Examination of Witnesses (Questions 159
- 179)
TUESDAY 6 MARCH 2007
SIR CHRISTOPHER
MEYER KCMG, MR
TIM TOULMIN
AND MR
RICHARD THOMAS
Chairman: For our final session can I
welcome the Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Sir Christopher
Meyer, and the Director, Tim Toulmin. Helen Southworth will start.
Q159 Helen Southworth: We had some
very extensive information from the Information Commissioner about
the unlawful trade in private information involving very specific
journalists and newspapers. Could you perhaps explain to the Committee
what your role was in that process and what you have done as a
result of prosecutions of private detectives?
Sir Christopher Meyer: The Information
Commissioner came to see us at the PCC at the end of 2003 to draw
to our attention the ongoing investigation which now goes by the
name of Motorman. He said that he had a very substantial dossier
of journalists who were using inquiry agents—using inquiry
agents, in and of themselves, is not of course an illegal act—and
that he fully expected there to be prosecutions early in 2004
which would involve possibly both inquiry agents and journalists.
This came as news to me and we were suitably taken aback by what
he seemed to be alleging. We agreed at that meeting that one of
the first things that the Press Complaints Commission had to do
was to issue a guidance note to journalists on section 55 of the
Data Protection Act and that, indeed, is what we did. You may
well have it in your dossier before you. Subsequent to that, there
was a prosecution but not of a journalist, of the inquiry agent
himself, and I believe he was found guilty and, parallel with
preparing the guidance note, which I hope sets out pretty clearly
what this actually means for journalists—as I was travelling
around the country in my early days as Chairman I came across
journalists and editors who were very fairly confused about how
the DPA applied to them for all kinds of reasons—I publicly
and privately—I am on the record—said that it was
absolutely essential that journalists understood section 55 and
obeyed its requirements. Then the Information Commissioner, if
I have got this right, published two reports, What price privacy?
and then a follow-up What price privacy now? and it was
the second report that had the table of contacts with this particular
inquiry agent by a number of journalists. I think he had to issue
corrections as far as The Sunday Times was concerned but
that was basically it. Last year, 2006, Mr Thomas came to see
Tim and me at the PCC to talk further about what to do about this
situation. I said to him last year, I think with more emphasis
than I said to him at the end of 2003, "Show us the money.
Let us see some of these cases, let us see some of this dossier
because I do not have investigative powers, I am not an agent
of the state, I police the Code of Practice, I do not want to
see journalists breaking both the law and the Code of Practice,
but short of issuing guidance exhorting conformity with the law
I need a bit more to work on if we are going to start ourselves
looking into individual cases". The Information Commissioner
was not willing to share any of the detail of the 305 cases. I
was not able to take that further forward and I believe we will
now be considering one of his other requests, which is to amend
the Code of Practice to take account of the Data Protection Act,
at the next meeting of the Code Committee, which I think is next
week. I have no idea whether members of the committee will agree
to make changes or not.
Q160 Helen Southworth: From that,
do you mean that you believe if the Information Commissioner has
a complaint as a public body of a serious nature about the regulation
of the press, he should share the information with you so you
can take that up?
Sir Christopher Meyer: It might
have been easier to pursue some lines of inquiry had some of the
evidence been made available to us. Of course, now we are half
a decade on since the Motorman inquiry and, of course, there have
not been prosecutions of journalists. We have these 305 cases
and reading the detail, particularly of his second report, you
can draw the inference that he thinks that a good deal of this
activity was indeed illegal but the case has not been prosecuted
by the authorities and no journalist has been brought to court.
Q161 Helen Southworth: You can take
the legal aspect to be separate looking at your role.
Sir Christopher Meyer: My question
to him was, "What exactly is it that you want me to do? The
Act is policed by the authorities, by you, and you have had one
prosecution. Is there more to be done on our side of the line?"
You, Chairman, said earlier on commenting on an answer that we,
if you like, complement the law, we add to the law or something
like that. What I was looking for was this precise added value
that the Press Complaints Commission could do in addition to what
was provided for in the law.
Q162 Helen Southworth: What answer
did you get as to what he was asking you to do?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I think
in the end the practical conclusion we came to was to see whether
we could refine the guidance note.
Q163 Helen Southworth: Did he not
give you an answer to that question?
Sir Christopher Meyer: No, he
did not give me the dossier.
Q164 Helen Southworth: Did he give
an answer to what he expected of you?
Sir Christopher Meyer: If I remember
rightly, and he took a record of our conversation and I am relying
on my memory now, in 2006 I think the burden of his remarks were
we are after the middlemen and not the journalists.
Q165 Helen Southworth: He was not
asking you to do anything, in fact?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I think
he wanted the Code Committee to take a tougher line in the Code
on these practices. He has made a textual proposal to the Code
Committee which I think the editors will be considering next week.
Q166 Helen Southworth: Perhaps it
would be helpful if you could come back to us on what he was expecting
you to do and what you did.
Sir Christopher Meyer: A further
guidance note was one idea and he did go and see the secretary
of the Code Committee and some of the newspapers themselves. A
further guidance note and perhaps an amendment to the Code, that
would be my short answer to your question.
Q167 Helen Southworth: What you are
saying to us now is that, sorry I am trying to work it out, you
said he was really proceeding against the middlemen and not the
journalists?
Sir Christopher Meyer: That is
what he said to me at the time.
