that you have six per cent of complaints.

(Mr Locks) Yes.

So you have virtually no vested interest in this and yet you are much more open, much more creative and much more willing to say that there is room for manoeuvre and room for change.

(Ms Ennis) Well, that is magazine people for you.

Ms Shipley: You see my point though. Thank you.

Chairman: Thank you very much for your evidence. It is much appreciated

Memoranda submitted by ITN and BBC

Examination of Witnesses

MR MICHAEL JERMEY, Managing Director, and MR JOHN BATTLE, Head of Compliance, ITN, and MR RICHARD SAMBROOK, Director of News, and MR STEPHEN WHITTLE, Controller Editorial Policy, BBC, examined.

Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much for making the time to come and see us this afternoon at what must be an extremely busy time for you.

Derek Wyatt

I would like to echo what the Chairman has just said to you. Thank you for coming. Can you give us any examples of anything you have done, produced or come into contact with which in a way you wish you had done better and therefore in a sense explain to us how you improved the system as a result of any incidences that happened.

(Mr Jermey) I can give an example of that. I can think of a mistake we made that we learned from. I think it is probably the only example I can think of in the last three, four or five years where a complaint has been upheld on privacy by the BSC. We had filmed some people in one context and used those archive pictures in a story about obesity which was an invasion of the privacy of the person concerned. They complained to us, we conceded we had made a mistake; they complained to the BSC and the BSC reasonably found that we had made a mistake and we were more careful thereafter in instructing our producers to show extra care on the use of archive picture. I think that is one example.

(Mr Whittle) From us, I could cite the case of the famous Mr Peck from which lots of people learned many different things including a change in the rules in relation to the use of CCTV material full stop. I think one of the lessons with Mr Peck is that if you are going to attempt to disguise someone= s identity, then you have to be total in your care because, in that particular case as you will perhaps remember, he had a very distinctive haircut and although his face was obscured, the fact of his distinctive haircut made him readily identifiable to people who knew him well.

We did ask the BBC about this before, but whereas on Radio you have Roger Bolton as the agony aunt, as it were, trying to redress things, do you think that given how much more television there is now, the BBC should look at that as an idea or not or have you looked at it and decided that actually it is not workable?

(Mr Sambrook) We are considering it at the moment. I agree, I think it is an anomaly that we have what is quite a robust programme on radio and we do not have an equivalent on television at the moment. We have had in the past but we appear to be in one of those periods where there is nothing at the moment. However, it is certainly something that is under active consideration.

Do you think that is a role for a governor or how are you looking at it? What sort of solutions are you trying to come up with?

(Mr Sambrook) We are looking at whether we should have a programme which partly holds ourselves to account for what we broadcast but also looks at the media in the round as well in the way that, for example, certain issues or certain stories are covered and discusses whatever issues may arise out of that coverage. So, if you like, from a media literacy point of view as well as one of holding ourselves to account.

How many cases go to court? I can only think of one in the last year but perhaps a number are settled out of court. How many cases have there been on news especially where you have given incorrect ...? I am thinking of the Africa story but I am just wondering how many go and how many do not go?

(Mr Whittle) Very, very few in the course of a year, though we have had two recent examples. One was a case in the Family Division only a couple of weeks ago in relation to a programme about foundlings C

We have that note.

(Mr Whittle) And similarly Hunt for Britain= s Paedophiles last year where someone sought an injunction before the programme. In terms of cases where, if you like, it goes to full trial, in the course of a year, in the area of privacy, I cannot think of a single one for a number of years.

(Mr Battle) That is the same for ITN. It is very rare that we actually are in court or being adjudicated upon or receive a privacy complaint.

You might have heard the comment earlier about whether the PCC be up and running in every paper every day somewhere. Do you think you do enough to say to people, A Look, if you do not like what you are watching, this is what you do?@ Are you comfortable that you have that relationship right?

(Mr Battle) I think so. We do, on a daily basis, receive sounding viewers who ring in to make a point about a particular programme. They are listened to every morning at the editorial conference, so the editors are aware of the points that have been raised. It is a matter for the individual whether they want to pursue that to a proper complaint and adjudication within the regulatory bodies. I think that the balance is right. I think there is no real evidence of breaches of privacy certainly within our organisation at ITN.

(Mr Whittle) As you will know, many of our programmes now positively invite interaction with their audiences by a whole variety of means and that is one debate that is very vigorous every single day. The people who phone in to complain to the BBC are clearly given the option of putting their complaints formally and in writing and pursuing both the route through the BBC itself and indeed routes through the Broadcasting Standards Commission, but of course the Broadcasting Standards Commission= s remit is very narrow, it is absolutely to do with people who have been featured in programmes rather than a general complaint about someone else= s privacy being infringed and those are very few indeed.

Rosemary McKenna

Over the last few weeks, I am sure that we have all watched, sometimes with growing horror, the 24-hour coverage of the war in Iraq and very often the live coverage. What safeguards are there for the families of serving officers of any of our serving forces on that kind of level of intrusion where soldiers could be identified and bodies could be identified? It is feasible that, with a live coverage, we could actually witness a soldier being killed. What kind of safeguards are in place to prevent that happening?

