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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 375-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT
Tuesday 6 March 2007 MR MIKE JEMPSON, MR JEREMY DEAR and PROFESSOR CHRIS FROST MR RICHARD THOMAS and MR MICK GORRILL MR LES HINTON, MR ARTHUR
EDWARDS MBE, MR PAUL HORROCKS MR ROBIN ESSER and MR
EUGENE DUFFY Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 204
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday 6 March 2007 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the chair Janet Anderson Philip Davies Mr Nigel Evans Paul Farrelly Mr Mike Hall Alan Keen Rosemary McKenna Helen Southworth ________________ Memoranda submitted by The MediaWise Trust and the National Union of Journalists
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Mike Jempson, Director, The MediaWise Trust, Mr Jeremy Dear, General Secretary, and Professor Chris Frost, Chair, Ethics Council, National Union of Journalists, gave evidence.
Chairman: Good morning, everybody. This is a special one-off session of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, to examine the self-regulation of the Press and the efficacy of the Press Complaints Commission Code of Practice. We have decided to hold this session in the light of a number of incidents which have occurred in the last few months which have raised question marks over the extent to which the PCC Code is being kept to by the Press. We have a number of witnesses and we need to get through relatively swiftly, so could I ask all witnesses to keep their answers as brief as possible. In our first session, we have the Director of the MediaWise Trust, Mike Jempson, Professor Chris Frost, the Chair of the Ethics Council, and Jeremy Dear, the General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists. I will invite Nigel Evans to begin. Q1 Mr Evans: Thank you, Chairman. MediaWise Trust states that "there is a rich seam of excellent journalism in Britain's newspapers and magazines, but there is also a faultline of tawdry and slipshod journalism driven by competitive pressures." Is that where we are, that we are seeing this once great institution descending into the murky waters? Or is it that generally standards are very high but with just a few exceptions? Mr Jempson: No. I think the feet have always been dabbling in the gutter, because that sells papers. You are always going to get that cross-section which we have tried to describe there. I am saying that you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater but it would be nice if they cleaned up their act occasionally. One of the difficulties, of course, is that it is all about making money and so people will do what is necessary, especially if the conditions for journalists are such that they are fighting, like the newspapers are, competing with each other for jobs and reputation. Q2 Mr Evans: Are some newspapers worse than other? Mr Jempson: Some are bound to be worse than others, yes. Q3 Mr Evans: Do any come to mind? Mr Jempson: Whatever you say you are going to get shot but ----- Q4 Mr Evans: So go on then! Mr Jempson: -- on occasions, the News of the World scrapes the bottom of the barrel, but then you also get other newspapers indulging in practices which we are somewhat suspicious of. In the last couple of weeks, for instance, we have been approached by a number of complainants. One of them was somebody just out of prison, who had been approached by a newspaper - I am not going to name it for the minute - offering to buy his story. As we know, there is an inquiry about whether or not this should be made a criminal act. When the matter of money was raised, they said, "It would be a bit off for us to pay you direct but we could pay you into an offshore account or pay you through a friend." It is quite clear what the rules are about this, but this was a respectable newspaper. Another client we were dealing with was dealing with a terrible tragedy in a family and was persuaded by a number of separate journalists to give information which was very private - and persuaded to do this for money. Once having done it for money, they were persuaded that the only way to protect themselves was to sell the story again, which of course made them very vulnerable, and then, once there was interest in the story, you had a journalist insisting that they sign up as an exclusive deal with a journalist as an agent. These sorts of things when people are in extremely vulnerable positions do not strike me as sticking to the spirit and the word of the Code. Q5 Mr Evans: Chris or Jeremy, would you like to comment on that? Professor Frost: Certainly some newspapers are worse than others, without a doubt. We need to remember that all newspapers are businesses. Part of that business is journalism. Some newspapers carry out their journalism better than others, but they are there to sell, to entertain and to attract audiences, and that inevitably is going to lead to problems on occasions. That is why we need a code of ethics and some kind of regulatory mechanism. If they were not those kinds of businesses, we would not need that. Mr Dear: Also, we put forward the idea that individual journalists should have an individual right to refuse assignments that breach PCC codes because there are these pressures on individual journalists because of the commercial interests of the papers and companies for which they work. That individual right for the journalist is an added bonus to that ethical of practice. Q6 Mr Evans: The sort of antics that we see happening which you have mentioned, Mike, does it only happen in the United Kingdom or is this a world phenomenon? Clearly the media in a lot of countries, including the United States, are very competitive but the reputation in the United States does not seem to be the same. People talk about the paparazzi and antics of journalists here in a different vein. Is it a British phenomenon? Mr Jempson: I do a lot of training all over the world and people are really shocked at what they learn about the British media. Everybody looks up to British journalism but they are also horrified by some of the ways in which stories are covered in the newspapers here. The phenomenon is beginning to appear, particularly, for instance, in Eastern European countries, where western commercial publishers are beginning to move in. The yellow Press is really spreading there and you are getting similar sorts of stories. But I do not think anything quite as - my words - "sophisticated and debased" as some of the things we have seen happen in the papers here. The problem is that journalists have always been curiously inquisitive folk and their managers, being desperately keen to make money for their employers, are always going to push the envelope and very often it is going to break. For me, it is not about demanding that everybody act as angels but first of all recognising the human consequences of some of these stories, which can be appalling, and also being willing to admit that mistakes have been made. If we look at the Goodman case, you had to wait until somebody was jailed before people held their hands up and said, "This was out of order." Professor Frost: I think it would be wrong to assume the UK is particularly worse than anywhere else, but the approach is different. We have a very different newspaper industry in this country, say, from America, where there is not the range of national papers all chasing the same level of market. We are more applicable to some other countries, such as Australia, for instance, where they often do have fairly similar problems. Mike is right about Eastern Europe, but, again, if you look at the Eastern Europe newspapers, the kind of ethical problems they are having there are just as bad from our perspective but different and the expectations of their publics are different. Where you are selling a product, part of which includes journalism, you are always going to get these kinds of problems. The only way to prevent it is not to make a commercial product, but clearly that is not an option here - and quite right, as many would say. Mr Dear: You also have in the US a better and more robust Freedom of Information Act, which allows investigative journalism to happen in different ways sometimes than it does in the UK. But clearly we are also concerned about proposals from other quarters to restrict the Freedom of Information Act here by increasing charges or by aggregating the demands from individual news organisations. You also have in some other places stronger public interest defences and therefore we may be seeing less in terms of numbers of complaints but not that much difference in terms of journalism. Q7 Chairman: It was suggested that Clive Goodman was a senior reporter who had previously achieved some very good stories but was now struggling to do so. There were young Turks snapping at his heels and therefore the pressure was on for him to get exclusives and that as a result, perhaps, he went beyond the terms of the Code and, indeed, the terms of the law. Does that sound familiar to you? Is that something which your members might commonly experience? Mr Dear: Certainly we receive complaints from lots of members who are put under pressure to breach PCC and NUJ codes of practice and codes of ethics in pursuit of a story. Q8 Chairman: Put under pressure by their editors? Mr Dear: Yes. Q9 Chairman: In breach of the Code? Mr Dear: Absolutely. In an intensely competitive newspaper industry, in which single photographs can be sold for £250,000, when that is the case you are going to get a photographer who thinks: "This time I'm going to breach the Code because this may well be my making." You are also going to get that in terms of journalists investigating stories. I think that is at the heart of it. It is not, as I think the PCC's own evidence to your Committee suggests, that these are individual mistakes. I am sorry, I do not accept that they are individual mistakes; they are the result of pressure applied on journalists to deliver more and more exclusive stories in order to boost circulation levels. Q10 Chairman: You are telling us that the editors who have the job of enforcing the PCC Code are saying to their journalists, "We'll turn a blind eye if you can produce good stories." Mr Dear: Some of them certainly are. Professor Frost: There is also a culture of expectation amongst journalists, of trying to pursue stories where, because there is no specific direction to say "We will not do these kinds of things," the temptation is to do them, because they feel they are obliged to provide the stories that their editors want. That is the reason why we want this conscience clause, so that journalists feel much more prepared to say, "I'm not doing that. That is not acceptable," and we can move the debate on a stage. We do not anticipate that there will be a large number of people somehow going to law or going to the PCC saying that they have been instructed to do something that breached the Code of Practice but it would give journalists the courage, if you like, to be able to say to their office that they do not feel that is the right way to behave, without fear of being dismissed or of damaging their career potential. Mr Jempson: The other point about the Goodman case is that this was not something which just happened recently. Mulcaire had been supplying information on a contract to the News of the World since 1997. The methodology for collecting information which may or may not be useful for a story has been used for a long time. We know that a contract signed by Stuart Kuttner of the News of the World was found as part of this investigation just for one year's dealings - but he had been doing it since 1997. That indicates that this is not something that has suddenly come out of a bit of a mid-life crisis in one journalist's career. Q11 Paul Farrelly: I am possibly the only member of the panel here who has been an investigative journalist in my time. I think the Goodman case is just a sideshow really because he was doing stuff that was just about gossip and nonsense. When Government routinely taps, sometimes legally, journalists pursuing serious stories, when is it justified to use the same tactics back? Professor Frost: We are talking about the public interest and the level at which we are providing stories which the public needs to know about. On occasion that might be true. The line we take as the NUJ and as the Ethics Council is that journalists should only use unstraightforward means of that sort if it is the only way of getting the story. There may be occasions when that is the only way. Q12 Paul Farrelly: Even if it is illegal? Professor Frost: Then it becomes much more difficult. If it is illegal, we would certainly advise them not to do it. Q13 Paul Farrelly: Have you ever been an investigative journalist, Professor Frost? Professor Frost: Not at that level, no. I am not saying that people do not do it and should not, but we would advise against it. Q14 Philip Davies: It seems from what you have all said that you think self-regulation is a busted flush, in that there needs to be some kind of statutory control, whether it is an Ombudsman or some kind of privacy law. Do you think there are any dangers in going down that line, that people, perhaps some unscrupulous people, might be protected by that kind of regime? Mr Dear: I certainly do not think that self-regulation as a concept is a busted flush. Self-regulation, as it is currently operated, is failing journalism. Public distrust of journalism shows that is the case. Someone who is prepared to pay £1,000 for information is not going to be put off by a speech made by Sir Christopher Meyer - no matter how great that speech is - admonishing them for doing it. There has to be a system of penalties and greater adjudication and greater guidance that goes alongside the self-regulation - and it is 15 years now that the PCC has been in charge of self-regulation - rather than just the kind of warm words that we hear every time there is the kind of scandal you are talking about. We think very much that there needs to be a system of penalties that penalises those who breach these codes - which they all voluntarily sign up to and, yet, when there is a significant commercial interest to them, whether that is adding to circulation or adding to profit levels of their companies, they are prepared to breach. Mr Jempson: It is also true and worth pointing out that, during the history of the PCC, each time there has been a crisis, apart from the early days, there have been quite significant changes and it is now a much more comprehensive organisation. Its website is a much healthier and more helpful document, they have become more aware of the way in which they need to relate to their public, but at the same time it is quite clear that for that part, if you like, of the public relations role of self-regulation, it is the only real industry in which they expect to be judge and jury. They are always coming up with arguments against penalties, for instance, or compensation, because they say it might get the lawyers involved, but in fact just getting a rap on the knuckles does not really make any difference to anybody, especially if you can bury a complaint or a correction deep in the newspaper and get away with it. It is really a toughening up of both the way in which communications or investigations are embarked upon and the sorts of sanctions that can be imposed. But I think the other point we need to be thinking about right now is this business of the fact that all the media are merging. Newspapers are now running TV stations on their websites and you can get audio podcasts of whatever off the websites of newspapers. You have the PCC gaily saying, "We're now going to be adjudicating and regulating those items" whereas in fact broadcast items are supposed to be caught by a completely different system of regulation which is a statutory system. Where does that leave the journalists? By which code of conduct are they now supposed to be operating when they are carrying a webcam, for instance, for a newspaper? Q15 Philip Davies: Some members of the public think that newspapers give a big splash on a false story and then bury a correction on page 35, underneath the classified adverts. Is that a fair criticism, that public perception? Professor Frost: The PCC's figure suggests that apologies and corrections are run further up but I think the perception is there because there is some evidence to support it. The difficulty is around issues of privacy. The Committee is very concerned - and quite rightly - about privacy. The way self-regulation is working at the moment means that privacy is not handled extremely well. The number of complaints that are sent into the PCC has remained consistent as a percentage overall for its 15 years of existence and yet the number of complaints on privacy on which the PCC adjudicates is tiny. I also wonder how many of us, if our privacy were to be invaded, would choose to go to the PCC, when the only penalty - the only penalty - they are able to give is to publish an adjudication in the paper which merely reminds everybody that it has happened. Even if your name is anonymised, clearly the only penalty is to remind people of this breach of your privacy. There has to be another way to deal with that. I think it is possible to do that through self-regulation