Q168 Helen Southworth: That would
mean that there would be no real role for you there.
Sir Christopher Meyer: Well, you
will have to ask him to come back again to explain.
Q169 Chairman: If Mr Thomas would
like to come and rejoin us we would be very happy for him to do
so; rather than you recounting what he said to you, perhaps you
could tell us.
Sir Christopher Meyer: His response
might contradict me.
Mr Thomas: I have a note of the
meeting and I will not go through it in detail. My recollection
is not far apart from Sir Christopher's which was I was looking
for some plain English guidance which the PCC could give out as
to what is unacceptable in these terms. I was looking for an amendment
to the Code which I first put forward in September and, although
the Code says it can be changed within weeks, nothing has yet
happened on that particular front. I also explained to Sir Christopher
that the focus of our prosecutions had been the middlemen and
I explained, as I have done to this Committee this morning, why
we did not take any further action against the journalists concerned.
I think I should also put on the record that we do not feel able
to identify the individual journalists in fairness to those journalists,
they have not been prosecuted and for me to bandy their names
around in public or to their employers I do not think would be
acceptable.
Sir Christopher Meyer: I think
our memories tally pretty well. As I say, I think the Code Committee
is meeting next week.
Q170 Chairman: Your expectation is
that the Code will be—
Sir Christopher Meyer: I do not
know. I will not anticipate, wisely I think, the outcome of this
meeting. There is something to be discussed and it will be discussed.
Q171 Chairman: It has taken an awful
long time for the Code Committee to consider the recommendation
of the Information Commissioner.
Sir Christopher Meyer: One of
the reforms, if I may toot my trumpet a little bit, that we did
bring in back in 2003 was to insist that we recommend to the Code
Committee that they should meet regularly once a year to look
in the round at the number of proposals that come in from members
of the public and from elsewhere for changes to the Code and that
is now a regular occurrence, so you need to see that in this context.
Q172 Helen Southworth: Could I ask
what steps you would hope that newspapers or publications would
take to ensure that they were using proper agencies which were
operating within the law?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Mr Esser
talked, before we came on the stand, about inquiry agencies being
properly registered. I have never dealt with an inquiry agent
so I have got no first hand experience of this. Newspapers, if
they are to respect the requirements of the Data Protection Act,
subject always, of course, to the public interest consideration,
know perfectly well who are the good agencies and who are not.
Regulating the newspapers is quite enough, thank you, but to give
me inquiry agencies as well would be probably more than I can
handle.
Q173 Helen Southworth: Would you
expect them to have some good practice steps to be taken before
they are in their employment and the information being used in
the industry?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Would I
expect the newspapers?
Q174 Helen Southworth: Yes.
Sir Christopher Meyer: I think
what we have heard from the previous two witnesses is precisely
that. I would expect best practice, indeed.
Q175 Alan Keen: One of the issues
that I have been struggling with this morning, and other people
have, is that I tend to feel that as long as it is in the public
interest almost anything is justified to investigate, is it not
in the public interest that we know the names of the journalists?
Does Mr Thomas not think that is a parallel with the things we
have been talking about this morning? Is it not in the public
interest to know who the journalists are?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I know
you have done this, but you will notice in our Code of Practice
that a number of clauses has an asterisk against it and that denotes
that the requirements of the clause can be overwritten by a public
interest argument and at the bottom of the Code of Practice we
set out not an exclusive list, not a comprehensive list, but some
illustrations of how that would apply. I think here is the nub
of the matter in many, many ways because one person's public interest
is not necessarily in another person's public interest. The animated
debates that we have every month when the board of commissioners
meets at the PCC to adjudicate on cases very often rotate around
an issue of where is the line between what is properly private
and what is genuinely in the public interest and this can be very
contentious and very difficult. At the end of the day we have
to make a judgment and we say either it was not in the public
interest or it was in the public interest, and once the adjudication
becomes public it usually becomes very contentious and controversial,
indeed it pops up all over the place, sometimes in the House of
Commons and sometimes in other newspapers saying "How on
earth did the PCC come to that conclusion". What I am really
saying is that we, any of us, will never come to an absolutely
objective standard for the public interest but that does not mean
we must not introduce it in consideration of these matters.
Q176 Alan Keen: If I was on the list
as a politician, do you think it would be in the public interest
to declare my name, or is it different for journalists than for
politicians?
Sir Christopher Meyer: If you
hired an inquiry agent to do some inquiring for you?
Q177 Alan Keen: It would be in the
public interest—
Sir Christopher Meyer: I cannot
really see that happening. When I was a press secretary, one of
the rules to survive, particularly in John Major's Downing Street,
was never to answer a hypothetical, so I think I will keep away
from that, if I may.
Q178 Mr Hall: Can I give you a non-hypothetical
question. We have heard in evidence this morning that the Code
of Practice does not appear to be working because it does not
have a conscience clause to allow journalists to refuse to undertake
activities their editors ask them to do, it does not involve complaints
by third party referrals, there are no penalties for infringements,
there is no compensation for people who have had their privacy
infringed, there has been a call for an ombudsman, there is not
any transparency in the payment for stories or the use of employment
agencies. Are you going to take any of that on board when you
look at the review of the Code of Practice?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I think
you are being a tad unfair there. I think there is a whole bunch
of stuff in there which we have already taken on board.
Q179 Mr Hall: Which one of those
is in the Code of Practice?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Can I start
with the conscience clause?
| 