(Mr Sambrook) Certainly in terms of the live coverage, although we have had a lot of live coverage of vehicles and tanks, in terms of live coverage where people are identifiable, we have had very little and have been quite restrained in what we have shown and wherever we do have live coverage from, if you like, the frontline in which people are identifiable, we put it on a delay for exactly the reason you have identified. In terms of identifying casualties and so on, we are very careful not to show or to identify visually any British casualties. We work very closely with the Ministry of Defence in terms of British casualties and do not name anybody until we know that the next of kin have been informed and we also work very closely with the Ministry of Defence and indeed with ITN and Sky in terms of any approaches that might be made to families.

(Mr Jermey) I think the broadcasters have adopted a very similar policy. I accept that there is a theoretical risk. We have not been in a position where we think that that has been a real risk and I can easily see that we would stop broadcasting something live if we thought that that was likely to occur. So, I think the risk is more theoretical than real. There is not an actual case we could cite to support the hypothetical example that you have produced.

On going between one news channel and another, I was monitoring what was actually happening, not in terms of intrusion, but the delay is not the same on all channels.

(Mr Jermey) That is right. Different channels will take different decisions about what they show. I think that all news channels are aware of those sorts of issues and certainly the news channel that ITN operators for ITV is looking to be cautious about what pictures we do show live with exactly the sort of consideration that you have in mind to the fore of our producers= minds.

Mr Bryant

One of the things you sometimes seem to do to protect people= s privacy is to blot out the registration number on a car, but you do not always do that. How do you make the decision as to when you are going to and when you are not going to and why do you do it?

(Mr Jermey) The issue there is more about security than anything else and if we believe or have been advised by the police or other appropriate authorities that a particular person= s car registration number could open them to terrorist attack or other form of attack, we will block it out. There will be other occasions where there does not appear to be any form of security risk and we would necessarily do it. It is also possible that, over a period of years, the odd picture has slipped through, but we have security to the fore of our minds when we block out numbers.

You must keep vast amounts of information about people= s private addresses which would not be available to the general public. How do you decide to whom that is available and to whom that is not available?

(Mr Sambrook) There are two or three ways that that material is kept. All journalists have always kept their own records of people= s addresses and so on and that continues to be the case and people keep their own private account of contact phone numbers, addresses and so on. Some programmes will have addresses and phone numbers kept on a computer database, but it will be one that is subject to the usual BBC IT security. In other words, you cannot get in there without an appropriate password and appropriate clearance to parts of the system that will allow you to access that information and that would normally be, for example, for very regular guests on a particular programme and so on.

There is a BBC book of, for instance, all politicians= telephone numbers, mobile numbers and numbers that they might not necessarily want to be publically available.

(Mr Sambrook) If any Member of Parliament thinks there is information in that book that they do not want publically available, we would remove it.

I am delighted because my mobile number is not correct in it! So, everyone is ringing some poor other soul, or perhaps not very often! One of the things that sometimes lifts somebody into the public eye who would not expect to be lifted into the public eye at all is when they are the victim of crime. The PCC code says that where there is a crime involved, that is per se a reason for public interest and whilst I guess that most of us would accept that, is that the rule you operate to because sometimes it feels as if the victim of the crime suffers twice because then the media descends on them as well?

(Mr Jermey) I think we would say that prima facie there is a public interest in a particular crime being identified but I think it would depend on the circumstances.

I am sorry, did you say you would or there is not?

(Mr Jermey) That there is, that there is a general public interest in people being aware of what crimes have happened, but I do not think we would deal with any victim of crime in an intrusive manner. We would seek not to do so.

(Mr Whittle) Our news agenda is not one that is actually dominated in any event by the reporting of daily crime and therefore it does not arise most days for us. Clearly with a significant crime, murder for example, that is obviously a very different circumstance. On the whole, with people who find themselves caught up in events by accident or because it happens to them, we are quite careful about issues of consent with them and taking them through the process of consent.

(Mr Sambrook) If I could briefly add two points to that. Firstly, normally identification of victims in those kinds of serious crimes would be with the police and quite often the police, for example, believe that a victim making a public appeal for information can help their investigation and therefore the police put it forward at a news conference in some way that we would broadcast and that is clearly with the consent of the victim. Equally, I do not believe that we would ever approach a victim directly. Our normal method of practice on this is to go through a third party, either the police, a friend of the family, a solicitor or so on in order to make an approach rather than to be overly intrusive.

Mr Sambrook, I know that you have worked on newspapers as well because you have worked on The Rhondda Leader most importantly. Do you think there is a different perception in the newspaper world from the broadcast journalist world about privacy and media intrusion issues and, if so, who is getting it right and who is getting it wrong, and do you think that the world of press journalism has changed for the better or for the worse over the last 20 years?

(Mr Sambrook) I would be reluctant to comment too much on that. I have worked for the BBC for 25 years and therefore that is what I know best. It is a very different market and clearly we are regulated in very different ways. I also think that the question of local journalism and national journalism is very different as well. Frankly, I do not think it is an area I would particularly wish to tread into. It is neither a market nor an area that I know particularly well in terms of the national press.

Mr Bryant: How very cowardly!

John Thurso

There is a tremendous amount of CCTV footage that is being shot throughout the country at any one time and more and more cameras are being installed. Do you have any rules, codes or whatever regarding the use of that material, and I am particularly thinking about material that comes from cameras that are relatively private or unknown about?

