Oral evidence

Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Wednesday 21 May 2003

Members present:

M Gerald Kaufman, in the Chair
Mr Chris Bryant
Mr Frank Doran
Michael Fabricant
Mr Adrian Flook
Rosemary McKenna
Derek Wyatt

__________

Witness: SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER KCMG, Chairman, Press Complaints Commission, examined.

Chairman: We welcome Sir Christopher Meyer to his first appearance before the Committee. I am going to call on Chris Bryant to start the questioning.

Q957  Mr Bryant: Hello, Sir Christopher. It is very good to have you along. It was nice to meet you last year in Washington, when you had the Select Committee to visit you.

Sir Christopher Meyer: May I say that it was a pleasure to have you there as well.

Q958  Mr Bryant: However, you have said a few things in public since you have been appointed, and I wonder if I can take you up on one of them. You identified some heresies that you believe people might be thinking of imposing upon the PCC and on regulation of the media. One that you mention is "any measure that would turn the PCC into a directive body, initiating complaints at random, intervening in issues which are nothing to do with the Code, or establishing any superior service for the rich and famous." I am sure we would all agree that we would not want to see any service that was special for the rich and famous, but we have heard from quite a lot of people who are concerned that you never take up third-party complaints, and you do not initiate any areas of interest where there might be a serious public interest in seeing how you see the lie of the land.

Sir Christopher Meyer: Obviously, when I was preparing for this job I became aware of the criticism that the PCC was not sufficiently proactive. That is a word I hear a very great deal of. I obviously looked into the record, and I thought that actually, this was an unfair charge, the issue being not should the PCC be proactive, because I think it is proactive, and I will mention one or two points of detail in a moment; the issue really is whether it should be more proactive than it is at the moment. In the very brief time I have been Chairman - I have only been doing it for six and a half weeks - one suggestion put to me was that the PCC should "roam across" the entire territory of British newspapers, looking for, for example, examples of inaccuracy or whatever. This seemed to me an entirely unrealistic notion. We have an establishment of 13 at the moment, which includes me. We would have to set up a vast, Orwellian organisation, which would look at every newspaper in the land and try to see whether there was something wrong in a story. That may not be what you have been saying, but it is what some others have been saying. I was pleased to see that the PCC has taken action of its own initiative without the benefit of being kick-started by a complainant. I notice that under my predecessors notes were sent to editors at the time of the Dunblane shooting, at the time of the Paddington rail disaster, at the time of the Amy Gehring case, when there was an issue of payments to witnesses, and I can see a very strong case for doing things similarly in the future.

Q959  Mr Bryant: Can I just take you up on that? That is the first time we have heard about any of these, and I presume that none of these instances that you are raising are in the public domain.

Sir Christopher Meyer: I have to say to you, Mr Bryant, that I culled that information from the submission which my predecessors put to your Committee in February or March.

Q960  Mr Bryant: When we asked Mr Black in this very room what instances there were of any proactive work that they had done, these were not referred to at all. In fact, effectively we were told that there was no proactive work that the PCC engaged in. Sorry, there was one instance which was mentioned, which was, of course, the work that you have done around trying to negotiate a deal between the newspapers and the royal household.

Sir Christopher Meyer: All I can say to you is this: not having read the record of Mr Black's testimony and his exchanges with you when he came in to see you in March, all I can say to you is that a very important part of my preparation for this job was reading the large submission that was put to you by the PCC, and it was there - I do not think I am mistaken in this - that I was pleased to see those references. That leaves aside the other activity which the PCC engages in - and I know this is much appreciated by newspapers because I have been travelling around the UK talking to them in the last five or six weeks - in helping to train journalists, in taking part in seminars, in which great issues are discussed in which the press has a role, for example, asylum seekers and refugees. So I think there is a fair degree of - and I must say, Chairman, I prefer the word "activity" to "proactivity".

Q961  Chairman: It is a horrible word, but it appears to be all we have, Sir Christopher.

Sir Christopher Meyer: I know. I have been trying to say "activity" on the record but it always comes back to me as "proactivity." I think I am not mistaken in saying that there is currently a case, initiated by the PCC before my time, vis-a-vis a newspaper over a payment to a criminal. So I think this is a pretty active body.

Q962  Mr Bryant: One of the issues that has been raised by one of the people who has appeared as a witness before us, Rebekah Wade, is the issue of the relationship between the police and newspapers. We have been told by her that her newspaper has paid the police for information. That is obviously an issue which must be of major concern to most readers of newspapers and most people who pay for the police through their taxes and, I would have thought, for the PCC as well. Is that not the kind of area where, without the "Aunt Sally" direction that you seem to be going down of creating an Orwellian organisation that is going to look at every single jot and tittle of what is appearing in a newspaper, you could play an active role in looking at the issues and exposing the problems if there are problems?