but it is not in the present system. Q16 Philip Davies: We are having a picture painted here of the holier than thou journalists who are being bullied into submission by these horrible, unscrupulous editors, and that if these horrible editors were not about we would just have nice stories, fluffy stories about knitting and all the rest of it. Would you not say that the people who are chiefly to blame for what is going on in the papers are your members? Because your members are the ones trotting out all of these stories. Professor Frost: Certainly a lot of our members write those stories. We would also claim there are some journalists who are not our members - and it would be nice to think they are the ones who are trotting out this kind of story, but I am not really that naïve. I am saying that by having the conscience clause we are able to shift the balance a little bit, we are able to move the debate a bit more, we are able to talk to our members about what would be appropriate and what is not without them feeling scared of losing their jobs. Certainly some will continue to produce those kinds of stories because there is money in it. Just as newspapers make money out of those stories, yes, so do some of our members. We have to understand that. That is why we need a self-regulatory system. If all our members were perfect and all editors were perfect there would be no need for the PCC, because nothing would ever go wrong. We need a self-regulatory system and we have to look at one which deals properly with invasions to people's privacy. It is no good just having a PCC that really just insists that editors print corrections of small, factual errors. Frankly, that is all we have at the moment. Q17 Philip Davies: In your submission you made a differential between what was in the public interest and what would interest the public. Do you not think the Code of Practice in its present form already makes that distinction? Do you blame the general public, who on the one hand complain about the invasion of people's privacy but on the other hand rush out to buy the paper that has just invaded people's privacy? Professor Frost: I think the Code of Practice of the PCC, by and large, is pretty good. I have made reference to the one exception to that. Its public interest defence is also a reasonably sound one. Defining the public interest is quite difficult and the way the PCC does it is as good as any other. It would be foolish to blame the public for wanting to read the kinds of things that the public want to read. I am not even suggesting that we should not provide that on occasions, but if it means invading someone's privacy, damaging their personal right to privacy in a way that is unacceptable, then we should not be doing that and the PCC should be making it easier for the media to understand where that divide comes. That means they need to adjudicate much more often than they do. There were 22 cases adjudicated last year and only five of them were upheld. Admittedly they print the resolutions, but it is quite difficult for the Press to get the lessons that come from these adjudications if there are only five of them. We need more guidance, we need to make it clear where that divide is, and there need to be appropriate penalties. Mr Dear: It is not that there should not be the kinds of stories you refer to; it is about the methods for getting those stories. If the methods that are used are outside the standards normally expected then there has to be an overriding public interest, and in our paper we define that public interest. It is the kind of information that allows citizens to make decisions about political issues, about the exercise of power and so on. It is more about the methods than about what the stories are. Mr Jempson: The problem is that when the methods are raised by complainants the PCC almost always refuses to deal with that. They look to the editors on their panel for advice. They almost always take their side over and against an ordinary member of the public who is saying, "The way they got the story was unpleasant. They did this and they did that." The PCC's line always tends to be, "It's your word against a reputable journalist" and they will go with the journalist, thank you very much, and yet it is the methodology that is often the problem. Q18 Paul Farrelly: Sadly, in my life, I have always worked for organisations which would not (Reuters) or could not (The Independent or The Observer) pay to get stories. But if you asked me who I would trust to bag a criminal on the Costa del Crime with a bag of cash, a Sun reporter or someone from The Sunday Times, like David Leppard, or a team from the Met Police, I would back the reporter any time. Sometimes you have to pay a criminal to catch a criminal. The police do it all the time. If that happened, Professor Frost, on your Ethics Council, and Mr Big from Costa Del Crime came and said, "This is really unethical. You've paid a small-time crook to finger me," how would you adjudicate that? Professor Frost: Quite clearly I am going to say I would need to see the case itself and go through the evidence. We are talking about extremely difficult areas, where the public interest has to be measured against the invasion of someone's privacy and their human right to privacy and the newspaper/reporter's right to freedom of expression. The balance then has to be made, looking at both the methods of doing that and the final result. It may be that the final result is so much in the public interest that the method used ---- Q19 Paul Farrelly: That the end justifies the means. Professor Frost: It may well do and I would not want to rule that out. That is why it is important that the PCC should adjudicate more, to give us more guidance on where that divide actually falls. We simply do not get that at the moment because a lot of cases do not come to the PCC, particularly in relation to privacy. The other thing to remember about the PCC is they are very limited in the number of third-party complaints that they make. If, for instance, you want to complain about Jerry Springer the Opera appearing on BBC Two, people wrote to the BBC in their droves - 56,000 springs to memory. If you want to complain about the way the News of the World use their false sheikh, for instance, in stories, then you cannot complain to the PCC. They will not accept it. It is a third-party complaint. Again, that limits complaints. We have not mentioned that in here but it is something the Committee should remember, that it is quite difficult for members of the public to complain about the way newspapers behave unless they are involved as the subject of the story. Q20 Helen Southworth: With reference to webcasts and television, what is the impact of the globalisation of the information trade on self-regulation, if you have journalists coming from all over who are working for people all over or freelancing? Professor Frost: It is clearly going to make it much more difficult. As more and more newspapers expand and as media converge it becomes much more difficult to tell which is doing which. But I still think we are talking about ten or 15 years as a minimum, before that becomes a serious problem for us, to reconsider how regulation operates in this country. Mr Jempson: I do not agree. It is quite clear already that a story that gets published, say, in a British newspaper and is then put out on the Internet, takes off in all sorts of bizarre ways. In a case we dealt with where The Sunday Mirror had accused a Christian worker in Monte Negro of being a child trafficker, that story disappeared on to the Internet, was picked up as gospel and then reappeared in all sorts of new forms: on websites attacking the UN; on right-wing organisations in America which were trying to make a point about Roma selling their children. Stories which are thought to be valid because they have been published in a British newspaper then get picked up and used as evidence. We found in one case that a story about gun-running ended up as evidence in an intelligence report which was also available on the Internet. I think there are lots of complicated problems about how you use the law to correct things which have begun as a simple story, have been put on to the online version and then picked up and turned around by other organisations all around the world. I think there are some really complicated legal issues there. Q21 Helen Southworth: If something has gone into the public arena on the Internet, what impact would that have on print journalism, for example? Does it have one? Mr Jempson: Of course. We have had lots of examples where there is an injunction preventing something being published but then it appears - in whatever world it is out there -on the Internet and, once it is there, everybody can see it, so what is the point of stopping it being published here? The whole opening up of the Internet changes the nature of regulation completely and nobody has really thought it through yet. Q22 Alan Keen: You mentioned that journalists are pressurised, that they need to make money for their paper. First of all, we think of the editors and journalists who get well paid and get bonuses, but what about the people who make their money through their shareholdings. Rupert Murdoch identifies himself very clearly with his newspapers: the public understand he is The Sun and The Times. With some of the other newspapers, we do not really know who is making the money from the shareholdings. Do you think it would help if they were identified more closely with newspapers, if in fact they had to appear in them or on them as identified people who presumably would have some moral code for what their newspapers produce? Mr Jempson: Some of them might think their privacy was being invaded if you told people that they had shares in a particular newspaper, for instance - which would be ironic. I think it would be quite a good idea if the public knew more about the ownership pattern, especially since, increasingly, people are not aware, for instance, at a local level that the same people may be pumping out the news on radio, on television, in their local newspapers, as well as in the national newspapers. People really do not know the sources of news. I do not think most people are that interested in the minutiae but I think the information needs to be there and then we can begin to ask questions about the implications of some of these cross-ownership schemes. What difference does it make if the control of your local newspaper, your local radio station, your local TV station and commercial TV stations are all in the same hands? What does it tell us about the limits of the amount of news we get and what things are not being told to us? Q23 Alan Keen: You have mentioned a number of points this morning on the PCC. Could you summarise what changes you would like to see. Professor Frost: We would want the conscience clause for journalists. That would, as I say, move the debate on and give them a chance to feel slightly more secure. We accept that would not change absolutely everything but it would change the picture a bit. We would like to see self-regulation continue with the PCC but for the PCC to take complaints from third parties and, more importantly to have penalties. So: to adjudicate far more often and, if necessary, to have penalties. As I have said, 22 cases were adjudicated last year; five were upheld. That means that on that kind of figure only five would risk any penalty. My own personal view on at least two of those cases is that it would only require a token penalty. We are not talking about fining large numbers of papers but if that penalty was available, if there were far more adjudications which were looking at what was happening, there would be a real debate about ethics within the industry and a real feeling that there are limits which should be adhered to at appropriate times. Mr Dear: Let us make it clear, we are against any privacy law, any statutory intrusion in privacy. I do not think that question was answered properly before. We want self-regulation but we want more effective self-regulation. That requires a system of penalties to be in place - not that you would use penalties all the time but so that they are there as a backstop for those who are persistent offenders in breaching the PCC Code and so on. We want a balance drawn on individual rights, for journalists to be able to refuse those assignments that clearly breach PCC codes of practice. Alongside that - and I know it is not the remit of this Committee - improved Freedom of Information legislation would allow journalists to be able to carry out the kind of investigations that are vitally important in a more open and transparent way. Mr Jempson: One of the things which is mentioned in our paper is the idea of an Ombudsman, somebody who can act as both a backstop for print and broadcast regulation but also who could be intervening if, for instance, Parliament decided to try to limit the freedom of the Press. I agree that there needs to be thought about compensation as part of the penalty system. And, perhaps most importantly of all, we need a much bigger public debate about the nature of the regulation now and possibly the need, if there is going to be any statutory introduction, for a right of reply. If we do not need privacy legislation, we might need a right of reply. Q24 Mr Hall: The National Union of Journalists has submitted suggestions that the newspaper industry and magazine web pages that are news-related should still be regulated by the Press Complaints Commission and that all web pages should be regulated by Ofcom. Does that not add another wave of confusion to all of this we go down that route? Professor Frost: I do not think it does. The way that quite a lot of these newspaper websites work at the moment is that they are getting video clips and audio clips from other sources. The Sun, very famously, recently had the flight video in the Iraq case - very, very useful to support what they ran in their own report and entirely appropriate in my view. But most of what is going on on their site and most of what goes on on other newspaper sites is coming from the standard news service and to try to consider two different types of regulation, two different types of rules that would apply, makes things unnecessarily complicated in our view. Certainly in the next ten years of development, to leave it with the PCC, a properly run PCC of the sort we are recommending, would mean that the control is with them. But whether that was in partnership with Ofcom and whether Ofcom had some oversight, as it does in other ways ... For instance, Ofcom subcontracts out regulation of advertising to the Advertising Standards Authority, and it may be possible to do something more akin to that. There clearly need to be links but there are difficulties involved, we think, in having two types of regulation. Many journalists and editors find it quite difficult enough to cope with one set of regulation, never mind two or more at the same time, and so there are difficulties with that. Mr Dear: The problem you would have for the individual journalist is that very often they will write a story and the same story will be used in two different formats and will therefore be subject to two different sets of standards, codes, regulatory frameworks. It is a huge problem going forward, as this happens more and more, as to how we deal with it. For now, we think the case is not there for a single regulatory body to cover the whole lot because of those particular difficulties for individual journalists and editors putting together a story. Q25 Mr Hall: In part of your evidence you said there should be this concept of penalties. We have had figures mentioned today of £100,000 for a news story and £250,000 for a photograph. What kind of penalties would make a difference? Professor Frost: I do not think they need to be huge. Q26 Mr Hall: What would be the point if they were not huge? Professor Frost: I was going on to say that it depends on the paper. The PCC has always said about penalties - quite rightly - that a penalty that would be suitable for a newspaper like The Sun would wipe out a small paper like the Accrington Observer for instance. We need to find some way of ensuring that a reasonable penalty for a small weekly paper is also capable of being a reasonable penalty for a big national paper that has multimillion pound budgets. We believe there are numbers of ways of doing that. We have suggested one in our evidence. We are not particularly wedded to that particular way of doing it; it is just an example of a way of doing it to ensure there are penalties that would be sufficiently severe for the individual newspaper or magazine involved for them to take that adjudication seriously. We do not anticipate that hundreds of newspapers or magazines would have that kind of penalty brought against them each year. As I said before, I would expect it would be two, three, four, five newspapers, but the fact that that penalty is there, that it could be reasonably severe - the PCC would be able to look at the methods used, the consequences and decide what is an appropriate penalty - would seem to me to raise the ante a bit and make people take things a little more seriously. Chairman: Thank you very much. We now need to move on to our next session. I would like to thank you very much for coming.