(Mr Whittle) Yes, broadly speaking. We have strict rules anyway about any material that is not shot by ourselves and over which therefore we can have no assurance as to what actually happened and certainly obviously as well with CCTV material particularly. One would certainly want to be convinced that there was a public interest involved in the nature of the material that was being shown. In the famous case of Mr Peck, the intentions of everyone at the outset were relatively honourable; they were about how CCTV footage could be used to detect and prevent crime. It was a wrong interpretation however of what was actually happening in the case of Mr Peck himself. So, clearly where there is a public interest involved in detecting crime, revealing crime and so forth, that would be a test for the use of such material but again of course the rules relating to the use and release of CCTV material have tightened considerably.

John Thurso: I do not think that it really applies to any of you here but if one happens to be channel flicking on the satellite, you can come across channels which are almost entirely devoted to CCTV footage and police video camera footage which shows some quite extraordinary things. I think what you are saying is that it is not something that happens in this country, but certainly if you look at some of the tapes that are shown through American stations, it would seem to be a fairly gross intrusion on some people= s privacy and some of it actually seems to be actively glorifying speeding and all sorts of other crime, but I think you are confirming that that is not an approach that is taken.

Mr Bryant

It is on ITV not on ITN.

(Mr Jermey) ITN does not make any programmes of that nature.

Michael Fabricant

Last night, I attended a wake; it was Patricia Hodgson presenting her final report for the Independent Television Commission and things are going to be very different next year. I was wondering how the BBC are adapting to the fact that, at least under the first pillar, the BBC is going to not be the final backstop on some of some of these issues and the ITC is going to have to slum it like ITN has for years and have a regulatory body over and above you. Has that altered any of the manner in which you will deal with these issues at all?

(Mr Whittle) First of all, in terms of what you are actually inquiring into, the BBC is already subject to an external regulatory, the Broadcasting Standards Commission, which has its code of fairness and privacy to which C

But no statutory power.

(Mr Whittle) It has the statutory power of requiring the BBC to appear and to answer the complaint. It also has the statutory power of compelling the BBC to publish a statement if they find against the programme on air as well as publication in a newspaper or magazine if they find against the BBC. So, the notion of having this external look at what we do is not new, though clearly, with the arrival of OFCOM, it will be over a much bigger territory and also, as you know too, OFCOM will have the power to fine the BBC in circumstances yet to be determined by OFCOM. So, of course the BBC is going to be thinking quite hard about its relationship with OFCOM, about the nature of the OFCOM codes and about the whole compliance of the BBC towards those codes.

So back to my original question, how has it so far actually affected programme guidelines and producers= guidelines or is too early to have made any decisions?

(Mr Whittle) Every time the BSC currently finds against the BBC, that causes a rethink within the BBC about what happened and whether it should happen again. So, for example, on a recent finding of the BSC in relation to a programme that was following the work of the Ambulance Service, we have learned some valuable lessons there about where the line should be drawn regarding the coverage of accidents and accident victims. So, the whole process is an ongoing one in which we learn from the adjudications that the BSC provide.

Mr Sambrook, have you had any thoughts on this issue?

(Mr Sambrook) Not directly because, as my colleague said, we are already subject to the Broadcasting Standards Commission in those areas and, to be honest with you, we hope that the procedures we have in place and the guidelines we have in place are proper and robust enough and will be appropriate under OFCOM as well. I am sure that they will evolve and develop with experience, but I cannot say that we have had a complete rethink about how we would produce programmes or have yet to recognise any other factors that we should take into account at this stage.

Do you think that it will hinder news gathering and news production?

(Mr Sambrook) I do not think so, no, because I do not believe that we will be subject to any restraints that would hinder the way in which we operate at the moment. At the moment, we try to operate responsibly and fairly and I cannot yet at the moment see any way that would be unduly affected.

ITN does not get off that easily because this is now addressed to both groups. When we had the tabloid editors, they said, A When we are doorstepping people= s homes, we are not actually the great ones at fault at all. It is the TV people with their cameras and their lights and their microphones and all the other paraphernalia. They are the ones who do not get off the lawn.@ Would you like to comment on that?

(Mr Jermey) I would quite happily comment on that and say that I do not think ITN doorsteps people in an intrusive manner.

How can you doorstep in an unintrusive manner?

(Mr Jermey) For instance, the example of being on somebody= s lawn. The way we conduct doorsteps is on public property seeking to ask people in the news a question. We do not spend weeks camped outside people= s houses. We seek to talk to people on the days when a news story is there and do so in a reasonable manner and I think that in most cases where there is not an overriding public interest reason not to, if people indicate that they do not wish to answer questions and ask us to leave, in most circumstances we would.

(Mr Battle) Also, in the codes themselves, where you are carrying out a specific journalistic investigation, before doorstepping takes place, you should put the allegation in writing to the individual in order that they are aware that the allegation that is being made is an allegation of serious wrongdoing and it is only if they do not answer and it is unreasonable that they do not answer and you want to give them the opportunity to reply that you doorstep. That is in a specific investigation. You would not just say, A Let= s go out and doorstep.@ There is a procedure that has to be followed.

But there are other circumstances when you doorstep, not necessarily referring to ITN but I guess the BBC too. Soham is an example. Did you learn any lessons from that?

(Mr Sambrook) What happened in Soham was that we again worked with third parties, worked with the police and the local vicar in terms of approaching any families at all. We worked very closely between national programmes and regional programmes to coordinate and make sure that we only had one crew at any particular location and indeed C

And you saved licence payers= money as well.