Sir Christopher Meyer: There are two ways of answering that, and I will use both ways. One is to take the easy dodge and say what has been said and done before I was Chairman has been said and done, and I am determined to set my own course and my own path, and I have sketched out some ideas, that may or may not run, in the speech which I made to the Newspaper Society. It does not need the Chairman of the PCC to tell newspaper editors that they should not break the law. I am very happy to do that, and I am doing it now, if you like, in answer to your question. That seems to me as plain as a pikestaff.

Q963  Mr Bryant: But the PCC is in a unique position in being able to talk confidentially - and you have suggested some of the work that your predecessor has done has always been on a very confidential basis - to newspaper editors to ascertain what is really going on. It is uncertain, I would suggest, precisely how buying or selling of information, depending on what the buying or selling of information process is, is illegal. So again, you are setting up a second Aunt Sally here.

Sir Christopher Meyer: Mr Bryant, I think you are being a bit unfair here. I am not here to set up Aunt Sallies. I am actually responding to things I have heard quite a deal of in the brief time that I have been Chairman, and I am trying to respond to points that have been made to me, I have to say, in a very intensive period of consultations which I have been undertaking. I have not only been in London: I have been in Manchester, Liverpool, Belfast, Falkirk, Dundee, Edinburgh, and somewhere else which I have now forgotten, and I am doing Wolverhampton, Barnsley, Oldham, Norwich before the summer break, and I am doing Cardiff in September some time. This is pretty intensive at the moment, but I am going to carry on painting the Forth Bridge, if you will, and you hear all kinds of things as you go round the country. I am not trying to create a straw man; I am responding to something specific.

Q964  Mr Bryant: One of the issues there was in the big report that we were sent by the PCC and which we have all read was in reference to Soham and the work that the PCC did to try and make sure that there was not excessive media intrusion there. Part of that revolved around the work of the local vicar. But I suspect if you were to ask the general public where they think the PCC is most active, it is actually in looking after the rich and the famous, and in particular, the deal that you have done with the royal family.

Sir Christopher Meyer: As the Americans might say, can I try and deconstruct that? The reality is that when I look at the work of the PCC, it reminds me of an enormous iceberg. The bit that you see most obviously above the surface, which actually is written about by newspapers and is discussed in Select Committees and places like that, tends to be the work as it relates to people who are in the public eye. They may be footballers, they may be fashion models, they may be politicians, they may be members of royal families. In reality, the massive bulk of the work - 95 per cent if you want arithmetic precision - which tends to be below the surface is what we do with ordinary people. Do not ask me to define an ordinary person, but you know what I am trying to get at. So in a way, it is unfair that there is a public perception of the work of this organisation which focuses on the rich and the famous and the celebrated, because that is not what we are doing most of the time.

Q965  Mr Bryant: Most of the time you are responding to complaints, so the 95 per cent is the complaints on behalf of ordinary people, but the five per cent of proactive or active work - is this what you are saying - is when you do a deal?

Sir Christopher Meyer: I must get back to this "doing a deal" and comment on that before we move on to some other aspect. On this "doing a deal," I presume you are talking about relations between Prince William and the newspaper editors. One of the first things I read as I was preparing for this job was a speech made by Lord Wakeham in St Bride's church in 1995 - you could not choose a much more public place in which to make such a speech - in which he set out what I thought were some very sensible, common-sense guidelines about how St James's Palace and Prince William should interact with newspapers. There was no cosy, pokey, hole-in-the-wall deal here. This was out there in public. I have already had the opportunity to say that this arrangement which John Wakeham described back in 1995 is such obvious common sense, and has been so robust so far, that you would be barking mad to let it slip away while Prince William is at university.

Q966  Chairman: There are two things that I would like to follow on from what Chris Bryant has been saying. Let us take as an example the public statements that have been made over the past few days about respect for Prince William's privacy, even though he cannot any longer be categorised as a child. There could be those - I do not think it would be members of this Committee - who are not out and out royalists who say that now that Prince William is recognised as being an adult, and he is a public figure, he is as much liable - not to have his privacy invaded, obviously; nobody, public or private, should have that happen, but in his public appearances, he should be no more liable to special protection than any other adult public figure. If what appears to have happened, namely the Press Complaints Commission say that he is still to have some protection, I will not quarrel with that, but what I would ask is, is he the only conceivable person who would appear to merit that special treatment? I exclude from other conceivable persons every politician; I am not for a moment indicating that any politician or adult child of a politician should have that protection, though there are certain implications when, say, the son of a politician who is alleged to have committed a criminal offence only gets that report in the national press because he or she is the son or daughter of a politician.