Witnesses: Mr Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner, and Mr Mick Gorrill, Head of Regulatory Action Division, gave evidence. Q27 Chairman: I would like to welcome Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner and Mick Gorrill, the Head of the Regulatory Action Division. It was Mr Thomas's report What price privacy now? which, at least in part, sparked this inquiry. I would also like to thank you, since I gather you are also giving evidence to another committee this afternoon. Mr Thomas: It has been postponed for two weeks, Chairman. Chairman: Good. I will ask Rosemary McKenna to start. Q28 Rosemary McKenna: Good morning, gentlemen. According to your report, you found evidence of systematic breaches of personal privacy that amount to an unlawful trade in confidential personal information. Would you say that practice is widespread? Mr Thomas: Yes, I would. It has been the law since 1994 that it is a criminal offence to obtain confidential personal information. This is not part of the European directive on data protection; it is a self-contained part of the data protection legislation. Over the years we have investigated allegations where this has taken place and we have in place now memoranda of understanding with such organisations as the Department of Work and Pensions, British Telecom and others which hold large volumes of personal data. Over the years we have investigated and we have brought prosecutions. Many of these have resulted in very low penalties. One reason we wrote the report in May of last year was to bring public attention to the nature and the extent of this trade. A particular case which has attracted a great deal of attention, not least in relation to the media, is what we called the Motorman Operation. That was a very extensive investigation which was so big that it was handed over to the Crown Prosecution Service because there were corruption aspects there. The information is obtained in two main ways. One is "blagging", where private investigators either impersonate the individual or they impersonate an employee of the organisation (DWP, British Telecom or whatever); the other is old fashioned payment: payment to junior staff for the disclosure of personal information. Those cases came to the Crown Court in 2005. I do not disguise from anybody my severe frustration that the result was no more than a conditional discharge for the private investigators concerned. It has been the law since 1994 but I came to the view that this was not being taken seriously enough and needed to have a higher profile. I am arguing for a range of measures, including increasing the penalties, and arguing - which the Government has now accepted in principle - that there should be a prison sentence there as a deterrent. I am also bringing to the attention of a wide range of organisations, not just in the media world but in the financial services industry, the legal world and even local authorities, who are the ultimate customers of this sort of trade, that this is a very extensive trade and that measures needed to be taken, both legal and, if you like, self-regulatory, to put a stop to it. I find it wholly unacceptable. I think the view I have is shared by very many people, not least over 60 organisations that have now responded to the Department of Constitutional Affairs' consultation paper, and the vast majority are supportive of taking a tougher line against this activity. Q29 Rosemary McKenna: Do you think there is evidence to give real grounds for thinking that much of the illegal trade in data never comes to light? Mr Thomas: It is always difficult. We can only really investigate where we have some sort of tip-off or where a complaint is made. I mentioned the protocols we have for the various organisations. They would invite us in when they had suspicions. Although the Motorman Inquiry was the one which attracted most attention, we have carried out a number other investigations since that report was published which brought other cases to court. They are documented in our December report. We have three or four cases now in the pipeline, another case coming to court next month, and others coming later this year. It is a pernicious trade; so extensive that we were able in our first report to publish the tariff for virtually any person in this room today. It would cost between £150 to £200 to find out the owner of the car parked outside your house last night. It would cost between £65 and £75 to get hold of your ex-directory phone number. It would cost £750 to get hold of your call records, the mobile phone or the fixed line record of whom you have called over a fixed period of time. It would cost £500 to get details of your criminal records. I found this quite outrageous. That is why I have put this into this report, bringing it to public attention. Q30 Rosemary McKenna: There is a widespread belief among people in the public eye that there are journalists and detectives out there trawling through the backgrounds of families and family members. Is that illegal? Mr Thomas: It is illegal if you obtain the personal data from a so-called data controller (an organisation which holds the information) without their consent, unless one of the defences applies. We will come on later to talk about the public interest defence. It is also a defence if you are doing it for the purpose of detecting or preventing crime. So there are a number of defences but it is a clear illegal, criminal matter - and it has been for many years now - to do this where you are obtaining information from a data controller (an organisation holding information). Of course, many organisations now, on data bases and otherwise, hold vast amounts of personal information about all of us. Q31 Rosemary McKenna: But it is not illegal to get information from private individuals. Mr Thomas: It would not be an offence under the Data Protection Act to go into your dustbin, as it were, and go through your personal dustbin. Q32 Rosemary McKenna: But public interest in that is ---- Mr Thomas: I can only speak in my role as Information Commissioner responsible for the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act. My personal view is that trawling through dustbins is equally unacceptable but it does not form part of the existing law. Q33 Paul Farrelly: I read some of the names who were involved in paying this private detective and thought, "Some of them have never broken a decent investigative story in their lives." They got caught with their fingers in the cookie jar; they just realised that it was possible to get this sort of information. I have never paid for a story but I have traded information. I will do a favour for a favour and I do not ask where I got the telephone number from or the bank records from and neither does my libel lawyer. I have one of my old libel lawyers, Louise Hayman, in the audience here. They do not ask either; they want to know whether it is true or not. We have some of the fiercest libel laws in the country. If I did not ask the question where you got that number or that bank account and those details, when pursuing people who are money laundering or serious crooks, and you said to me, "You shouldn't do that," I would say you were being prissy. Mr Thomas: With respect, Mr Farrelly, I am not sure it is prissy to make very clear criminal law. If you had got hold of my bank records, I would say, "How did you get those? You must have known they were confidential." Q34 Paul Farrelly: But I would not go for yours. Mr Thomas: It could be anybody. Q35 Paul Farrelly: I might go for who Mr Ivanovich, who might have a Chelsea estate from money laundering into London. Mr Thomas: If I could give an indication of the sorts of victims who were uncovered in our various investigations. A lot has been said, not least to this Committee in evidence, about public interest. I am frankly very sceptical about why that is being put forward. We are talking about fishing for tittle-tattle. We are talking about footballers and football managers, broadcasters, politicians, members of the royal household. You might argue possibly that some of these raise public interest issues. Q36 Paul Farrelly: No, I am not. I am talking about investigating serious crooks. Mr Thomas: If it is for the prevention or detection of crime, you have a cast-iron defence. That is part of the existing Act already. No one is suggesting any change to that. But where we come on to the sister of the partner of a local politician, the secretary of a Member of Parliament, the mother of a man linked to a Big Brother contestant, the mother of an aspiring star in the show-business world, these are the sort of people who are sucked into this web of illegal gathering of activity and then it is completely ordinary members of the public. The painter and decorator whose white van was checked out: we discovered that the private investigator had gone to DVLA illegally and from a corrupt official there had obtained the ownership of that white van. Why was he investigated? Because he was painting the house of a recent lottery winner. Q37 Paul Farrelly: Suppose Mr Iliich Ivanovich, to invent a name - and I am subject to privilege here but I hope there is no one like that out there wearing a hoodie who is going to shoot me - came to you when I published a story, the story went through the libel lawyers and he was 'bang-to-rights' for money laundering out of Russia. If he came to you and said, "This journalist got my number and my bank record unethically" how would you adjudicate that? Mr Thomas: We would investigate. Mick, I am sure, will say a few words in a moment about the process of investigation. Mick is a former senior officer in the Greater Manchester Police and essentially we use police methods to investigate. We have search warrant powers. We gather the evidence. We would raise this with the perpetrators. In the example you are postulating, they might start saying public interest. I want to make absolutely clear I am a very strong champion of the public interests. Wearing my freedom of information hat, it is fundamental to the success of the freedom of information law that there should be very clear activity in the name of the public interest. Perhaps I could refer you to the source material which we have published on what is for public interest. Under the FOI legislation we have published seven pages of guidance defining the public interest but, if I could summarise it, in terms of informing public debate on key issues; promoting accountability and transparency for decisions in public spending; tackling fraud; corruption and other crime; promoting probity, competition and value for money; clarifying incomplete or misleading information; promoting health and safety. We can recognise public interest when we see it but I have to tell you that in the cases we are dealing with under this legislation, where we have gone in and we have investigated the private detectives, I have not seen a whiff of public interest. Q38 Paul Farrelly: So it is acceptable for people like me to break the law to bring someone to book. Mr Thomas: If you are gathering information without the consent of your organisation and you can show that was justified in the public interest, you are not breaking the law, you have a good defence, and we would not dream of prosecuting, let alone a court convicting, in a case like that. Q39 Chairman: Mr Thomas, in your subsequent report, your follow-up, as a result of a Freedom of Information request you published a table listing all the various newspapers and a number of journalists whose names were found, I think, in the client list of the people arrested under Operation Motorman. The Press would respond by saying that there is no evidence that just because they appeared in a client list they were involved in anything illegal and nothing has been produced to suggest that. How would you respond? Mr Thomas: The first thing I would need to share with this Committee is that the 3,000 or 4,000 transactions identified in this table came from a total of 13,000 transactions in this one operation alone. We were careful only to put forward those where there was some sort of hard evidence of the transaction being positively identified as involving a journalist for a newspaper. We put this table together, as you say, in response to an FOI request and we then published it in our December report, but we were also at pains to spell out and the paragraph which proceeds the table does say very clearly, that "The Commissioner recognises that some of these cases may have raised public interest or similar issues but also notes that no such offences were raised by any of those interviewed and prosecuted in Operation Motorman." I would remind you that, although they have ended up only with a conditional discharge, there were convictions. The detectives concerned were found guilty of the section 55 offence. They could have raised a public interest defence; they did not do so. They were convicted. Q40 Chairman: I understand that it is a breach of the law not just for the person who illegally accesses the database, it is also a breach of the law by the person who commissions them to do so. If there was evidence that journalists had paid these people to access databases illegally, they themselves would be breaking the law. Did you investigate that? Mr Thomas: Yes. The offence is cast in terms of obtaining, disclosing, procuring, and I think it is the procuring element at which your question is directed. I think your question implies: why did we go for the investigators and not the journalists? We prosecuted the investigators in the first instance because they were the obvious culprits. We had hard documentary evidence of what they had done, and, indeed, that led to a guilty finding. We were going to wait to see what the outcome of that case had been before taking any further action. When the conditional discharges were imposed by the courts, we had advice from counsel that it would not be in the public interest for us to proceed with further prosecutions. We had some other prosecutions of our own against those same private detectives and then there was a possibility of taking action against journalists, but we had clear advice from counsel that we could not and should not proceed any further. I should also make the wider point that the evidence was very strong against the private detectives. If we had gone down the road of prosecuting any journalists, I fully recognise that we would have had to produce the evidence for a court of the nature and the extent of their involvement. We did have, and we do have still, the statements, the bank statements, the invoices - some of these well-known proprietors were including information such as payment for confidential information, payment for blagging in some case - so there was what I might call hard prima facie evidence but, equally, to bring a prosecution for the offence of procuring is never going to be that easy. I would not disguise that from anybody. In that particular case, we were unable to proceed any further with legal action. But, as I said at the beginning of my session this morning, the disappointment and frustration we had at the courts not taking this seriously enough we thought argued the case for a much stronger penalty to be there as a deterrent. I am very keen to stress that it is the deterrent effect which is important. Q41 Chairman: Could I press you on that, because you are suggesting to us that you did have evidence which might well have been of sufficient quality to enable a prosecution but you did not proceed because you were advised it might be against the public interest. Why should it be against the public interest? Mr Thomas: Because it would be essentially a waste of time and effort for my organisation but, also, if we were to go to the courts - it would be back to the magistrates' court - and bring prosecutions, we would have to decide which of the journalists to prosecute - would we go for the whole lot or some? - and the strong advice from our counsel was that we should not and could not proceed with such prosecutions. It would be attracting severe criticism within the court system if we were to go any further. Q42 Chairman: Do you not accept that your case that there is a widespread industry of illegally buying and selling information, and that journalists are one of the main perpetrators of this, is undermined if, when you come across all this evidence, no prosecutions follow? Mr Thomas: With respect, prosecution did follow. Q43 Chairman: But not of journalists. Mr Thomas: We have also documented in the back of our report many other cases where over the last five or six years we have taken cases to court, all of which ended up with very, very low penalties indeed, and I think we really felt that this is a serious matter but it is not recognised with sufficient seriousness on the face of the law and the courts themselves cannot take it more seriously. Even since we have published our report, there are now signs that the courts are beginning to impose higher fines, and in one case a community service order against the private detective concerned, so already the penalties are beginning to get more serious. Q44 Chairman: Although you did not prosecute, did you go to any of the editors of the journalists concerned and say, "We are not in the public interest going to proceed with a criminal prosecution but you should know we have come across evidence that your journalist appears to be breaking the law and under the self-regulatory system I would expect you to do something about it"? Mr Thomas: Chairman, I went to the Press Complaints Commission in November 2003. I had the first of a number of meetings with Sir Christopher Meyer in November 2003 and I said, "These cases are in the pipeline at the moment" and I outlined broadly what was involved. I wanted him to understand what the implications of this might be and I wanted the Press Complaints Commission to have the opportunity to decide what would be an appropriate response. That did lead to a guidance note being published by the Press Complaints Commission. That was a useful step but I also have to say that I was a little disappointed that there was not a more strident denunciation of the activity by the Press Complaints Commission. Q45 Chairman: As far as you know, no action was