(Mr Sambrook) That is another extremely important consideration. We also worked very closely with our colleagues at ITN and Sky and pooled some of the most sensitive approaches there. I would also say - and none of this came up in earlier evidence before this Committee - that we withdrew from Soham as soon as it was indicated that the community wished us to and I think we withdrew more or less at exactly the same time as the newspapers did.

Rosemary McKenna mentioned 24-hour news which I think is very important and is very much coming of age now with the Iraqi war, but is an important service and News 24 and ITN= s 24 hour service are both very, very good, but is there now increasing pressure really to fill up airtime with not just talking heads but with pictures to actually have cameras, scanners and all the rest of it that go with it for outside broadcasts in Soham-type situations? I am not referring now to Soham particularly, but is there not a pressure on you in order to provide pictures to be doing just this which maybe there was not before when you just had a bulletin at one o= clock, six o= clock and ten o= clock?

(Mr Sambrook) I think that there is certainly with the 24-hour news channels appetite for material, but I believe our judgment about how we deploy into those sorts of situations and when we deploy and when we withdraw are subject to the same kinds of guidelines and the same kinds of editorial standards it has always been and that is why I think Soham is quite a good example of where we sought to reduce the impact of our presence as far as we could and, as soon as it was clear that the community wished us to go, we went.

(Mr Jermey) I agree. I think it is possible to exaggerate the difference every time. I remember being in Lockerbie before 24-hour news channels and there was an awful lot of equipment in those days and quite a lot of the considerations about pulling out of Lockerbie applied in Dunblane and applied in Soham. I think there are important issues there but they are issues that have always been there and I am not sure that there has been a change of kind.

Finally, may I just ask about another form of doorstepping, the sort of programmes where you are doing consumer programmes and I guess this is not so much ITN now but more BBC or ITV companies. We have all seen where the intrepid interviewer goes marching forward with a microphone in his hand followed by the cameraman and the chap who is trying to slam the door in the interviewer= s face or the dog is let loose and all the rest of it. In a way, if a person has not been convicted, even if he is the biggest A crook@ out, he is still an individual. How do you defend that sort of doorstepping if doorstepping is the word?

(Mr Whittle) Because they have a right of reply and usually those programmes have investigated and have demonstrated that there are questions to answer and have sought by a variety of means, usually without the doorstep, to get a reply in order to give that person an opportunity to respond to the allegations that are being made. Only in the last resort does one actually doorstep in order precisely to give them an opportunity to reply to the allegations that are being made.

Chairman

Is there not a problem for which neither of you is responsible but in which both cases is imposed both on you and on us, namely that ITN is a specific organisation which operates under a licence. Your unit or even the BBC as a whole is very different. You operate under a charter. ITN, as a company both under the present legislation under the ITC and under OFCOM, is liable, if it is judged that that is appropriate, to be fined - and could be fined massively, many millions of pounds - and could even have its licence taken away and that would prevail under OFCOM. So, there are very condign potential penalties for ITN or for any other ITV company or any other non-BBC broadcasting organisation. In the case of the BBC - and we looked at this in the Bill - the power of OFCOM, although OFCOM will have certain very distinct powers over the BBC, those powers cannot extend to taking away the BBC= s royal charter because that is not the statutory endowment within the Broadcasting Act and what will become the Communication Act is the charter. Therefore, looking at the worst scenario of the deepest ill of which the BBC is capable, there is no way under statute of dealing with that and even if there were, say, a power to fine, that would be a waste of time because whereas ITN would be fining out of its own funds, the BBC would simply be paying a fine out of the licence money, so there is absolutely no point in fining the BBC. There is therefore and will remain so a very serious disparity between the way in which ITN is answerable for any errors it makes and is the BBC as a whole, not simply BBC news, is answerable for any errors. I will ask our witnesses from ITN first, do you find that a satisfactory situation and I will ask our friends from the BBC too, do you find that a satisfactory situation?

(Mr Jermey) It is a very elegant argument. In the narrow area you are looking at in terms of privacy of individuals, I cannot envisage circumstances in which the ITC is likely to produce the sort of heavy fines you refer to or where, under any system of regulation, the BBC would be opened up to that. If you are asking the question in a much more open way than that on the regulation of the BBC and OFCOM, I could happily give you an answer but I suspect that it goes beyond the terms of your inquiry.

(Mr Sambrook) Constitutionally, of course, you are right and, as you put it, for the most heinous of crimes that might be imaginable, I can see that there is a difference there. However, I have to say that I think that, in terms of day-to-day practice not only for privacy but indeed in other areas of editorial policy, I do not believe that it would make any difference to people working for the BBC because we take our current producer guidelines extremely seriously, we take breaches of them extremely seriously and we take our internal complaints and referral processes seriously and I genuinely do not believe, in terms of day-to-day activity, that, if that kind of sanction existed, it would make any difference to the way in which the programme is put together.

I accept that and I accept what Mr Jermey has said as well, but we just heard from the editors and the other editors who have been here and of course the absolutely excellent witnesses we had from the Press Complaints Commission. That is the private sector, not statutory, they regulate themselves. However you are very different. You are both public sector, you are statutory or on charter and you do not regulate yourselves. That being so, although you are very different from the press - and I would not wish the press to be under the constraints you are under because anybody can open a newspaper and anybody has the right to open a newspaper if they have the money - do you not think that this is a very, very messy way of dealing with what is an extremely basic subject, namely the right of the individual to have her or his privacy and not be intruded upon except for public interest reasons, by the media?