Sir Christopher Meyer: What I am saying is intended to be very simple and straightforward here. I think everybody in principle is equal before the Code of Practice, but over the years a particular arrangement has grown up between St James's Palace and the newspaper editors which I think is simply an example of sheer common sense. It obviates paparazzi feeding frenzy in St Andrew's but at the same time I think responds to a very real public interest to know how the son of the heir to the throne is getting on. It is very sensible, very common-sense, and I simply hope that it manages to survive until the prince finishes his university education. That is all I am saying.

Q967  Chairman: If that is all you are saying, Sir Christopher, and you are simply talking about common sense, then when we get the editor of The Sun, in a commendably straightforward reply to a question by a member of this Committee, saying that her newspaper has paid police for information, even though, of course, any police officer who has done that may be regarded as having committed a criminal offence, would it not be useful for the Press Complaints Commission to make a statement saying, "Now that this has been brought out into the open, and with great honesty, the editor of the largest circulating daily newspaper has said that it has happened in her newspaper, regardless of whether the criminal law is to be invoked or not, we call upon all newspapers to desist from such practices." What is wrong with that? Why could you not do that?

Sir Christopher Meyer: I could not disagree with you.

Q968  Chairman: Then why was it not done?

Sir Christopher Meyer: I was not Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission then.

Q969  Mr Bryant: So it would be done by you if it were?

Sir Christopher Meyer: This is not a practice that I could possibly condone, and I would be astonished if anybody on the PCC itself would condone it. This is a given.

Q970  Chairman: The second point is, you said - and who could disagree with you? - that the Press Complaints Commission cannot be expected to scour all of the press for transgressions. While it is perfectly true that when we put to the witnesses from the PCC when they came as a group the remarks made by Linda Gilroy in the House of Commons about potential intrusion on families of servicemen and women who might have been casualties in the war, the witnesses there said, very understandably indeed, "You cannot expect us to scour every column of Hansard to see what might or might not be said." Of course, one accepts that, but with the impending arrival or the actual arrival of a war in Iraq, knowing the susceptibilities of any family who has a member of their family serving in the gulf, might it not have been a good idea for the PCC, without saying it is going to happen, to remind everybody that there are these susceptibilities, and that therefore the press ought to use every caution in dealing with such matters? Your words will be better than mine, but nevertheless I offer them to you as a draft. Would it not have been a good idea and an example of proactivity that nobody, the press or anybody else could conceivably contest, for that to have been done, whether or not Linda Gilroy said anything in the House of Commons on the subject?

Sir Christopher Meyer: Let me say first of all that I would like to take this opportunity to express, if I may, my 100 per cent support for my staff, some of whom are here today, and my Director, Guy Black, who I think appeared before you to give evidence to you. I think they have over the years done a very good and a very under-valued job, and that is one of the reasons why I decided to take this job, because I knew I would be resting on a very firm foundation which was capable of evolution. As to the specific case of the Iraq war and British casualties and the feelings of those who were families and friends of those who died, I did give thought to this when I took over in my first week. In the end, I judged - and maybe this was the wrong judgement - that it was not actually necessary, but I am very open to doing that kind of thing in the future.

Q971  Derek Wyatt: Good afternoon, Sir Christopher. When Paul Dacre appeared in front of us, he said that all his journalists had in their contract all the PCC regulations, that they were written in, yet when you look at the end of a year to see which of the newspapers that had their knuckles wrapped, Mail on Sunday is one of the highest. Why are you so set against fining or introducing fines for newspapers that persistently abuse the Code?

Sir Christopher Meyer: I do not know whether that statistic is correct, but you have been dealing with these matters longer than I have, Mr Wyatt, and I am not going to seek publicly to contradict you. A lot of people have taken this view with me in the various debates I have had around the country, and this has been one of the strongest. Many people have said to me "Why in God's name don't you fine the blighters," except sometimes the word is stronger than that, "or introduce some system of monetary compensation, because only money will really deter the transgressors.?" I actually do not think that is true. I have dealt with journalists in one way or another for a very long time, both as a government spokesman twice and now as Chairman of the PCC. I actually think that for an editor who transgresses, and against whom there is a critical adjudication, having to spell that out in terms in his or her newspaper is actually a greater sanction and deterrent than money, and the trouble with money is it throws up other problems. What is the tariff? How high do you set it? For a newspaper with very deep pockets, £50,000 is all part of the game. £100,000. What are we talking about? It would be very difficult. The other thing that would happen - and this really does make me anxious - is that not only would it be a lesser deterrent than the publication of a critical adjudication, it would also I think bring in a cumbersome system. Lawyers would come in behind the money, there would be appeals, and the fast, free, fair, effective system which is at the basis of what we do now I think would be severely compromised. You would have a different animal and, in my view, a less effective one.