taken to follow up any of the specific cases which you had uncovered. Mr Thomas: Not as far as I know. Q46 Paul Farrelly: If I were to name four different types of person: a policeman, someone working for a statutory agency, a private detective or a journalist, where, in your experience, would you rank those four people in terms of misuse of the law on personal information? Who would be the worst culprit? Mr Thomas: I think you are drawing me a bit beyond my statutory functions but I would have to say, on the evidence we have seen and the reason why we have targeted them, the middle men, the private investigators, are the ones who we see at the heart of this illegal trade. This is an illegal market. Any market of this nature depends on supply and demand but the market also, if you like, comes together because these people are in the full-time business. I am not by any means condemning all private investigators but I am saying that most of our inquiries - and Mick may want to say a few words about this - focus upon the activities of private investigators. Mr Gorrill: We have 23 live investigations at the moment all based on private investigators. They have come to our notice for unlawfully obtaining personal data. It normally starts with a phone call to the DWP, BT or someone else who holds a big database of information. We are also getting more concerned now that medical records are being attacked. To give an example, a few weeks ago we executed a search warrant, and while the investigators were executing the search warrant the fax machine started to work and there was a task there from a company we are now investigating asking to find out if a particular woman had ever had cancer and if she has cancer at the moment. In a second one very similar to that, we found a task sheet which asked someone to ring some clinics in London that did abortions, to find out if a named woman had ever had an abortion at any of the clinics, with a warning to: "Be careful when you speak to the receptionist. If you do not get the information, hang up immediately, because we do not want to be compromised in this endeavour." These are the kinds of things we are doing. Q47 Paul Farrelly: Do you think you might be looking in the wrong direction? Mr Gorrill: In what way? Q48 Paul Farrelly: On these private eyes. Do you think you might be focusing on not the main culprits of misuse of personal connection. Mr Thomas: We are an investigating and prosecuting authority. We can go where the evidence leads us. The hardest and most blatant evidence which we have come across has been on the files and the records of the private investigators. But I think it is very important to make clear to this Committee - and I think it is implied in your question - that it is not just the representatives of the media. It is a fairly small minority, frankly, of the media who are the ultimate customers. We also identified the fact that banks, insurance companies, local authorities, even law firms are also involved in this market. That is one reason why the DCA has decided that the penalty should be increased generally. I am bound to say, however, that these other players, if you like, people like the British Bankers' Association, the Finance and Leasing Association, have all come along, in effect, and said, "This is unacceptable. There may be a few bad apples" and they are broadly supportive of increasing the effectiveness of the law to deal with the problem. That has not, sadly, been the general response of the media. The media has been rather more hostile to the proposals we have been putting forward. Q49 Alan Keen: Both the newspaper industry and the NUJ are opposed to custodial sentences under section 55 of the Act on the grounds that it would deter investigative journalism. Where do you place the balance? Mr Thomas: I hear the chilling argument, Mr Keen, which I think is what they are saying. To a certain extent, I want to deter illegal activity, but I do no think this in any way will chill or deter genuine investigative journalism. There are a number of defences, which I have mentioned this morning already, for the prevention or detection of crime where it is in the public interest. It seems to me that any serious investigation which can be remotely justified as being in the public interest will not be deterred or chilled by this law. It is already the law. In theory there has already been the possibility of unlimited fines. That has not been effective in deterring the unacceptable activity but nor has it inhibited the acceptable investigatory journalism. As I said earlier, in the cases we have investigated there has not really been any suggestion of what I would call genuine public interest. We can recognise it when we see it but none of the cases we have come across, I think, could easily have been justified as being in the public interest. It seems to me that any responsible journalist who is contemplating paying for or obtaining this sort of information only has to make a file note saying, "I'm obtaining this information for the following public interest reasons" and that would be a very strong piece of paper to wave in the face of any commissioner investigating and possibly prosecuting later. I do not think really it is going to have any serious effect on chilling genuine investigative journalism. There was a very recent and very important judgment in the House of Lord, the Wall Street Journal case related to what I would call "responsible journalism". Perhaps I might just read to the Committee the passage in Baroness Hale's judgment, because it puts it very clearly indeed: "The public only have a right to be told if two conditions are fulfilled. First, there must be a real public interest in communicating and receiving the information. This is, as we all know, very different from saying that it is information which interests the public - the most vapid tittle-tattle about the activities of footballers' wives and girlfriends interests large sections of the public but no-one could claim any real public interest in our being told all about it. It is also different from the test suggested by Mr Robertson QC, on behalf of the Wall Street Journal Europe, of whether the information is "newsworthy". That is too subjective a test, based on the target audience, inclinations and interests of the particular publication. There must be some real public interest in having this information in the public domain. But this is less than a test that the public "need to know", which would be far too limited." I entirely endorse that sort of approach. I think it very clearly distinguishes between the genuine public interest and some cases where the public may be interested but it is not in the public interest. Q50 Alan Keen: You have made the point a couple of times that you have been disappointed with the penalties when you have been successful on prosecutions - presumably because it is not a sufficient deterrent. Who is at fault? Who is making sure these are not sufficient as a deterrent? Mr Thomas: The law itself has a relatively low level of maximum penalty. That is why I have argued the case forcefully and the Government have now accepted that the penalty should be increased on the face of the law itself. Q51 Alan Keen: The Government have accepted. Mr Thomas: Yes, the Government had a consultation exercise in the autumn and about a month ago published their response to the consultation exercise. It proposed increasing the penalty. It had about 65 responses in total and the vast majority supported the idea of increasing the penalty and the Lord Chancellor announced about a month ago the intention to increase the penalty when parliamentary time allows. Q52 Alan Keen: Will that put it right? Mr Thomas: Yes, indeed. I think that would be exactly what I have been looking for. I am delighted with that response on this point from the Government. We have had a success already, frankly, in raising awareness of the problem. It was interesting that for the first couple of months after we published our report in May, it received virtually no press coverage at all. It was just ignored by the Press. Then, for a range of reasons, perhaps not least the News of the World case, it became rather more prominent. I do not think there are many journalists now who can say, "We didn't know that it is an offence under the law" because I think there has now been sufficient controversy about this matter. So we have had already success in raising awareness but, equally, that means for the future no one can say they did not know it was against the law. Chairman: That is all we have. Thank you very much Memoranda submitted by the Editors' Code of Practice Committee, The Sunday Times, the Society of Editors and Mr Paul Horrocks
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Les Hinton, Executive Chairman, News International, Chairman, Editors' Code of Practice Committee, Mr Arthur Edwards MBE, Royal photographer, The Sun, Mr Paul Horrocks, Editor, Manchester Evening News, President, Society of Editors, and Mr Bob Satchwell, Director, Society of Editors, gave evidence.
Chairman: For our next session, I welcome Les Hinton, who appears wearing two hats: that of Chairman of the Editors' Code of Practice Committee and as Chairman of News International; Arthur Edwards, the Royal photographer of The Sun; Paul Horrocks, who is President of the Society of Editors and Editor of the Manchester Evening News; and Bob Satchwell, the Executive Director of the Society of Editors.
Q53 Janet Anderson: I wonder if I could put this question to each of the four of you, please. The press notice announcing the Committee's inquiry linked it quite clearly to the Clive Goodman case and the trade in personal data identified by the Information Commissioner, and the treatment of public figures by photographers working on behalf of the press. Would you accept that the events that triggered this inquiry raise serious issues and that there is a valid role for politicians - such as those of us on this Committee - to consider whether the present system of self-regulation is the right one? Mr Hinton: Unarguably you are right to participate in a debate about whether the self‑regulation is sufficient, is proper. Q54 Janet Anderson: Do you think that the recent events ---- Mr Hinton: The recent events relating to...? Q55 Janet Anderson: The Goodman case in particular. Mr Hinton: Any event that involves the conduct of the press and our present system of self‑regulation is open - in whatever circumstances, frankly, politicians judge - to be open for discussion with us and for debate. Mr Edwards: Yes, I think so too. Self-regulation, if it is going wrong, then someone has to come down and make sure it works. Coming here today and sorting it out - I think that is the way to do it, yes. Q56 Janet Anderson: Mr Horrocks, you said in your evidence, "The problem with privacy issues is that politicians can easily whip up a storm among the public". Do you think that we are doing that today? Mr Horrocks: I think there is a danger of that. I see nothing wrong with the debate, but the fact is that it is all too easy to focus in on one case. As I think I said in my statement, one bad apple does not mean that the whole barrel is rotten. I do not believe that there is widespread bad practice, and I do believe that self-regulation, the role of the PCC and the Editors' Code, by and large, is strictly adhered to. I know that in my own newspaper we regularly discuss adjudications and we regularly go back and back-check our information, to see whether or not there is a potential breach. So the PCC and the Code are highly regarded and it would be wrong to suggest otherwise. I was a little disappointed, when I heard some of the earlier evidence from Mike and Chris that people are coerced into breaking the Code. That is just not my experience. I have been a journalist for over 30 years; I have been the Editor of the Manchester Evening News for ten years; and I was on the PCC as a commissioner for four years. It is not a common problem, in my experience, that people are being forced into breaking the Code or are pushing beyond the boundaries of what the Code and what the law say you can do. Sure, it is perfectly acceptable to go close, but there must be an overriding public interest were you to consider breaking the Code, and that would then be down to the editor to determine whether those circumstances were correct. Q57 Janet Anderson: You specifically mention that in your e-mail to your staff about the use of phone tapping and so on, where you say, "The only exception to this would be in the case of a story which had exceptional public interest and even then such action would have to be sanctioned personally by the Editor". Are you able to give us an example of where that was the case? Mr Horrocks: If you were carrying out an investigation into corruption, if you were doing an investigation into wrongdoing, into misdemeanours in public life, misleading the public, those are the sorts of public interest tests that I would want to see applied to our journalism, to make sure that the bar had been set at the highest standard. We are not talking here about tittle‑tattle; we are not talking about the lifestyle and the private lives of celebrities. We are talking about serious wrongdoing, corruption, misleading and crime. If we are investigating those subjects and that subject matter, then I think that there will be and can be occasions where a justifiable breach of the Code could take place. Q58 Janet Anderson: You have never had a case, for example, where you have thought that to break the Code was in the public interest, but the journalist or the reporter you were asking to do this disagreed with you? Mr Horrocks: That can be debated. I do not recall in my experience ever having to have that discussion. When we embark on those types of investigation, it is as a result of debate and everybody being content with the route that we are following. We do not say to journalists, "You must do this because I say so". What we do say is, "We believe that this investigation will be in the public interest. Therefore...". Maybe if you were buying drugs - for argument's sake - for a particular reason for an investigation, you would not go along and say, "I'm a reporter from the Manchester Evening News and I want to buy some drugs from you", because clearly that will not work. So you may have to masquerade as somebody else. That potentially is a breach of the Code. Mr Satchwell: This inquiry by this Committee not only is quite reasonable and correct, but is welcome. The point I would make is that too often there is an emphasis on the misdemeanours and the things which go wrong with the media and within the PCC system and self‑regulation as a whole. The danger is that, because you get a spectacular case involving a big celebrity, a film star, a pop star, a politician or a footballer, there is a level of interest and concern raised which does not reflect the reality. Surely the protection which needs to be there about privacy is about ordinary people? By and large, the media does not have any interest in ordinary people, unless they are doing something which deserves to be enquired into. The point I would make is that I would hope that this Committee, particularly given your remit, would also look at the achievements of the media. It is not all bad. It does things which are good and very rarely gets a pat on the back. In Les Hinton's case, the News of the World had a problem with a reporter on a Royal story and yet, a couple of weeks later, goes and exposes a case to do with friendly fire in Iraq, which everybody thinks was well done. That is done by a paper from the same stable, but very little praise comes out; very quick to criticise but not very quick to praise. Similarly with the effects of the system that has been brought in for the last 15 years, and the work of the PCC. I do not think that there is any real argument that the behaviour of the press has improved, and that has been to do with the fact that the PCC has been there. I am not saying that it is perfect, and of course it could be developed and improved, but no one seems to recognise the achievements of the system. Q59 Janet Anderson: Could you give us an indication on what is an editor's dream story or dream headline? Do they have a kind of list of priorities? What sells more papers than anything else? Mr Satchwell: It used to be a Royal story, with a nice cuddly Labrador dog, and a diet thrown in! There are all sorts of stories which are dream stories. With any story it depends on the publication and the nature of that story. Obviously, a story which is soft and about celebrities will sell but, similarly, so will a very serious story about the misdemeanours of government or the police or whatever. I think that it is impossible to say what is the best story. Mr Hinton: For the public, there is probably a rule of thumb that the biggest stories are the stories the subjects of which want least to be revealed, in the case of the policy of the government. The best story I can think of, if you could keep it exclusive, would be the Second Coming. Q60 Philip Davies: It is in 10 Downing Street! Mr Horrocks: For us, it would be winning a campaign that has been initiated by the concerns of our readers, when we went up against maybe authority or government to say, "This is wrong" and we would win that campaign. That would be a strong and compelling story for us. Q61 Paul Farrelly: Can I throw a question at Les, who wears so many hats that his wardrobe must be full of them! Recently, in the Sunday Times, three of the finest investigative journalists that I have worked with - Mike Gillard, Jonathan Calvert and David Connett - teamed up to write the story about the Adams family finally being brought to book. If Mr Adams came to you and said, "These people got me bang to rights. They hacked into my text messages"; then maybe you had Prince Charles coming to you saying, "Clive Goodman has hacked into my text messages"; and you said, "Actually, Mr Adams, you're a crook"; but Clive Goodman says to you, "Mohamed El Fayed says that Prince Charles is a crook, and I'm trying to back up a story that actually he murdered Princess Di", who would you find in favour of? Mr Hinton: That is the whole point of the debate we are having now, when it is proper