(Mr Sambrook) I recognise what you are saying, Chairman, but I have to say that I think that, to some extent under OFCOM, it is beginning to come together and what has happened is that I think all broadcasters have very similar codes and standards of practice on it and, from that point of view, there is some consistency across the broadcast area. In terms of the kind of constitutional inconsistency that you point to, I acknowledge what you are saying but I am not sure that I can go much further than that.

Things are very different in the United States. As far as the press are concerned, not all of the states by any means but a number of the states have privacy legislation, protected by the First Amendment but they have privacy legislation. As we found on the last occasion that this Committee was in the United States and met the FCC, the FCC is an extremely tough organisation if I may say so, far tougher than the ITC has ever been. So, although in the United States there is a freedom of expression that I think is much wider than in this country, at the same time, the constraints in the United States are greater. Do you think we have any lessons to learn from that?

(Mr Jermey) I suspect that you know more about the FCC then I do, Chairman, but its powers, whilst immense, are more exercised in the economic sector than in the micro-management of content and I suspect that American broadcasters feel that they have very extensive rights reflected by the constitution to report as they see fit. We are very happy with the way we have been regulated by both the ITC and the BSC; we think bringing it together in one body in OFCOM does remove the potential problem for us of double-jeopardy of two bodies considering the one issue, but we feel that if OFCOM operates in a similar way to the way the ITC and its predecessors has operated and BSC has operated, we will have the sort of freedoms we need to report in a free society. So, I think we are happy to continue with the UK precedent rather than a great desire to move to a more American model.

(Mr Whittle) The other huge advantage that we have recently experienced is the arrival of the Human Rights Act which on the one hand recognises freedom of expression while on the other hand recognising the right of individuals to privacy and seeking to get the balance right between those two important rights but, as you will remember as well, the Act makes provision for people who feel that those rights are being violated by the media to have their complaints judged against the existing codes of the media, whether they are on the one hand the Press Complaints Commission codes or, in our case, Broadcasting Standards Commission or indeed the producer guidelines.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.

Memorandum submitted by Mr Clive Soley

Examination of Witness

MR CLIVE SOLEY, a Member of the House, examined.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for coming before us, it is greatly appreciated.

Michael Fabricant

Ten or 11 years ago I was a new, virginal member of Parliament, and I remember serving on what was a sort of select committee, which was your private members Bill to introduce privacy legislation. From what I can remember of it, all of those ten or 11 years ago, a whole series of people came to us and gave evidence about how their lives had been destroyed, I think, one might correctly say, by some media. Has anything changed in the last ten or 11 years? In your view has the situation improved?

(Mr Soley) It has. Let me say, you can now get the book or the film, which is lodged in the House of Commons Library. You are right, you served on it. I have a correction, it was not a privacy Bill, it was a Bill on the freedom of the responsibility of the press, we deliberately left out privacy because of the conflict with press freedom and greater uncertainty about it. The core question you ask, has anything changed? Yes, it has. It is marginally better, but it is still nowhere near good enough. In my mind the core of the problem is the failure of the Press Complaints Commission as an effective regulatory body.

Why do you think there is this failure? Is it because of their inability to impose strong sanctions against the media and/or is it because they are made up not only of lay people but also the press themselves? What is the genesis of their weakness?

(Mr Soley) It is a number of things: First of all, it is set up by the press for the press, I think it starts from the wrong position. It is not just a funding issue, the funding of the Press Complaints Commission, which is by the press, I think one could live with that if, as you indicate, there was a greater balance between lay members and editors. You may remember from the hearings 11 years ago that at that stage there was a majority of members of the press on the Press Complaints Commission itself, and they defended that hotly. It was yet another example of dragging teeth out painfully over many years before they accepted that it should not be a majority. It is still six out of 14 at the moment. There are 16 Commission members and seven are editors. There is one vacancy at the moment. On top of that, as I think was pointed out to your Committee during the evidence session from the PCC, the whole of the code is drawn up by the code committee and every member of that committee is a member of the press. If you go down the road of creating a structure that is so dominated by the press you immediately put it in in terms of the interests of the press rather than of the reading public or the complainant. The key problem is the philosophy of the PCC, it is basically a philosophy for negotiating between a complainant and the editor, not adjudicating on complaints. The editors are always in a stronger position, partly because of the knowledge, frankly. The other big failure of the PCC is the failure to address the needs of the reading public, in other words it does not see itself as having a consumer protection role. It is interesting if you look at their latest publication you will see - I am sure you are familiar with this, this is the Annual Review 2002 - on page 10 there is a heading A Caring for the Customer@ . The customer turns out to be the complainant. There is no concept of the people who read the newspapers as having any right whatsoever. There is a whole range of issues of that type where, frankly, however you look at it the PCC is a body set up for the press by the press and it is there to protect the interests of the press.

That is quite an indictment. Do you say that the PCC should be reformed by changing its make-up, by changing its charter, by changing its role or do you say that the PCC should be scraped altogether and be replaced with something else? If so, what else?