Q972  Derek Wyatt: I just point out that ICSTIS, which is the equivalent of your body for mobile phones, does fine and the fining has been so fantastic that it has stopped the pornographic selling on mobile phones. So there are other cases where it seems to have been incredibly successful.

Sir Christopher Meyer: I know. I agree. I think the estate agents' self-regulatory body do that as well. All I would say to you is I think this is horses for courses here, and I think on our course the horse that I am riding is the fastest and the best.

Q973  Derek Wyatt: Has that issue as a whole been discussed with the PCC?

Sir Christopher Meyer: No, I have not done that. No, that is not an accurate answer. I have had informal discussions in different permutations, with groups and individuals, with every member of the Commission, and we have gone through a whole bunch of issues, including some of those that I raised in the Newspaper Society speech. I think the consensus of opinion, including among some very robust lay commissioners, who have no connection with the newspaper industry at all, is that the adjudication is the way to go.

Q974  Derek Wyatt: Simon Kelner said that he did not fear a statutory back-up at all, but it seems something that the PCC does not want. Can you explain why you do not want it, and why when we saw people in camera, we did feel as a group - I think I speak for everyone - that they just wanted to feel there was an alternative place to take that criticism and that complaint that was not involved with the PCC. Why set yourself against that so quickly?

Sir Christopher Meyer: I set myself against that so quickly because my core belief in all this - and again, this is partly based on my experience as a press secretary - is that the government, either directly or through a body like OFCOM, needs to keep out of regulating newspapers. I am scarred - that is an exaggeration, but I did spend a lot of time when I was in John Major's Downing Street, taking part in the discussion of a possible White Paper on a privacy tort. I had inherited it from my predecessor and in the end the whole thing died a death, and it was when you got into the details of how that was going to work, or how some kind of statutory ombudsman was going to work, that it was very hard to see how it would actually add value or quality to what has been done now by the PCC, always assuming the PCC is enforcing the Code effectively. I have had a lot of discussion with people about this, and I came to the conclusion that there is a real danger in a statutory back-up, because that is getting closer to government regulation of newspapers. Secondly, it was not clear to me whether this statutory back-up was going to be one person, or a group of people. If it is going to be, say, an ombudsman, then why should he or she have better judgment than the 16 - and soon to be 17, if I have my way - commissioners of the PCC? Having said that, I do not know whether you have read my speech. We do need inside the PCC someone aside from the Commission looking at the way we reach decisions and seeing whether we do this right, and I am determined to get that off the ground.

Q975  Derek Wyatt: How do you react to the idea that you should meet in public?

Sir Christopher Meyer: Most of the people who come to us do not want to have their case ventilated in public. If you are an aggrieved newspaper reader, you have quite a pallet of remedies potentially open to you. You can just write to the editor, and if you are lucky he will take your point and publish your letter or publish a correction. If you do not like something, heaven forfend, that you have read in The Guardian, you can go to the readers' editor, which is an interesting thing, or you can come to the PCC or you can go to law. If you go to law, it will be very public, probably more public than you would want. So I think that what we are doing is responding to our customers, provided that the adjudication is spelt out very clearly and in full, where there is one. We post it on the website so the reasoning is very, very clear for all to see, and of course, there is a huge process of telephonic exchange with the parties, writing to the parties. So it is not as if this thing is hermetically sealed, but I think if we started going to public hearings, we would actually deter people from using the PCC.

Q976  Mr Doran: I want to come back to proactivity, although I will try and avoid using the word as much as I can. I read the speech that you made recently to the Newspaper Society, and you said some interesting things there. You have repeated some of them today, and it is quite clear that the sort of idea of proactivity that we have in the Committee, which I see as setting standards or maintaining standards in the press, is not something that the PCC is interested in in the future, or is that too broad a statement?

Sir Christopher Meyer: It is a broad statement. It upsets me to hear that. Stated at that level of broad generality, I would say that we both have the same objectives. I think there is some disagreement between us, or between some members of the Committee, on how we should get from A to B. I have to say, in the submission to the Select Committee, for which I take no responsibility but which I thought was an excellent piece of work - it was my basic brief for the job - it does lay out a very significant compendium of actions which the Press Complaints Commission takes without having to be sparked or prompted by any complainant and, as I said in that speech, I want to take this further. I have no problem - this is a point that you made, Chairman - when a very sensitive issue comes up, or where one is worried that the press may over-react, about sending a note out or saying something like "Be careful. Watch it. Don't forget the Code says this" or whatever. I have to say, Mr Doran, it is in the full mainstream of what the PCC has done. That is why I say it is a somewhat under-valued institution because I do not think you give it credit where credit is due. I think it has done a lot, and this should be recognised.