or not proper to go over the line in enquiring into stories. Usually, when you begin making an investigation - if one of our reporters was told, for instance, by a colleague of Mr Whittingdale that he had been receiving daily millions of pounds from the Republic of Congo, and we listened to his plausible story and decided that we were only going to be able to find out by getting access to his bank account through subterfuge - and we did so, and it turned out to be true - we are fine. But if it turned out that this chap had an incredible vendetta against Mr Whittingdale and we were tumbled, trying to find out, would that person be subject, as Mr Thomas would like him to be, to being imprisoned? If Andy Coulson, when he was Editor of the News of the World, had called up the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and said, "I have to tell you, Mr Blair, that one of my reporters was accessing a phone message, a voicemail, and we have reason to believe that, two days from now, bombs will go off on the London Underground", I doubt that Mr Blair's first words would have been, "Mr Coulson, you're under arrest". We operate in this area all the time. It is not to say that we do not make mistakes or that we will continue to, but placing too great an inhibition on people who are setting out to explore what they consider to be genuine issues of public concern is a dangerous thing to do. Mr Thomas himself has just said in his evidence to you that journalists, in so far as he knows, who are breaching the use of these tracing agencies are a very small minority. I think that is the most telling part of his testimony, if I might say. Q62 Chairman: You would presumably accept that in the example Mr Thomas gave, which was the mother of the man once linked romantically to a Big Brother contestant, it is difficult to see a public interest in invading her privacy. Mr Hinton: I cannot imagine it. Q63 Mr Evans: Public perception out there seems to think that a lot of journalism is squalid; that they are ferreting around in areas of so-called mini-celebrities' lives where perhaps they ought to be left alone. Do you think that a lot of it is perhaps the fault of celebrities themselves; that in fact there is collusion out there and members of the public have not the faintest idea that that goes on? Mr Edwards: I think that mini-celebrities probably want publicity. They are probably getting people ringing you up and telling you these things, so that they can get publicity and they become major celebrities. I think that is a lot of it. When celebrities appear in newspapers, I just think that most of it is brought on themselves. They have courted the press getting there and, by and large, I think they enjoy it. It helps them. I think that it helps them to sell their films and their records. Mr Hinton: It is true as a broad rule, I think - and, again, this is not to say there is not excess by certain members of the press at certain times - that the people who depend upon a public profile are inclined to change the rules. When they want the public profile, they will very cleverly court it; sometimes more subtly than lay people may appreciate. When that publicity and that spotlight which they have invited suddenly discover things that they find less agreeable, then of course they cry foul. Again, it is tricky, but you have to remember that people who make the currency of their livelihood a public profile have to be ready sometimes to accept publicity they do not particularly want. Q64 Mr Evans: Would you include Chris Tarrant in what you have just said? The Chris Tarrant divorce? Mr Hinton: I do not know. It would depend upon the case. I cannot remember the details. Q65 Mr Evans: We have been written to by the manager here. What he is saying is that clearly Chris Tarrant likes a lot of publicity but then, when something in his private life goes a bit "squiff", they are not really keen. Looking at the submission put in by his manager about the way that his wife at that stage and the child were followed, time and time again, by the media, there is one bit here which says, "This meant that they were forced to conduct their daily lives behind closed curtains, the press pointing cameras and specialised microphones at the house, which is close to the public highway. Furthermore, when Ingrid was obliged to go out to the shops or to take Toby to school, she was subjected to an onslaught of flashlights before being pursued in her car. On a number of occasions, in trying to get away from the pursuers, perilous situations occurred, where she and those with her in the car were put in danger. I understand that there was one occasion where the car actually left the road and damage was done to its suspension". Mr Hinton: That is all new to me but I have to say that, on the face of what you have just said, if it were all as described, Mr Tarrant would have had a very good cause for making contact with the PCC to claim some action be taken. Q66 Mr Evans: Which is what he did in this case. Are these freelancers that are doing this then? Who is doing this? Mr Hinton: I do not know in that particular case. We can talk about other cases. I am a little more familiar with the Kate Middleton case, which I know is one that you have specified. It is very difficult, again. To treat and harass someone in the way that that happened would seem to me to be excessive. The PCC - and in their testimony they will tell you later on, I know because I have seen their submission - act frequently and very effectively when things get out of hand. In the case of the Kate Middleton episode of a few weeks ago, when things were clearly getting out of hand, I would guess that the vast majority of those people outside were in fact not acting upon assignment from big media. That did not matter; we were all part of it. That stopped, because it was clearly wrong. However, it is very difficult to make rules about what is the proper size of the assembly of the press at a particular event or on a particular occasion. It is very hard to do that. Mr Horrocks: In general terms, harassment is not acceptable. We have a policy at my newspaper that, if people do not want us to be present, if we have knocked on the door once and they say, "Go away", we go away. All my staff are aware of that. In terms of celebrity images, I will give you a recent example where we were supplied with an agency photo of a celebrity footballer, out with his girlfriend, shopping in Manchester, inside a department store. The photo had been photographed through the window. We considered using that photograph. We tried to contact that person's agent to see whether they would give permission. They would not. We did not use the photograph. On a different issue, we took photographs recently of people on their mobile phones in their cars because, such is the public interest in that. We did consider whether or not people did have an expectation of privacy when they were at the wheel of their car. We determined that, as they could be seen from the road, they did not and that the public interest motivation in exposing wrongdoing by driving whilst phoning justified, potentially, a breach of their privacy. Those are the sorts of discussions that go on, day in and day out, in newspapers - not so much the Chris Tarrant issue. Mr Satchwell: But you do not mention what happened after the Tarrant family contacted the PCC. There is all of that evidence, which I am sure that the PCC can talk about in terms of their proactive work. Look at some of the biggest stories that have happened over the years: Dunblane, Soham - huge great cases - where the world's media were there. Then somebody gets together and says, "Look, we need some peace. Can the media leave us alone?" and the media just withdraws. The PCC plays a big part in that. Bear in mind, with the media scrum argument, a lot of the size of the scrum is down to the fact that TV has to have cameras, sound people and so on, so they make up the numbers; but the PCC is the first point of call. The PCC will go to the broadcasters and say, "Look, we have been asked to leave these people alone". I do not know of any instances where, after that request has gone in, there has been a continued problem. Q67 Mr Evans: How much of this do you think has come out after the death of Diana? You talk about a media scrum and everybody being interested. A lot of people out there, whenever they saw her - and, Arthur, you are probably one of the Royals' favourites here - the public perception was that they were harassing her, persecuting her wherever she went. Mr Edwards: We are talking about Diana? Q68 Mr Evans: Diana in this case. Do you think that a lot of change has happened since because of that? Mr Edwards: I think they pursued Diana towards the end. In 1997 when she was going to the gym and everything, I did think that was outrageous, yes. I think that was uncalled for. Princess Di used to wear the same shirt every day, so that perhaps it would deter photographers from taking that same picture; but it did not. They just kept going and going and going. It was a feeding frenzy on it. After her death, where photographers pursuing the car had something to do with it - and I believe that - I certainly looked at what I did every day and how I approached photographing the Royals. In the early 1980s, when Kelvin was the Editor of The Sun, the Royals were open season; it is no secret. I used to go to do private things, private holidays. I do not do that any more. It is all finished; it has changed. The whole idea of covering the Royal family, for me, is very different now. The recent thing with Kate Middleton, when I saw the video footage outside her house on her birthday, I felt really sorry for that girl. I just did not want anything to do with that. When I saw the pictures the next day of the girl with a camera right up to her face, I was horrified - because I knew that girl and she is a very good photographer, works for Associated Press and, for a long while, she covered the Royals with me. It was a kind of freak frame that the photographer took of the girl, where she was walking past her and it did look worse than it actually was. When I saw the pack break and they all surrounded her, I felt awful about that. It does remind me of what happened to Princess Diana, and I hope that we do not make that same mistake again. I think that we should pull back a bit and start to look at this girl's life. She is a private citizen; she needs a bit of space. She is in love with Prince William. I am sure of that and I am sure that one day they will get married. I have talked to William about this. (Laughter) Mr Satchwell: You have heard it here first! Q69 Mr Evans: I can see Sky News now - "Breaking News: We're going live to the Select Committee"! Mr Edwards: I have talked to him about it and he has made it clear that he wants to get married, and I believe what he says. So I think this girl should be left alone. Mr Hinton: It is also true in the case of Kate Middleton - and I think a sign of the times, and the others have made references to some events - that, very quickly, when it became clear that it was out of hand, that pack dissipated within 24 hours. One morning it was very bad; the next morning I think there were two people there, and one of them, I think, was an ITN camera crew. Q70 Mr Evans: Can I ask you, Arthur, a further question on this? You say that you have shown great restraint and you have looked at your procedures since the death of Diana. However, there are a lot of freelancers out there and there are a lot of other people who must be under pressure from editors who say, "How come they got that photograph there, and you didn't get it?". Are you under any pressure ever from that? Mr Edwards: No, not at all. In fact, I do not feel under pressure. If Kate Middleton had won the Lottery or was playing a piano in a pub somewhere, I think that it would be fair to go along and photograph that - if she was doing something of interest, not just going to work every day and driving a car. Some of the things she has been subjected to, Nigel, I have to tell you, are pretty bad. She has been stopped at traffic lights, where they climb off their motorbikes and start photographing her. She has been out shopping in stores and they run into the stores after her. She uses public transport a lot - or she did - but they climb on the buses and the bus driver is having to throw them off. That is what is happening, and that is not how I was taught. When I worked on local papers and came through to work on The Sun and other national newspapers, I did not do it that way. I normally approach the person and ask them. The first picture I took of Princess Diana I said, "Are you Lady Diana Spencer?". She said, "Yes". I said, "Can I take your photograph, please?". She said "Yes", and she posed for me. That is how I was brought up. Today, it is not like that. It is young people who buy a digital camera and think they are a photographer. They go into the scene; they do not care; they just rush in; they have no idea the suffering that person is undergoing. I think that when Les made that rule on our papers, "No more paparazzi pictures of this lady", that was it. Suddenly everybody came to their senses. This girl was going through hell - for what? For a picture. It just was not worth it. Very easily, we could be responsible for her having another accident, like Diana did, by pursuing her in traffic; bothering her at work; climbing over the wall at work, where security guards have to throw the paparazzi out. It is not the way ---- Q71 Mr Evans: Have the Royals told you personally about their feeling about the intrusion into their private lives? Mr Edwards: No, they have not; but I have spoken to people close to them and I know that it really is distressing this girl. You get the argument, "Well, she's smiling"; but she is a really decent, nice person. She is not going to walk out scowling and looking miserable. She just tries to look her best every day. It is a big pressure on her every morning, when she walks out and sees young men out there with cameras, and who have no respect for her. Q72 Mr Evans: Arthur, can I ask this one question then? Do you believe that the procedures in place now are therefore sufficient to protect the privacy, the rightful privacy under the Code that is currently there, of those like the members of the Royal family? Mr Edwards: Yes. I think the birthday just went hopelessly wrong. What our company did by immediately stopping that, as Les said, immediately the next day it was nothing. In fact, one TV crew went down there to photograph paparazzi and there was no one there. So it did stop it. I checked yesterday, and I am told that it is maybe one, maybe two, now and again. So it has stopped it. Mr Hinton: I have to say, Nigel, that 20 years ago or longer, when I was on the road, it would have been impossible to do that. Mr Satchwell: Going back to your original question about Princess Diana and 1997, there was a sea change that happened then. The Code was rewritten quite importantly but, more than that, I think the spirit behind the Code was changed. In fact, the Code began to say that it should be followed in its spirit as well as to its letter. That was a very important change. That change happened at that time. Big events tend to make people think again, and I think what happened was that the press was beginning to say, "Okay, we can do this, that and the other, but we should ask ourselves who are we hurting, who are we damaging, before we do it". I think that helped at that time, and that is where the change has happened over the 20 years. As Arthur bears out, you get another event which just serves as a reminder recently, which makes everyone think again. With these sorts of things, we have to be reminded from time to time where the Code takes us; but it certainly has had a huge effect over that 20-year period. Q73 Mr Evans: Foreign photographers - there is no Code over them though, is there? Mr Horrocks: No, but we still have a responsibility to look at the source of those photographs. The fact is that photographs now come from all over the world and they come from members of the public. It is back to the Code and back to the editor's responsibility to establish, if possible, where that picture was taken, who took it, and what were the circumstances. That is why the Code is so important, and that is why it is discussed and has been raised up the agenda of every newsroom that I am aware of. Q74 Chairman: Les, you were active regarding Kate Middleton. Kate Middleton is a very popular figure; the public like her; she may be Queen one day. It was probably in the interests of your newspaper to take the stand that, "We're not going to be a part of this". What about people who are not popular with the public? Somebody like Jade Goody or like Jo O'Meara, who were pursued when they came out of the Big Brother house and certainly did not have the kind of public support that Kate Middleton did - should they not also have some degree of protection? Mr Hinton: It is not an entirely answerable question, but it is also fair to say that people leaving the Big Brother house are often making sure that they do not travel too quickly, so that the press can keep up with them. So I would be a little cynical about the particular example that you have employed. However, I do recognise that when ordinary people suddenly find themselves in a very special situation and are subject to intense attention, it may or may not be warranted but I do think that it is beholden on the industry and individual newspapers to make sure that they are behaving in a proper manner. Judging what the proper manner should be, in relation to the particular reason that they have attracted attention, is a very tricky thing to do; but I think that the industry is far better at measuring its conduct than it was 20 years ago. Mr Horrocks: What the vast majority of complainants want - and I know this from my own experience as editor and being involved in the PCC - is a resolution to their complaint. They may not want a correction; they may not want an apology. They either want something to stop or they want the newspaper to say either "Sorry" or "We'll amend our records". What the PCC is very good at doing is brokering those arrangements; and the vast majority of complaints