(Mr Soley) I think one of the other people you took evidence from was Professor Bryant, who started off in the opposite position to me at the time, saying that we should not go down the road of having a Privacy Act or a statutory press complaints body. I started off in that position, however I think both of us have moved towards each other. I would rather have a self-regulatory body if it is possible. I have to say the evidence over all of the years, really since the Second World War, as I indicate in the paper I put to you, has been of abuse by the press, followed by an outcry over a period of time, followed by retraction by the press and retrenchment and another set of views. I dearly want to make it work. I do get the feeling that in recent years - and you asked me what has changed over the last ten or 11 years - I think there is a greater awareness by the press that they are on the defensive. One of the reasons I mentioned in there the recommendation about OFCOM having an additional duty was to try and keep the pressure up over a period of time so that it did not keep slipping off the agenda, which is what it was prone to do.

Earlier on this afternoon we were talking about the fact that there is going to be a legislative framework, whether we like it or not, through the adoption of the Human Rights Act. Would you prefer to see that legislation framed in law or would you prefer to see an evolution through case law?

(Mr Soley) I think I would rather give case law time to work. If you ask me what I would now like to see in the short run, ie the next few years, I would like to see human rights legislation drawn up by case law and I would like to see the Press Complaints Commission radically reform itself into a more effective self-regulating body.

You would not give the backstop to OFCOM and just get rid of the PCC altogether?

(Mr Soley) It has crossed my mind on a number of occasions. I know OFCOM would resist that at the moment. I think everyone is unreasonably scared of having a statutory regulation of newspapers, because it can work, and it does work in other countries, so you should no throw the baby out with the bath water. If you can make press self-regulation work then I would prefer to do so. There is no indication that the PCC or newspaper owners or editors take it seriously enough at this moment to make it work. The pressure has to be maintained. I would say if that fails over the next few years - because this is not just about privacy, although I know your Committee is most interested in that, it has this whole range of issues about accuracy and the impact that has on individuals, which often exposes them to invasions of privacy - in that whole area you would look at some form of statutory response which could be, as I indicate in my paper, you could make the existing justiciable.

Derek Wyatt

I am just wondering how we make the PCC more accountable, I cannot see there will be much change to the system. Would you rather there were just lay members, rather than editors, on the board?

(Mr Soley) If I was looking for a model that might work I would say, first of all you need to have them before committees of this nature more often, which is why I would like OFCOM to have what I attempted to move in the House of Commons, and I know it was resisted by, and sadly, in my view, and wrongly, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Secretary of State for Culture, a power to review and report on the effectiveness of self-regulation. I still think we ought to go down that road, and that would keep the pressure up, if you like, for constant challenge. Secondly, I would like to see a greater number of lay people on the board, as you indicated, but most importantly I would like some people on the board who have a knowledge of consumer interest. If you look at how the lay members get there it is quite interesting. I notice from one of your questions concerning a particular lay member the explanation was given that he had known her for a number of years and asked her if she would like to apply. That does not seem the best way of making up your committee. Members with consumer rights experience would be important. Again, I would very strongly recommend that the code committee itself has a minority of newspaper people on it, it needs somebody, but it does not need to be 100 per cent and it should not even be a majority. I would also like them to have a proactive stance. I noticed in their evidence to you their definition of proactivity was to go round the schools telling everybody what a good job they did. My example of proactivity, and I referred to it as an example in the paper, is where you get a glaring breach of the code but they choose not to act. I gave the example of the four year old child in the Daily Mail. Everybody knew it must have been a breach, but when I raised it with the PCC I was told, A Yes, it is an interesting question, we would like to know what the editor would say@ . That says everything that is wrong with the PCC. It should not have taken me to do that on the part of a four year old child, whom I had no contact with or any knowledge of.

Given we have lost OFCOM for the moment do you think a backstop power could be an information commissioner, an ombudsman or this Committee, or what?

(Mr Soley) An ombudsman is an interesting suggestion. I certainly think if it was possible for your Committee to see them every year that would be very helpful, I do not know whether that is possible or not.

How about the hearings, do you think the hearings should be in public more or not?

(Mr Soley) The hearings within the PCC?

Yes.

(Mr Soley) If you look at what happens it is a classic negotiating position where one person holds most of the cards, they simply take the complaint, they put it to the editor, the editor then makes various suggestions as to what might be an acceptable compromise and the person at the other end says yes. What they really need is, if you like, a complainants friend, who takes a much more proactive role on behalf of the complainant, actually fights their case for them. The reality is that if any of us complain we at least know how the system works, but you have to bear in mind most of the people - and Michael Fabricant will remember the people we took evidence from - have no knowledge of how it works, they are very vulnerable when they are suddenly presented with a crowd from the press. Even when they are given an opportunity to put their side of it they often get in a muddle or do not put the best case forward, they are at a disadvantage. The PCC needs to recognise that complainants are generally at a disadvantage and make sure that their structure enables the complainant to have a more forceful voice.

Chairman

Is there not a problem because obviously to people who believe in access to information there is a great attraction in public hearings, and this Committee when it conducted its inquiry on the Communications Bill recommended that both OFCOM and the BBC governors should hold their meetings in public. There is a very great attraction in the Press Complaints Commission meeting in public for most things. We are looking at privacy, is the difficulty here that people who feel their privacy has been intruded upon will be reluctant for a public hearing, which would trail their private lives even more?