Q977  Mr Doran: I recognise that it has done a lot, and I have said that quite explicitly in previous hearings and to previous witnesses, but it seems that there are certain boundaries which are not going to be crossed. But you are suggesting that you will be crossing some of them.

Sir Christopher Meyer: Which boundary do you have in mind?

Q978  Mr Doran: Proactivity is one of them. What we have heard from you today we have not heard from any other witness on behalf of the PCC. Can I just mention one of the areas that does concern me. You paint a picture in your speech, and it is quite clear in all the submissions we have had from the PCC, that proactivity is seen as getting out there and taking a message, and it is about training journalists, which is something we approve of. One of the things that worries me about the parameters that you have though is that it seems to me that the Code has now become effectively the code of ethics for journalism in this country. I know that the National Union of Journalists has a code, but they are not recognised in every newspaper. Unless that code is enforced, not just because members of the public decide to write a letter to the PCC, but there is some proactivity - I am sorry to use the word again - on the part of the PCC, then we do have a serious problem in this country.

Sir Christopher Meyer: I do not argue with what you have just said. I think the Code, code of ethics, the constitution, whatever you like to call it, something which has been amended 30 times since it was first promulgated in 1991, and it was changed again just before I took over to take care of a very serious lacuna, in my view, on witness payments, has done that. I do not believe in a uniquely passive interpretation of the Code. I think we should be active in its defence and promulgation. Having said that, I am not quite sure what in practice this is going to mean. If you ever invite me back again, a year from now or whatever, I might be able to put some flesh on those bones.

Q979  Mr Doran: Can you foresee a situation where a British newspaper would do what the New York Times has just done?

Sir Christopher Meyer: I will give you a different answer to that question. Although I am not a spokesman for the British newspaper industry - and goodness knows I have said that 100 times already - I do not think that situation could have happened in British journalism.

Q980  Mr Doran: I am shocked! Why do you say that?

Sir Christopher Meyer: This is a really interesting subject which we could go on for a long time about. I think that that degree of plagiarism and invention of stories which appeared to have happened for such a long time would have been rumbled very quickly by the British press, the culture being very different.

Q981  Mr Doran: So you do not foresee a situation like that arising? If you were a regular reader of Private Eye you would probably have a different view of the press in this country, because that is where most of the stories appear. I accept that they are not always true, but as a regular reader of the press, a consumer of the press in this country, it seems to me there are many areas where ethics and integrity are lacking. The Chairman has mentioned a couple of areas recently.

Sir Christopher Meyer: We are not talking about perfection here, by any means.

Q982  Mr Doran: We are talking about integrity and ethics, which should be at the heart of a democratic system.

Sir Christopher Meyer: I agree with that. All I am saying is, on the specific New York Times point, in this particular case, where a journalist was able to rise through the ranks and write stories from places with bylines where he was not and so on, I simply do not think that would have happened in the UK. I just say that as a judgment. You may not agree with that. But coming back to the Code of Practice, of course it is integrity, ethics and standards. Of course it is. I agree with that.

Q983  Mr Doran: Moving on to another issue, in your speech you made a statement "Slings and arrows from some on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. Guy Black will be the first - and, I hope, last - recipient of the PCC's specially struck Medal of Valour for coolness under fire." What did you mean by that?

Sir Christopher Meyer: Every now and again in that speech you will see some pitiful attempt at humour. It is one of my trademarks. I tend to do this kind of thing in public statements. One person's humour is another person's poison. I was not here for Mr Black's appearance before your Committee, but I did hear from third parties that exchanges were vigorous.

Q984  Mr Doran: It sounds as though you thought he had a hard time.

Sir Christopher Meyer: Exchanges were vigorous, and after several paragraphs of necessary but serious comment in my speech, I thought the time had come to inject a slightly lighter note, and so it goes on through the text irregularly. That is the way I do it. I will probably do more speeches with that sort of levity. If you do not like it, you had better tell me.