are resolved in that way: amicably, properly and - the point is - very quickly. Q75 Alan Keen: Could I ask Les this question? I have asked this question before. Should the owners of newspapers be more prominent and would that make a difference? The fact that Rupert Murdoch identifies himself very clearly with his newspapers - does that mean that you are more careful than an editor of a newspaper whose ownership is unknown? Would it be better if people were forced to identify with the newspaper that is making their money for them? Mr Hinton: For me, of course, that is a pretty academic question, since we are not actually under the ownership of a retiring proprietor. However, I think that there is often a balance between proprietorial control over what a newspaper does and editorial control over what a newspaper does. The Guardian is famously run by a trust that allows total independence to its editor. I think that it is perfectly reasonable for readers to know who owns their newspapers; but it is not a particular secret. The vast majority of newspapers in this country are owned by big public companies, such as ours is, and there are shareholders. There are insurance companies and pension groups that own News Corporation - the company I work for - and I am sure it is the same with Paul. So breaking down the actual ownership of a newspaper, when you start to dissect it, is tricky but, in the end, it is a question of how a newspaper has conducted itself; how an editor is behaving; how its readers are reacting to what those newspapers are doing - and that reaction is buying them or not. Q76 Alan Keen: I understand that Rupert Murdoch does not own all the shares, of course, but he is high profile. If the shares are owned ultimately by a public company, should that chairman and that group of companies be identified with the newspaper? Would it make the newspaper more responsible? You have a very direct line through to Rupert Murdoch, obviously. Mr Hinton: I am not quite sure what the merit would be. If you take, for example, regional newspapers, and Johnston Press is an example - I am a non-executive director of it - it places great pride and importance on allowing its editors to make individual policy decisions based upon the editor's view of the community. There is never an editorial discussion of board meetings; that is the way it works. I think that, for community newspapers, is actually a good thing. In the end, the relationship is between a community and its newspaper and the editor of that newspaper. I think that is the visibility that matters most of all. The broader ownership issue is of course important, but I think that is the most important connection. Mr Horrocks: And that is where self-regulation works, I think, because at the end of the day no editor wants to have in their newspaper an adjudication against them that their own community then sees. That is a harsh penalty. Q77 Mr Hall: Can we just go back to the Kate Middleton case? You have said that self‑regulation works, but it did not work in this case. We had the media scrum outside her house; we had a complete intrusion into her personal space and her privacy. It was only a reaction to that which got the scrum outside her house removed. Do you not think that editors have some kind of responsibility to make sure that that thing does not actually take place in the first place? Mr Horrocks: You can be responsible for your own staff and give your own staff instructions as to how behave. You cannot legislate for freelance activity or for members of the public also acting as photographers. The main thing is that, when a scrum situation like that occurs, there was a mechanism to stop it. Q78 Mr Hall: But there is not a mechanism to stop it happening in the first place. Mr Hinton: It does happen spontaneously ---- Q79 Mr Hall: Come on! Everybody knew it was her birthday. Mr Edwards: But there was a lead-up to it. Mr Hinton: It was going on before the birthday. Mr Edwards: There was a lead-up to it, and a lot of people thought that, because it was her birthday, there might be an announcement of an engagement. Q80 Mr Hall: You have already done that for them! (Laughter) Mr Edwards: But they did not listen to me! I did not go down there, you see, so I knew ---- Mr Hinton: What had happened was that there were a couple of plausible stories - and Arthur has added, with his great credibility, to the plausibility of them - that they were about to announce their engagement. That is what started it. It led up to her 25th birthday. So there was genuine interest at that point. Going to her home in order to take a photograph of her, in isolation, would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But when you see a crowd that will clearly create problems, that you cannot control and the only way we could control it - when I looked at it, it was "This is going to lead to trouble" and, I confess, it was a pragmatic decision too, "This is going to lead to trouble. Something is going to go wrong here" - the only way you can really do it is by saying, "We will not buy photographs from paparazzi". At that point, thankfully others followed and they immediately had no reason to be there. However, it is difficult, in advance, to anticipate every occasion when that might happen. Q81 Mr Hall: The real difficulty, of course, is - this is something else that was mentioned, I think by you, Paul - you said, "Self-regulation works, but big events help to change our thinking on various things". Clearly, we have an example here of where the protection of the privacy of Kate Middleton did not work. What you are saying is, "When it happens again, we will call them off". Should there not be something more proactive, to stop that happening again in the future? Mr Horrocks: What would you suggest? I think that at the moment what we have is a situation where, with an event like that, you cannot legislate for the number of people who may appear at a particular news event. You cannot do that. However, what you can do is, if things are getting out of control, have a mechanism to try and make sure that it does not happen the following day. Q82 Mr Hall: One of the mechanisms you suggested is making sure that the complaint is resolved. Again, that is reactive, is it not? Mr Satchwell: This is not a complaint that is resolved; it is the fact that she was put into that position. She was put in that position not just because the media is there, but the members of the public will be there. That is how the scrum develops. As soon as the issue was raised, I think that the industry acted very quickly indeed. Bear in mind that the papers do not have any interest in her being caused problems, certainly not her life being endangered, because here is a great story. We have had everyone laughing this morning, but it is about a royal prince and a fairytale story about a possible marriage. That is a wonderful story for all the papers. They do not want to do anything which will disturb that story. So the intention is always to try and make sure that the story is covered very responsibly. Q83 Mr Hall: So what you are saying is that news editors were not responsible for all of the scrum outside Kate Middleton's house. I think that is absolutely right, because you do not control every aspect of the media. Yet, on the strength of a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, that scrum disappeared the day after, completely. Mr Satchwell: Once a situation is raised by the person concerned, the PCC would then talk to all the papers and the broadcasters. That is the part of the system which again goes unsung: the fact that the industry is taking this on board itself and involving everyone who might be involved, to try and get away from that problem - and it was a very quick reaction. Q84 Mr Hall: That suggests to me that the vast majority of people there were under some obligation to the Press Complaints Commission, because they actually moved. Mr Satchwell: It was also reported, was it not? Mr Horrocks: The fact is that the editors take notice of the PCC's request or passing on of information. That is the point: that the editors take notice. Years ago, that may not have happened; it does now, because editors do take notice. We can focus a lot on the high-profile cases, and inevitably that is what happens, but there are many, many cases going on throughout the country - regional, weekly, and local papers - where self-regulation and responsible reporting, photographers, et cetera, is regulated by the Code and it is taken notice of. Q85 Rosemary McKenna: In the Goodman case it was dealt with by the law and obviously would have been caught under the Code as well. The Society of Editors has said that the editors and the whole of the media have taken this very seriously and have said, "We condemn this offence and it is not representative of the media". We will accept that. However, journalists continue to use methods that are very dubious. There is no doubt about that. They are paying for information; they are trawling through people's backgrounds; and using other methods, like trawling through dustbins, refuse collection, and all that kind of thing. Can you justify that, when there is no public interest whatsoever in some of the kind of information that they bring up? Mr Horrocks: If there is no public interest, no, we cannot justify it; but the fact is that the Goodman case, in my opinion - and that is why I gave that statement - was a one-off. I do not believe that this is widespread activity. In my career, I have not come across this in a widespread way. Of course, there will always be people who go beyond what is acceptable, but in this case the law dealt with Goodman. The Code would have dealt with Goodman. The fact is, the law worked; and, if this was so widespread, why are there not more prosecutions? Why are not more people coming forward to make those sorts of complaints? In my four years on the PCC I can only recall one adjudication in favour of the complainant, where somebody had intercepted telephone messages. One case in four years. It is not widespread. We are not saying that it does not go on, but it is not widespread. Q86 Rosemary McKenna: So you would not accept, as was said earlier, that one of the reasons people do not go to the Press Complaints Commission is because the redress of publishing the story again is not worth it, because all you are doing is reminding people of the original story? Mr Horrocks: People will go to the PCC to make a complaint if they feel that there is a problem with accuracy, harassment, intrusion, and the PCC will look at that complaint; but then will, in conjunction with the complainant, agree the form of resolution. It may be that somebody does not want to have their name published again in the newspaper; they may simply want a letter of apology. Q87 Rosemary McKenna: That is fine, but the story has already been out there. The story is there. One of the problems is, once the story is out there, every single time that person's name is mentioned in connection with anything else, that is rehearsed. I have spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks, speaking to colleagues about why they have not made complaints or, if they have been involved, what their attitude is, and very many of them say, "Simply because it rehearses it again and again". Mr Satchwell: But if there is an inaccuracy and a complaint is made, part of the procedure will be that cuttings files and library files are changed suitably, if there has been an inaccuracy. That is why it is important for people to complain: so that things are put right for the future. Mr Horrocks: We have an electronic log at the Manchester Evening News of complaints that are against the paper, or legal adjudications or PCC rulings. Any member of staff, any journalist, can look at that log and find that if person X complained or said there was an inaccuracy in that story, "Do not repeat that particular suggestion". Q88 Rosemary McKenna: That message is not out there. One other point - the growing practice of editors contacting people late on a Saturday, when a story will appear on the Sunday and it is too late to do anything. Mr Horrocks: That is a hard one. I think that people should be given the time to properly consider a reply. I do not believe it is acceptable to leave it right to the last minute. Q89 Mr Evans: Can I ask one final question of Arthur? You know your colleagues really well. Do you think that now, because of what has happened in the past - we have mentioned Diana - that Kate Middleton is unlikely to suffer the same sort of intrusion that Diana did during her lifetime? Mr Edwards: I would like to think that she would not. I really would. We are talking about self‑regulation here. Mainly, the Fleet Street photographers - I mean the photographers employed by newspapers - do act properly. They do try to be organised. They do try to work it so that there is no stress. But there is this gathering band of paparazzi now and they are just ruthless; they do not care; they are just going to do anything for a picture. If we can control those, and I think that not buying the pictures will help, Kate Middleton will probably have a much better time of it. Since that scrum on her birthday, I think it has got a lot better for her and I just hope that continues. Q90 Chairman: Les, can I come back to the Goodman case? The official version of events appears to be that Clive Goodman broke the law and has paid the penalty for doing so; that his editor was unaware that he broke the law but nevertheless took responsibility, because he was the editor, and resigned; and that is the end of it. Can you tell us what investigations you carried out to determine whether or not anybody else was aware of what Clive Goodman was doing? Mr Hinton: First of all, the police obviously carried out pretty thorough investigations, and the result of their investigation was the charge against Clive and against the private detective. Clive went to prison; the News of the World paid a substantial amount to charities nominated by Prince Harry, Prince William and the editor, who told me he had no knowledge of this activity but felt that, since it had happened on his watch, he should take his share of the responsibility, and he resigned. The new editor has been given a very clear remit to make certain that everything is done in the form of seminars and meetings. We were already doing this kind of thing in the past with all our newspapers. It has been re-emphasised. They are all attending. There is mandatory attendance at seminars, understanding the law and understanding the limits; understanding that, in the event that there is a judgment that the public interest might warrant some stepping over the line, it has to be authorised by the editor at the very least. That is all being done now. I believe absolutely that Andy did not have knowledge of what was going on. However, he is no longer the editor and what matters now is that we have to start somewhere. What we are doing now is a very rigorous programme to make sure that the conduct of the journalists there is as impeccable as it reasonably can be expected to be. Q91 Chairman: I commend what you are doing now, but Clive Goodman was paying for some of this information. Those cheques presumably required approval, did they not, from somebody else? Mr Hinton: There were actually two issues involved in the Goodman case. There had been a contract with Glenn Mulcaire, during which he was carrying out activities which the prosecutor and the judge accepted were legitimate investigative work. There was a second situation where Clive had been allowed a pool of cash to pay to a contact in relation to investigations into Royal stories. That, the Court was told, was where the money came from and the detail of how he was using that money was not known to the editor. That is not unusual for a contact, when you have a trusted reporter - which Clive was - to be allowed to have a relationship which can lead to information and which involves the exchange of money. That is what happened in that case. Q92 Chairman: If self-regulation is to work, if a reporter suddenly comes back with some pretty exclusive stories, is there not a procedure where somebody says, "You can give me an assurance that this hasn't been obtained illegally or in breach of the Press Complaints Commission Code"? Mr Hinton: In the case of Clive Goodman, the stories he apparently obtained were small items in gossip columns, and therefore there would be no particular need to. In other areas - when Trevor Kavanagh came into the office and said, "I've got a copy of the Hutton Report", I know Trevor and I know he had a copy of the Hutton Report, and I was not about to ask him where he had got it from - because it was clearly a matter of public interest. Those lines exist all the time and editors, when they are running aggressive, investigative newspapers, are forever having to judge the wisdom or not of stepping over the line. And - do you know what? - they do not always get it right. Q93 Chairman: I think that we can probably make a guess where Trevor got the Hutton Report too! Mr Hinton: I know your guess, Chairman, and you are wrong! Q94 Chairman: You can assure us, therefore, that in future there will be checks in place that senior reporters, however experienced, who suddenly produce stories, will be required to give undertakings that there have been no breaches of the Code? Mr Hinton: Anything that can make the new regime more rigorous, we will do; but we are running aggressive newspapers. Their job most of the time, as I said earlier, is to find out information that other people do not want them to find out. Q95 Chairman: You carried out a full, rigorous internal inquiry, and you are absolutely convinced that Clive Goodman was the only person who knew what was going on? Mr Hinton: Yes, we have and I believe he was the only person, but that investigation, under the new editor, continues. Q96 Chairman: And presumably with the Press Complaints Commission? Mr Hinton: The Press Complaints Commission have in fact been in pretty detailed communication with the new editor. Chairman: Thank you. I think that is all we have for you. Witnesses: Mr Robin Esser, Executive Managing Editor, the Daily Mail, and Mr Eugene Duffy, Group Managing Editor, MGN Ltd, gave evidence.