(Mr Soley) I might have misunderstood that. I was talking about a different sort of public hearing. If you are talking about cases of privacy I would say in almost all cases they should be confidential, certainly if the person wants that. There are exceptions, the person might want it to be open and my general presumption would be in favour of openness. If any complainant in any situation before a regulatory body wants privacy they should certainly have it. It is certainly true, and this was given to us in evidence in 1992, that the vast majority of people who wrote to me at that stage, and who did not complain, felt that they did not want to complain because they felt the whole issue would be reopened and they would be vulnerable all over again.

Rosemary McKenna

We took evidence in private from people and it was quite clear from their evidence that they did not want to appear in public because they had already suffered media intrusion. In the analysis of that, of those cases they dismissed 20 because they were about inaccuracy. You have already mentioned this, could you expand on that? I think it was the inaccuracy and the distortion that created the intrusion. Would you agree with that?

(Mr Soley) Very strongly. I have not done this exercise recently, but again in 1992 when I did do it, I cannot remember the precise figures, but something like 80 per cent of complaints about invasion on privacy came from a story alleged by the complainant to be inaccurate in the first instance, and it can be extreme. The allegation of the paediatrician who was supposed to be a paedophile is a classic example of a gross inaccuracy leading to a gross invasion of privacy. If you think of it in more conventional cases it is very often of that type.

That is exactly what I thought.

(Mr Soley) Which is why the accuracy issue is so important. Also interesting is why the PCC, although it claims to deal with accuracy forcefully, in my judgment does not deal with accuracy forcefully. When I first started on this many years ago they used to claim, and the evidence is in the book of the hearings, the PCC argued then that you could not adjudicate on accuracy because one person's accuracy was another person's inaccuracy, yet it was Article 1 in their own code, so you wonder why it was there.

They seem to have over-reacted to this inquiry. Someone said last week that the freedom of expression was now under more threat than it has ever been, and cited this Committee's inquiry. They seem to have over-reacted. However, even if this Committee says that it does not make any recommendations at all for change there is still a concern about peoples' private lives, is there any one thing that you could think about that the PCC could do that would help in those situations?

(Mr Soley) I would say appoint someone who has an understanding of consumer rights and individual rights and allow them to be the person's representative, if you like, to argue the case for them.

They would be appointed as an advocate.

(Mr Soley) An advocate in that situation. I would say that would help for a person from ordinary society, if you like, not somebody who is well known in politics, the media or the Royal Family. In terms of everyday people someone who is an advocate for them could be an important step forward and should be seen, if you like, to take on the negotiation on their part, even though I do not like the negotiating role, someone who could speak for them and with them with some experience of the press.

The other side of the coin is, how would we preserve freedom of speech and the capacity to undertake investigative journalism, how would that be preserved if the PCC was reformed?

(Mr Soley) I think the press makes too much of this at times. I am very, very strongly in favour of a free press. It is always important to remember that journalism is a wonderful trade, if you look at the number of journalists, photographers and others killed in war it shows what a great trade and an important trade it is. The problem lies with certain editors and certain owners, frankly they lack a management structure which gives a high enough profile to the quality of control. The reason why I say I think they put too much emphasis on it is, if you look, as you were a few moments ago, at the electronic media they are actually regulated by law and they have in the old Broadcasting Act - I think the wording is the same in the new one - a requirement to publish news impartially and fairly. No one, to my knowledge, accuses the BBC or ITV or any of the others as not being good at investigative journalism, indeed they have worldwide reputations for good investigative journalism. I am not quite clear why it is that a law that requires the BBC and ITV to put in a level of management which does look at quality without inhibiting investigative journalism, why that would not have a similar impact with the press. I am therefore not convinced of the argument that all forms of legislation restrict press freedom, and certainly that is not the case in a number of European countries. In a way one of the problems of the British press is it is very bad at separating news from comment, you are never quite sure whether what you are reading as a news story is comment or news, other countries are better at separating that out. Secondly, they are very reluctant to publish corrections. It took me many years to get newspapers to admit that maybe there was a case for a corrections column, nearly all of them fought it like mad. Eventually the Guardian used one and nobody thinks it is any worse of a paper for now having a corrections column.

Mr Bryant

Clive, on several occasions you have mentioned the idea of making the existing code justiciable, and I heard other people use it as well, it sounds very impressive, but I wonder exactly what you mean by it?

(Mr Soley) If you had to go down that road - and I indicate that for me it would be an indication that finally we had given up on self-regulation if you go down that road - what you would do is say, take the code as it existed at a given point in time, you could take a newspaper to court on that basis and ask to have a correction published. Once you involve the law the issue is really the punishment. You do not want fines or imprisonment for editors, you want a correction of the story. If you went down that road you could then give judges a power to interpret that code as part of basic justice, and if the code changed they could take that into account. It would be a clumsy thing to do but in a way it would be the most targeted way of creating a legal angle other than setting up a special body. The alternative is to set up a statutory press complaints body.

One argument that the PCC might use against that, or indeed have, is anything that is written down in law and requires going to court is immediately much more expensive to the complainant and therefore actually would make access to redress more difficult for the average person rather than easier. The other argument that others than the PCC might advance is, if you take the code at any one moment then it is not able to evolve and the truth is that many of these issues have evolved over the last ten or 12 years, and probably will again, and the code will need to evolve over the next 15 years to come.