Q985  Rosemary McKenna: Can I first of all say I am glad that you visited Falkirk in your journey around newspapers. I presume that was the Johnson Group that you were visiting. They publish two very good newspapers in my area and many more round about, and they are very consistent about letting people know about the complaints process and how to go about it. I am glad you visited them, because there is quite a difference between local newspapers and national newspapers, and how the reporters seem to operate. Early on in the questioning I made the statement that standards had deteriorated. What I was trying to say was that I am seeing more detail, often salacious detail in reports, and that has certainly increased over my lifetime, particularly in respect of reports during trials of how a person has died, et cetera. That kind of detail I find offensive, and sometimes I think it is absolutely unnecessary. That was what I meant when I said I thought standards had deteriorated. I wanted to put that on the record. I also want to ask you about a couple of things. First of all, I heard you say on Frost on Sunday that you were going to be looking at the apologies and how they were handled. Some of the witnesses who came before us in camera made it quite clear that this was really one of their problems. One of them said "We won our case but we felt we lost," because the retraction and apology was so poor, and buried. Could you tell us what you think about that as an issue?

Sir Christopher Meyer: I have been taking various messages to the regional and local editors and proprietors, including in Falkirk, and one of the messages has been about consistent visibility, namely, it is in the interests of editors themselves, because it is in the interests of self-regulation, that when they do apologise or a correction has to be published or a negative adjudication comes out, these things should be at least as prominent as the original transgression. Most people agree with that. I know there is a patchy record on this, but wherever I go I say this: "It is in your interests that you do this, because otherwise people will lose confidence in self-regulation. So give it prominence, "just as I say to people, "Every day, in every issue, put in a panel which says, 'If you are not satisfied with the way in which the editor has handled your issue, there is this thing called the Press Complaints Commission.'" Some newspapers do it, some do not. I have to say that up in Falkirk, with the Johnson editors, we had a round table meeting for a good hour, and they were terrific on this, and I got a sense of very great responsibility. One of the editors raised precisely the point that you raised. He said that once a coroner or a judge or a police spokesman comes out in public with details of some event, which may be very tragic, at that point they cannot sit on it, they cannot pretend it has not happened and it has not been said. There and other places around the country I have had really quite agonised discussions with editors about what you do in those circumstances, and, let me put it this way: you get a very different perspective when you are outside London, which is important to me.

Q986  Rosemary McKenna: You are going to continue to encourage apologies to be much firmer.

Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes, otherwise it is ridiculous. They should be, as I said, at least as prominent as the original transgression. Sometimes it does not have to be more than putting a letter on the letters page; sometimes it needs to be more than that. You must judge each case on its merits, but the bottom line here is that it is not in editors' long-term self-interest just to let these things get buried.

Q987  Chairman: Let me just try and get some clarification of Sir Christopher's answer. What you are saying is that if a newspaper commits what the PCC decides is an offence on a front page splash and at the request or requirement of the PCC then publishes an apology, in your judgment it would not be appropriate for an offence on a front page splash to have the PCC-required apology published in a panel on a page well inside the paper?

Sir Christopher Meyer: What I am saying is this. If we go to formal adjudication, you come out with a formal adjudication, and there had been some hideous transgression on the front page, then I would expect the adjudication to be published, or at least to start on the front page, depending on how long the adjudication was going to be. I think that would be entirely reasonable. If you start going down the hierarchy of redress - and it does not have to be a formal adjudication of the PCC; Chairman, most of our work, the bulk of the iceberg, is talking to the aggrieved reader and talking to the editor and trying to reach a common resolution, and most of the time that works. It is part of the process of resolution for where the apology or correction is going to be placed.

Q988  Rosemary McKenna: Can I move on now to the appointment of the commissioners? We have had evidence concerning the appointments procedure. Will you go ahead with public advertising for the PCC commissioners and when can we expect that?

Sir Christopher Meyer: I am determined to do that. I have not come across any resistance to the idea. There are some financial angles to this, because it will cost some money. There is a gap on the Commission, because the Articles of Association provide for one more lay commissioner, so there is a gap there we can fill as fast as we can. I hope we will see the first publicly advertised and appointed commissioner before the end of the year. I have given myself a rather wide margin of time, but what I am really saying is as soon as possible.

Q989  Rosemary McKenna: Would you see any benefit in appointing someone who had actually successfully carried a complaint to the PCC being appointed as a commissioner? Editors are there because of their experience in publishing newspapers. Would you see any merit in appointing someone who had actually had a successful case at the PCC? There is going to be a Commission of what, 13?

Sir Christopher Meyer: We would be 17 once we had a full complement. I would have no objection to that. If we advertise all round the country, which is the intention - not just in London but throughout all the regions - we are going to have to appoint a firm of headhunters to process the applications, and if somebody like that rose to the top of the pile, no problem. I come to this with no preconceived views at all.

Q990  Rosemary McKenna: So there would be no presumption against anybody?

Sir Christopher Meyer: Absolutely not. Let the best man or woman win.