Chairman: For our next session, can I welcome Robin Esser, who is the Executive Managing Editor of the Daily Mail, and Eugene Duffy, the Group Managing Editor of the Mirror Group Newspapers. Q97 Philip Davies: Can you tell us what you consider constitutes self-regulation? Who should do the self-regulation? The editors or the PCC? Mr Esser: Obviously, the PCC oversees self-regulation but it depends very heavily on the willingness of the editors to make sure that the Codes are followed. The huge strength of self‑regulation is that the Editors' Code has been produced by the editors and they have signed up to it; so there is no real pressure upon editors to break it. In my opinion, this works extremely well. It is not perfect; it is always being looked at and, as circumstances change, the Code is being refined. By and large, however, I think that the PCC does a very good job and editors throughout the country, local, regional and national, strive to keep to the strictures of the Code. Q98 Philip Davies: You say that the editors have signed the Code. They have signed the Code because, presumably, they have to sign the Code. The issue is do they follow the Code? The NUJ was telling us earlier that they get a number of complaints from their members, who are blatantly encouraged by editors to break the Code. I do not think that anyone is arguing that editors are not signing the Code; the contention is whether or not the Code is actually being followed and whether journalists are being encouraged to breach it. Mr Esser: I have been in Fleet Street for 50 years and at no point during that time have I seen an editor request a journalist to break the Code. Of course, it has not been in operation all that time and, in the wild days of yore, there was no such self-restraint. However, the PCC Code has been working very well for the last decade or more, and I believe that it is effective. Q99 Philip Davies: The thing the public may say is, "He would say that, wouldn't he?". If I asked the Prime Minister, "Have you ever said anything that you knew not to be true?" he is not going to say, "Oh, yes, I said about four times 'I did this' when I shouldn't have done". Of course he will say, "No, never"; and every newspaper editor is going to say, "Of course this never happens on my paper". If it never happens, why is the National Union of Journalists saying that this happens? Mr Esser: You will have to ask the National Union of Journalists that. In my opinion, the Code is faithfully followed by every editor I have ever known. I think that it works very effectively and continues to do so. Mr Duffy: Perhaps I could add that I did not recognise the newsroom that the NUJ was talking about this morning. It is certainly not one that I have worked in, in 30 years in newspapers. Self-regulation is carried out from the editor, right the way down to the individual journalist. I did some numbers in preparation for this Committee and, looking back over the last five years, the Daily Mirror has had 35 actions taken to the PCC by subjects of stories unhappy with how we had handled our stories. In only one of those cases was the complaint upheld. During that period, Daily Mirror journalists were probably involved in news or features in about 30,000 stories over a five-year period, and we have had one complaint upheld against us. So, from where I sit - and I think this is shared across Fleet Street - self-regulation certainly does work. Q100 Philip Davies: Do you think that lots of people think, "It's not worth taking on the might of these big newspaper groups. They've got limitless resources. I couldn't possibly take these people on", and so they just sort of accept it - and you take advantage of that? Mr Esser: The whole strength of the PCC is that it is there for ordinary citizens; it is free and it is fair. Up to the point that self-regulation was adopted, you either had to have the resources to go to court or, as you say, you gave up. Ordinary people now have the ability to complain. Q101 Philip Davies: Can you tell us briefly about apologies and corrections, where you do accept that something was not true? Lots of the public think that papers are quite happy to make a big splash about something and, when it is found not to be true, print the correction hidden away somewhere, deep into the paper. Is that perception justified? What is your approach? Do you give the same prominence to the apology that you did to the story in the first place? Mr Duffy: This is clearly a difficult area for every newspaper. Certainly in the case of the Daily Mirror we were the first newspaper to introduce a correction column; it is for the record and, each day, we will put in there any factual errors that we have made in the paper. Clearly there is an issue if there has been a front-of-paper story which has led to a retraction or a correction, but what you also have to bear in mind now is that, when we do print a correction, there is often some form of compensation to the aggrieved party involved. Certainly any corrections we put in the papers are agreed. Their placement, the wording and the terms of the settlement are agreed with the aggrieved parties. Q102 Philip Davies: What if you made a false story about somebody a front-page splash and they said, "I want the front-page splash saying that the Daily Mirror got this wrong"? What would you say to that? Mr Duffy: It would become a difficult issue and we would arrive at an amicable solution. Q103 Philip Davies: The point is you would not do it, would you? Mr Duffy: There have been front-page apologies. Certainly one in my time, and I think in other newspapers, we have had to carry front-page apologies. Q104 Philip Davies: We have talked a lot about Kate Middleton earlier today. Hopefully, to finish off that particular part, why was it that your papers were seemingly happy to allow the media scrum to take place in relation to Kate Middleton? Why was it that you had to wait for the Sun newspaper to do something about it before your newspapers followed? Mr Duffy: I think that the News International position in relation to Kate Middleton cannot be presented as black and white as they are painting it. If Kate Middleton were to drive down the road, using her mobile phone at the wheel, and a paparazzo were to take a photograph of it, that would clearly be in the public interest because she is breaking the law. Would the Editor of the Daily Mirror publish that picture? Probably yes, because she was breaking the law; but he would certainly question the photographer providing the picture on the circumstances he was in when he actually took it. Mr Esser: Obviously, you cannot prevent a media scrum, because you are talking about a large number of photographers these days who are freelancers, who are working for foreign publications and, very often, are not even nationals of this country. This has arisen over the years, as the large banks of staff photographers have largely vanished from Fleet Street. The scrum was not only made up of paparazzi but also of freelance photographers and television crews. However, the difficulty really is in defining what is a paparazzo. He is a photographer who is employed by the Press Association to go and take a picture of an event in your constituency - okay today - and then, when sent tomorrow to take a picture of Kate Middleton is classed as a paparazzo. The definition is extremely difficult to come by. It is also true that the foreign markets for such pictures are very considerable. I think that it is a tribute to the influence of the PCC that they are able to control and to disperse these scrums when they arise. Q105 Philip Davies: Do you think that British national newspaper editors have no responsibility at all for what happened? It was all freelance photographers supplying foreign newspapers, and that the British media has absolutely no blood on its hands when it comes to paying huge amounts of money for photographs like that? Mr Esser: That is not what I said. I did mention that there were at least three television crews, all from British-based stations, all controlled by Ofcom and not by the PCC. There were several members of the public taking pictures on their mobile telephones, who are not controlled by anybody. Without doubt, if you entirely banned all pictures from the paparazzi, the paparazzi would be free to behave in any way they wished. As it is at the moment, every editor will make very careful checks on how a picture is taken, where a picture is taken, and it must conform with the strictures of the PCC Code. That gives the PCC an influence over the paparazzi which otherwise they would not have. Q106 Mr Hall: In earlier evidence we were told that in the Goodman case the journalist had access to liquid funds, which he did not have to account for when he used those funds to pay for stories. Is that standard procedure in the print media? Mr Esser: Not in the Daily Mail. Mr Duffy: I do not have as much money as him, and we definitely do not have pots of cash lying around. Q107 Mr Hall: Under the Code of self-regulation, what regulations are there about paying for stories then? Mr Duffy: The Mirror Group titles would pay for stories, firstly if there is a public interest justification there. Somebody who has an exclusive human interest story to put in the paper - we would be there, bidding for it. There is no problem, I think, in most of the stories that we publish in actually paying cash for those stories. Q108 Mr Hall: Does that apply to the Mail as well? Mr Esser: Obviously, each case you judge on its merit. For instance, there are many books that are written that contain very good information and we pay for the serialisation of the book - at one end of the scale. Q109 Mr Hall: That is not what we are talking about though, is it? Mr Esser: At the other end of the scale, if somebody rings up and has a jolly good tale then we would pay him a fiver. Q110 Mr Hall: Is there any sort of transparency in the amount that newspapers pay to their sources? Mr Esser: Transparency? Q111 Mr Hall: Yes. Mr Esser: It is all returnable to the Inland Revenue. We do not pay cash sums to people anonymously. What is paid is declared to the Inland Revenue. Q112 Mr Hall: The actual individual amounts of money that are paid to informants and people that provide information - I would think that is confidential to the newspaper, is it not? Mr Esser: Yes. Q113 Mr Hall: Should that be covered by the Code of Practice? Mr Esser: I cannot quite see how it would be, or should be. I think that the commercial operations of any firm should remain confidential to it. Q114 Rosemary McKenna: Do you accept the figures given for individual publications' transactions with a private detective given by the Information Commissioner in his report, What price privacy now? Mr Esser: I cannot possibly comment, because we have not seen them. I could not comment, therefore, on either the figures or the individual transactions. They have not been shown to us. What I can say, however, is that, following that report, we made very vigorous moves to make sure that our daily practice conforms with the Data Protection Act. We not only issued verbal reminders to all our staff ---- Q115 Rosemary McKenna: Can I check that you are saying you have not seen this report? Mr Esser: I have seen the report, but I have not seen the invoices. Q116 Rosemary McKenna: The figures in the report? Mr Esser: I have seen the figures, but I have not seen the invoices. So I am saying that I cannot comment on the individual ones. Q117 Rosemary McKenna: No, I am just asking you about the report. Do you accept the figures in the report, not the invoices? Mr Esser: I imagine that the Information Commissioner is correct in his mathematics. Q118 Chairman: Why have you not seen the invoices? Ninety-one journalists employed by the Daily Mail were employing those services. Surely you could ask the 91 journalists to show you the invoices? Mr Esser: They occurred five years ago. Many of the journalists are no longer working for us. We have millions of invoices and we process over 100 news stories a day; that is a third of a million stories a year at the Daily Mail. The figures? I do not dispute the figures. Q119 Chairman: But 91 of your journalists are listed as employing the services of somebody who has been convicted of breaking the law for illegally authorising databases. Have you said to those 91 journalists, "What were you employing this man to do for you?"? Mr Esser: As I said, many of those journalists, or some of those journalists, are no longer working for us and there is no way in which they can remember what happened five years ago. However, I would point out, as the Information Commissioner has said, that not one of them has been accused or charged or found guilty of any offence. Q120 Chairman: This is self-regulation. It is not sufficient to say that they have not been prosecuted. You are supposed to be administering a self-regulatory system. You say that they may not remember what they paid for, but I would imagine that they would probably remember if they were paying somebody and, by doing so, were breaking the law. Mr Esser: As far as we are concerned and as far as we know, they did not break the law. As I say again, none have been accused, none have been charged, and none have been brought before the courts for breaking the law. We use agencies for all sorts of reasons, for finding information quickly - legitimate information which is in the public domain. Q121 Chairman: The whole purpose of self-regulation is that it is supposed to sit on top of the law. It is supposed to enforce higher standards than those which are required by law. Surely it requires the editorial management team of a newspaper to enforce it? Then, when you have 91 journalists who apparently were employing somebody who has since been convicted of breaking the law, surely self-regulation requires you to go and ask the journalists why those names appear in this man's client book? Mr Duffy: One of the points on Mr Thomas's report is that he has listed hundreds of transactions, involving journalists on the Mail and every other newspaper, my own included, and the implication ---- Q122 Chairman: You actually come out top. There are 95 from the Sunday People and the Daily Mirror combined. Mr Duffy: The implication from Mr Thomas is that every single enquiry that those journalists made was illegal and was in breach of the Data Protection Act. What he does not make clear is that he has forwarded none of the transactions to my newspapers; no names of journalists have been provided to my newspapers; so we have not examined, nor can we examine, individual journalists or individual transactions. What we are doing, through self-regulation and trying to improve it, is reinforcing with our journalists that - as Mr Thomas says in his own report - any journalist he suspects of committing breaches of the DPA in future will be subject to prosecution. We will deal with those people in the future, should they breach the DPA. What we are doing now at the Mirror titles, very vociferously, is that each individual journalist has the Code of conduct contained within their employment contract. This summer we are introducing meetings of each individual journalist with their head of department, where the requirements of the Code of conduct and the Data Protection Act will be reinforced with them. It has come down from the highest levels of management within the company that we now have a zero tolerance policy on any breach of the Data Protection Act or the Code of conduct, where enquiries of the sort referred to by Mr Thomas have been carried out where there is no public interest justification on that investigation. Q123 Chairman: It is all very worthy, your setting out these rules, but are you saying to us that Mr Thomas told you that 95 journalists from either the Sunday People or the Daily Mirror featured in the book of this man who was convicted of an offence, and you did not do anything about it? Mr Duffy: No, we have done something about it. Because we do not have the details of those transactions nor do we have the names of those journalists, we have taken a forward-looking view and we will prevent any future breach of the DPA or the PCC. Q124 Rosemary McKenna: So that practice can continue? As long as they do not get caught, that is okay? Mr Esser: If Mr Thomas would kindly forward the names of the journalists and copies of the invoices to us, we will ask each one of them what they were doing at the time; but he has not. Q125 Chairman: It is very simple. Why did not both of you say to your journalists, "Did you ever employ this man who has been convicted of an offence? If you did, what did you employ him to do?"