(Mr Soley) The second one is easier that the first, the second one you deal with by allowing a judge to take into account any changes to the code that are made, so they do not have to apply them but they can take them into account. The first one is more difficult, you would make it more difficult for a person to challenge, especially if legal aid was not available. The argument, in a sense, starts from a different position. It goes back to what I said about the BBC and ITV required to produce news that is accurate and impartial. The effect of the law is to raise standards, what it says to a newspaper or an agency is, A If you do not raise your standards and make sure you screen out mistakes of this type then you are liable to be sued or approached by somebody who wants to challenge you@ . It makes them more careful. I cannot prove this, but I suspect that is why the electronic media is less prone to making these type of mistakes, because they have a layer of management which addresses the concern, whereas in newspapers you do not have that. The newspapers would say that the editor does that, but the editor is running round like mad trying to decide what goes in the newspaper and what does not. This will be on his agenda but it will not be very high up it and it will not be any one person's responsibility, with one or two exceptions in the newspaper industry who are now trying to meet that requirement. I do not want to go down that road if I can avoid it. I simply say that we have been giving the self-regulation argument many, many years of hope, and so on, but it always seems to be that experience betrays the hope.

One of the things that seems very uncertain is the issue of whether at the moment the PCC will entertain third party complaints. We have been copied in on some correspondence round one case, which I will not mention by name because that person does not want it to have further currency. The Press Complaints Commission said, A No, you cannot complain on behalf of a third party@ . You seem to be saying the same, but when the PCC were here they seemed to be saying there were occasions when they would accept third party complaints. What is your understanding?

(Mr Soley) My argument would be that they are very unclear about it and woolly, frankly. You need to watch the small print here. It is a bit like the answer that was given to you about paying police officers, incidentally I could deal with that if you want me to. The issue about third party complaints is a bit like headlines, you will get different answers at different times. What happens if the headline is inaccurate? You will often be told that it does not matter as long as the story puts it right, other times they say, A We will an adjudicate on it@ . It is the same with third party complaints. The PCC have taken third party complaints from me because I have made quite a lot of complaints on behalf of other people.

Other people from whom you had permission or people that you just thought up for yourself?

(Mr Soley) In at least two cases, very powerful cases, in my view, I took them out without permission. One of them is the example in here of the four year old child with her name underneath, on the front page of the Daily Mail. There was another case, a few years ago now, but of the same order, where the headline said, A Boy 11 held for murder@ and on page 3 right down the bottom it had a correct quote from the police saying, A We do not hold the murderer in these cells we hold a juvenile who may have been a witness@ . As a result of that the family were driven out of their home and when I asked the PCC to investigate their answer was, firstly the headline had been corrected by the story - the headline you could read from one end of a tube carriage to the other - and secondly they could not get hold of the family to encourage them to complain - they thought they ought to complain too -because the family had fled because they were surrounded by a mob and they were in temporary accommodation, they had been driven out. At that stage they did not take my complaint but I think they would do now. I do not know what they would do if, as in both those cases, the individuals did not complain. Indeed part of their defence on the four year old child was that the grandmother had said that it was all right to use it, that was the Daily Mail's defence. If you think about it, the mother being in prison does not lose her right as a parent and, secondly, and more importantly, whether she does or she does not anyone with basic common sense knows you do not run a picture of a four year old child with her name underneath telling everyone that her mother has just been sent to prison by her grandmother. It was an important story in its own right but you did not need a photograph and name. They are very inconsistent in their attitude towards headlines and towards third party, they need to have a system where they do scan the press themselves in a proactive was, pick up stories like that and follow them up in the same way that I did. That is what I would do if I was a member of the PCC, which is probably why I am not a member of the PCC.

Mr Bryant: Maybe this should be your next job!

Chairman

I can quite understand the press, which are a private sector industry, not statutory in any way, and are regulated through the self-regulation of the PCC, objecting to the idea of the any external back stoppage as statutory, but on the other hand there are precedents for self-regulation to provide its own backstop. For example, if you make a complaint to the Law Society against a solicitor there is an ombudsman to whom you can go if you are not satisfied. Do you think that the press and the Press Complaints Commission might save themselves a great deal of difficulty if they appointed their own independent backstop to whom a complainant could appeal if that complainant was not satisfied with the verdict of the PCC?

(Mr Soley) Yes, I do. They would have to avoid the mistake they made in every other example of this type and make sure they were genuinely independent, 100 per cent independent of the press. If you went down that road it would be a good thing to do. Can I just say to you on your preamble to that question, the press will often say, A We do not want to be treated specially@ , but if you look at their impact on the law they do go to great efforts to write in protection. The Data Protection Act is the classic one, where the previous Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Lord Wakeham, lobbied the then Home Secretary like mad to get the PCC and the press taken out of the Data Protection Act, they were taken out, are taken out, and in my view that is a mistake.

The Data Protection Act is one of the most insane pieces of legislation ever passed by this House. On Saturday I met a constituent who told me his telephone was stolen, it was retrieved, and when he asked for the numbers which had been used by the thief while the thief had possession of his telephone he was told he could not be given that information because of the Data Protection Act. Mr Soley, you have done more work on these issues than any other Member of Parliament, your perceptions are particularly valuable and we are grateful to you for sharing them with us. Thank you.

(Mr Soley) Thank you very much.