Q991  Chairman: Sitting at that table, Sir Christopher, a member of the Commission, Vivien Hepworth told us that she became a member of the Commission after a member of the staff of the Commission rang her up and asked her if she would like to be a member of the Commission. Would you give us a commitment that that will not happen again?

Sir Christopher Meyer: I made it pretty clear in my speech that I want to move from the current system to one of publicly advertising all future openings for lay commissioners as and when they come up.

Q992  Chairman: May I take that as a "yes" then?

Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes. I could just have said "yes." I have said this already in public before God knows how many witnesses.

Q993  Chairman: Good. That is very helpful. Two other things following up questions by Mr Wyatt. When Mr Wyatt raised the question of fining you said that if that were to happen, lawyers might come in, et cetera. The Football Association fines, and it is a voluntary organisation, and to my knowledge, though other colleagues may correct me if I am wrong, no club or individual fined by the FA has ever called in lawyers to dispute the fine. So it does not always happen, and that is not a statutory but a voluntary organisation.

Sir Christopher Meyer: There are all kinds of organisations which are analogous to the PCC but are not identical. So you can do lateral thinking and say, "They do it that way and it seems to work," and you are right. I just happen to think that there are certain specific characteristics of the PCC that make it very likely that lawyers would get into it. I have nothing against lawyers, except I know, because they already make their presence felt in the activities of the PCC, that the result is to slow everything down, and I am not clear that the benefit that the complainant receives from having legal representation when he or she can come direct to us is such that it warrants that delay. I think what I am saying to you is that they are already around the PCC, and I think they would be more so. That is where the analogy, say, with the FA breaks down.

Q994  Chairman: Secondly, accepting fully that there is a very major difference indeed between the ITC, a statutory body, and the PCC, a wholly voluntary body, and the fact that anybody who has a licence awarded to broadcast, whether it is an ITV company or Channel 4, is getting that licence as a result of a statute, whereas the press is and ought to remain entirely unfettered, in the case of the ITC and its licensees, it is able to fine an organisation which it regards as having transgressed 5 per cent of its turnover which, say, in the case of Channel 4, could be around £40 million. It has never happened. It has not never happened that there has been a fine because MTV I think was fined, but it has never happened that there has been a whopping great fine like that by the ITC. Making it very clear that I certainly accept the massive difference between what the ITC is and what the PCC is, and what a TV licensee is and what a free newspaper is, nevertheless, would you not accept that, even though that kind of fine has never been imposed, the potentiality of its being imposed is something that a broadcasting organisation will have in mind, and would not the possibility of a hefty fine by the PCC, even if the PCC were never to impose such a fine, nevertheless be a Sword of Damocles which newspapers might take into account when considering the way in which they conduct themselves?

Sir Christopher Meyer: First of all, I am not an expert on broadcasting. I am not good on broadcasting. ITC is going to be folded into OFCOM, I think, when the Communications Bill has gone through. I certainly know that Lord Curry has no interest whatsoever in becoming involved in the regulation of newspapers.

Q995  Chairman: That is not the issue. I am not bringing that in as an issue, Sir Christopher.

Sir Christopher Meyer: The answer to your question is, of course, if you were in a regime where an editor thought that if he transgressed his newspaper would be whacked for millions, this would concentrate the mind. There is no doubt about that at all. But were you to have that, you would be in a wholly different system than the one we have now which is called the Press Complaints Commission. I do believe very strongly that - I said this in the speech and forgive me for repeating it - but I think it is apt - Churchill said - and I paraphrase now - "Democracy is the least efficient form of government until you compare it to everything else." Self-regulation is similar to that. It is not perfect; it has jagged edges. It can be improved, and I am going to make it my job for the next three or six years or however long it is going to be to improve it. But for all its imperfections, it is better than any alternative, and that is really where I come from on this.

Q996  Mr Bryant: We have been talking about analogies to other organisations, and I have thought of another one, which is the Advertising Standards Authority, which seeks quite specifically to adjudicate, whereas what you were just saying and what we have heard before is that on the whole, you see your job as trying to resolve before you have to come to an adjudication, and you only end up adjudicating in certain situations. Can I propose to you that the problem that that presents for ordinary members of the public who end up in the limelight because they are the victim of a crime or a tragedy or whatever is that they have their privacy peeled off them like an onion, and you cannot put that back on. They do not feel they have a strong hand when they are in these discussions with the newspaper because the moment has already gone; they have already been hurt, they have already been damaged, and when you do not then adjudicate, when you seek to resolve rather than to adjudicate, you actually make it worse for them.

Sir Christopher Meyer: My answer to that is that advertising is very different from press, very different indeed. There is a superficial similarity but I think it is more superficial than similar. On the issue, if we go back to the original Calcutt Committee, way back to the days of the last chance saloon and all that stuff, it was made very clear at the genesis of all this that where possible you should try and resolve a dispute between a reader, a complainant and an editor. All I can say to you is this: that the three-monthly surveys that the PCC takes of its complainants, people who have come to the PCC, of whom over half, one way or another, find that their complaints do not prosper, we do these surveys and we keep on getting tremendous positives, positives that politicians would die for. For example, we did a survey of several hundred people for the first three months of this year, and we broke down the questions, but the overall approval rating of the PCC and the way it handled their complaints, including those whose complaints did not prosper, was just under 70 per cent. I think that runs contrary to what you were saying to me. Most of the punters who use the PCC like the way their complaints are handled. There is another factor. The number of complaints is going up this year. If we annualise the rate for the first quarter of the year, we may hit a record number of somewhere between 3,000-3,500. Does this mean that newspaper standards are declining? Since a goodly portion of these complaints come from the regional press as well as from the national press, I think it is a difficult argument to make. I suspect it has something to do with the increasing knowledge of the PCC and its increasing visibility. All I am saying is there are not many objective standards by which to judge us, but those that exist suggest that people are not worried about what is going to happen to them during the process.

Q997  Mr Bryant: Can I suggest two things in response to that: one, there is a logical hiatus somewhere in the middle of that which is around the fact that if the number of complaints is low and you are only talking about the satisfaction of those who have complained, I think 70 per cent is actually pretty low, and you might want to set your standards a little higher.

Sir Christopher Meyer: If the Prime Minister had a 70 per cent approval rating ----

Q998  Mr Bryant: If you judged everything by politicians' ratings, everybody in the world would be doing well. That is my bit of humour. Can I just ask: do you think that you will have done a good job in five years' time if the number of complaints has grown, because that will show that the PCC is more available, more open, that people feel that they have better access to the process, or will you feel that that is a sign that somehow or other the industry is failing?

Sir Christopher Meyer: That is a horrible question! I cannot give you an answer.

Q999  Mr Bryant: That is a horrible answer!

Sir Christopher Meyer: I will try and make it a bit more palatable. You can have a graph in which you can trace an upward curve of complaints and be able to say this is because people know it better, it is advertised more in the newspapers, I and my colleagues are whizzing round the country doing these town meetings, which I hope we will be able to do pretty soon, but I agree with you; at some point, if that line on that graph continues to go up, you are going to have to say "Actually, thee is something wrong here." But we are nowhere near that yet. I do not know when we will be. I cannot say.

Q1000  Mr Bryant: But there must come a point at which, if you discern some trend in the kinds of complaints that you are getting - let us say, for instance, you get a large number of complaints in one year which are all related to the way a story is picked up from a local newspaper and then goes into a national tabloid - you might want to say, "Hang on, there is something going on here that we need to look at," meaning the trend rather than just the specific instances.

Sir Christopher Meyer: You have a very good point actually, Mr Bryant, and I am sorry if I have been a bit flippant in responding to it. What the Press Board of Finance that finance the PCC do not know because I have not actually mentioned this to them yet is I think I need a bit more money from them actually to survey more precisely what is going on out there. We are doing it to some extent at the moment, and the figures we are getting back, as I say, are quite good. I actually think just under 70 per cent is good, but we can agree to differ there. I would like to know much more about people's reactions to all this, and this is going to cost money and it means doing more surveys. That was not in my speech but it is something that is a conclusion I have drawn after going round some of the regions in the UK.

Q1001  Mr Doran: I just want to follow up the point the Chairman was making about sanctions. One of the witnesses we heard said to us that if you impose sanctions, it was likely that there would be a revolt amongst editors and it would be impossible to get through. You may even lose members. So the question really is what is more important to you; public confidence or keeping your members?

Sir Christopher Meyer: I would hope that that is not a choice that one would have to make in the sense that you have just described. I think it is possible, otherwise I would not have taken on this job, within the basic context of the way in which the PCC is put together, with the sanction being adjudication, that you can raise standards and make the system work better. I do not think it is an either/or in the way which you have suggested. I think it can be done. So it is not a question of how do you keep the editors on board and let us not go too far because we might start losing them. I actually believe that this is the way to go.

Q1002  Chairman: Thank you, Sir Christopher. We are most grateful to you. That ends the inquiry.

Sir Christopher Meyer: Chairman, would you permit me a final word, if I may? Thank you for giving me this opportunity to come before you, and to do it in public. These are very, very important issues, and the more we talk about them, the better. I have been illuminated.