? Mr Esser: Yes, and all say that they were asking for information which was in the public domain. Q126 Chairman: So you could ask them whether or not they employed and, if they said yes ‑‑‑‑ Mr Esser: We have asked all our journalists this. Q127 Chairman: So you know who the people are? Mr Esser: No, we have asked all our journalists, all 400 of the journalists who work for us. Q128 Chairman: Whether or not they employed ---- Mr Esser: Whether or not they used this particular agency and for what reason. We have been assured by them all - most of them, of course, say they did not ---- Q129 Rosemary McKenna: They would say that, would they not? Mr Esser: We have been assured, by those who do remember from five years ago, that they were asking for information which is in the public domain. Also, we have reinforced to them the need to be extra vigilant from now onwards; to try to understand the Data Protection Act; to obey the laws of the Data Protection Act; to examine and be familiar with the PCC guidance on the Data Protection Act. Compliance with the Data Protection Act and the PCC Code is part of the employment contract of the Daily Mail. Q130 Chairman: Can I just be clear? The Daily Mail, on receipt of the information about the number of your journalists who employed the people responsible in Operation Motorman, went to all of your journalists, you found out which ones did pay this person, and you satisfied yourself that in each case there had not been a breach of the Code. Mr Esser: As far as memory from five years ago is concerned and can be relied upon, yes. Q131 Chairman: You got this information quite recently, because it was only published a few months ago. Mr Esser: We took this action right away; but, as I say, we have not actually had a list of the names and the invoices from the Information Commissioner, and that would enable us to make an even more rigorous examination of what happened some five years ago. Q132 Chairman: Mr Duffy, have you done exactly the same with the Mirror Group? Mr Duffy: No, I have not been to each individual journalist employed on the three papers. Bear in mind that the Crown Prosecution Service has decided, on the evidence given to them by Mr Thomas, that there is no public interest in prosecutions against any of the journalists he has identified. Bearing in mind that, as Mr Thomas has spelt out, he will take action against any of those journalists he believed committed an offence under Motorman who, in his eyes, re-offend in the future, my job is to ensure that they do not re-offend and that is what we are doing in my company. Mr Esser: As we are at the Daily Mail. Q133 Rosemary McKenna: Can we move to the things that are not covered by the Data Protection Act and the other methods that are used by journalists? For example, you seem to think that all public figures are fair game and that it is okay to rifle through the refuse outside people's homes, and to employ people to trawl through their backgrounds going back 20 or 30 years, paying for information which is of no public interest at all. Mr Esser: We do not go on fishing expeditions like that. All our staff are forbidden to tap phones and are forbidden to indulge in any of the so-called "blagging" activities - specifically forbidden. Q134 Rosemary McKenna: But to go and speak to people and ask them, offer to pay them for information? Mr Esser: We are too busy with news stories that break on the day to go wandering around the place on speculative stories. We do not go on fishing expeditions. Q135 Rosemary McKenna: Mr Duffy? Mr Duffy: First, we do not go through people's bins. We have never found much material there worth publishing! Philip Davies: So you do go through! Q136 Rosemary McKenna: I am sure that shredding machines have made a difference to a lot of your activities, but never mind. Mr Duffy: As Robin said, when we send our journalists on investigative stories it is with a purpose. It comes to mind with Ian Huntley, where we threw a lot of journalists at the Ian Huntley story and many of the enquiries we carried out led to women who had made complaints to Humberside police about Huntley, many years prior to the two murders that he carried out. It was only through the journalistic work of papers like myself, the Mail and others that the true background of Ian Huntley came out, and Humberside police had to put their hands up and admit they had not done their job properly. Q137 Rosemary McKenna: I am sure you are to be congratulated on that, but I have one other point. Can I ask you about the growing practice of notification late on a Saturday night, about a story you are going to publish on Sunday? Mr Esser: On the Daily Mail, I am glad to say, we are at home on Saturday night. Q138 Chairman: And the Mail on Sunday? Mr Esser: I cannot answer for the Mail on Sunday, I am afraid. Q139 Rosemary McKenna: Perhaps Mr Dacre could come along. Will he answer for the Mail on Sunday. Mr Esser: No, the Editor of the Mail on Sunday will answer for the Mail on Sunday - Mr Peter Wright. Mr Duffy: I can answer for the Sunday papers at Trinity Mirror. I am interested that you say a "growing practice", because I worked on the Sunday Mirror 20 years ago and the practices carried out then are the same as are carried out now. We go to people in good time on a Saturday, and you also have to accept that papers, particularly in the Sunday market, want to protect their stories. You can go too early to the subject of an exclusive on a Saturday afternoon and, if he does not like your paper, he can feed it to the opposition. Our editors work under fair practices, and that is to give people sufficient time to prepare their answers. Q140 Janet Anderson: I wonder if I can take you back? I think that you both said earlier that none of your journalists or reporters has pots of cash with which they could pay people. The reporters who were identified by the Information Commissioner as having been in touch with this agency - how would the agency have been paid? Mr Esser: The agency would have presented an invoice, which are the invoices that the Information Commissioner has. Q141 Janet Anderson: That would have been paid by your newspapers? Mr Duffy: Yes. Q142 Janet Anderson: But at no time when paying those invoices would you have checked at the time whether this was an above-board enquiry by your reporter - whether it was within the Code? Mr Esser: When the invoice comes in, obviously the detail is on the invoice. It is unlikely in any circumstance that it would say, "For blagging". However, I think the Information Commissioner did suggest that one or two of them did. Q143 Janet Anderson: What would it say? If it does not say "For blagging", what would it say? Mr Esser: It would say, "Enquiries", "Electoral roll", "Birth certificates" - things of that nature - and a name. Q144 Janet Anderson: And cheques would just be issued without any further checks being made? Mr Esser: If the agency had been employed to find out this information, we would pay for that service. Many of these agencies, I might point out to you, are registered with the Information Commissioner and only those registered with the Information Commissioner are used by us. They have registration fees which they pay to the Information Commissioner's Office. I assume that the Information Commissioner therefore is satisfied that they are conducting a proper business. Q145 Janet Anderson: What happens at Trinity Mirror? Mr Duffy: The invoices are challenged; they do not just get paid blindly, with nobody asking what are they for. The invoice will come straight to my department and, as Robin said, most of them are fairly self-explanatory. If I see a bill that looks unusual, I will challenge the head of department and get an explanation why that invoice has been incurred. Q146 Janet Anderson: What sorts of sums would these invoices be for? Mr Duffy: Broadly in line with the figures given in Mr Thomas's report. Q147 Alan Keen: I think that one of you said a short while ago that you reported everything to the Inland Revenue. Is that right? Mr Esser: Yes. Mr Duffy: Yes. Q148 Alan Keen: So if you pay an individual, you disclose that amount of money and who the person is to the Inland Revenue? Mr Esser: Yes. Mr Duffy: Yes. Q149 Alan Keen: I think I recall from the last inquiry we did that a well-known editor said that her paper paid the police for information. Do you ever do that? Mr Duffy: I have been at Trinity Mirror - the Mirror, Sunday Mirror, and the People - for 21 years, and there is no instance when I can remember any of those titles paying a policeman. Mr Esser: Nor can I recall any payments. Q150 Alan Keen: You have never paid the police? Mr Esser: No. Q151 Alan Keen: And if you did, you would report it to the Inland Revenue that "PC Smith..."? Mr Esser: Unlikely, I would say; but, as it has not happened, we have not had to report it. Q152 Alan Keen: Were you surprised when that well-known editor admitted that her paper paid the police for information? Do you not recall it at all? Mr Esser: I do recall that. Q153 Alan Keen: Were you surprised? Mr Esser: I think the suggestion was that it had happened in the past. Mr Duffy: I think the suggestion was that it had happened in the past but it certainly has not happened in my experience in Fleet Street. Of course, there are friendships between policemen and reporters but famous crime reporters like Percy Hoskins in the past, of the Daily Express, was extremely close to many leading people in the police but there was a friendship and I am sure it was of mutual benefit. Q154 Alan Keen: You both said you definitely do not do it now. Mr Duffy: We do not do it now. Q155 Alan Keen: If you were suspicious that it was going on, you would stamp it out. Mr Duffy: Long, long before Mr Thomas was on the scene you knew you did not pay policemen for stories or any information or try and access the PNC or the DVLC, it was not tolerated. Q156 Chairman: Finally, can I come back to Motorman. My colleague Paul Farelly, who has now left us, was full of praise, for instance, for The Sunday Times as an investigative newspaper. The Sunday Times has only one journalist who employed the services of the agency on four occasions whereas the Daily Mail have 58 who employed the services on 952 occasions. Were you shocked by that figure? Mr Esser: No, I expect The Sunday Times had many, many more invoices to separate agencies. There are at least ten or 12 agencies which are used by the newspapers in Fleet Street and the picture of one agency does not tell us the full picture and the full story, but we certainly have moved vigorously since the Information Commissioner's report came out to restrict our business to agencies which do and have given us written assurances to obey the law and not that agency concerned. Q157 Chairman: Essentially, it was bad luck that the agency used by the Daily Mail happened to be the one that was regularly breaking the law. Mr Esser: I do not know if it was bad luck, but it is a fact. Q158 Chairman: That was something that you and your paper were completely unaware of. Mr Esser: We were unaware of it until this happened and we have not continued to use that agency. Chairman: I think that is all we have. Thank you. Witnesses: Sir Christopher Meyer KCMG, Chairman and Mr Tim Toulmin, Director, Press Complaints Commission, gave evidence; Mr Richard Thomas, Information Commissioner, gave further evidence. 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 part 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, 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 writing 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? Q180 Mr Hall: Is it in the Code of Practice? Sir Christopher Meyer: No, of course it is not in the Code of Practice. Q181 Mr Hall: Do you think it should be? Sir Christopher Meyer: No, I do not and I will tell you why. I thought I had solved this with the NUJ but clearly I have not from reading their submission. On 7 February 2006 I attended a meeting of the NUJ Parliamentary Committee, I think that is its title, Austin Mitchell is the Chairman, John McConnell is a member and Jeremy Deer, the General Secretary of the NUJ, was present. True enough, they said to me, "Why do you not have a conscience clause in the Code of Practice?" and I said, "We have to draw a line between what is basically an employment practice between a newspaper editor and a journalist and what rightly belongs to our Code" and what we said ‑ and Tim was there as well at this meeting ‑ was "So, we are not going to interpose ourselves at the PCC on employment matters and become an employment tribunal, but what we do insist on...", and this is spreading, I hope, pretty widely around the UK, "...is that all journalists including editors should have as a matter of course written into their contracts respect for the Code of Practice". I said that is the main campaign of the PCC in this respect. Mr Deer, General Secretary of the NUJ, was there saying, "That is great". Mr Toulmin: That is correct. Sir Christopher Meyer: We thought we had resolved that matter with the NUJ but it has come back again like a Jack-in-the-box. Q182 Mr Hall: What about third party referrals? Sir Christopher Meyer: In principle, we look at third party complaints with a great deal of care. We do not rule them out absolutely. There is a feeling in the land that we will never look at them, we might look at them. What we are more concerned about is a first party complaint rather than a third party complaint, so that if a third party complains about something which has happened to somebody else, the direct subject of the story, we would go back and check with the first party to find out whether they wish to pursue the complaint and if the first party says, "No, I do not want to do that", then we will turn down the third party. I can give you an example of this. Q183 Mr Hall: No, I think that is perfectly okay. Compensation? Sir Christopher Meyer: We do not do money. If we did money we would have lawyers, if we had lawyers the whole blinking thing would come to a grinding halt. Every now and again as part of a conciliation process and we resolve a complaint the editor will make an ex gratia payment for whatever reason, but that is not the same thing as compensation. Q184 Mr Hall: Ombudsman? Sir Christopher Meyer: We are the ombudsman. Q185 Mr Hall: You are? Sir Christopher Meyer: We are the ombudsman and another one of the reforms that we introduced ---- Q186 Mr Hall: Part of the make-up of the Press Complaints Commission is that you have got editors on the board itself so that is taking self‑regulation right until the end if you are not independent, is it not? Sir Christopher Meyer: Mr Hall, I am not quite sure where to start. Q187 Mr Hall: Well, you have not got a lot of time. Sir Christopher Meyer: Very quickly, on the matter of independence, yes, we have editors on the board of commissioners because one of the bases of our operation is that the buck stops with the editor and it is right that editors drawn from all over the land, not just national newspapers, should be there to provide their viewpoint when we come to discuss matters. A key thing, the moral heart of this, is that they are in the minority and the majority of the board of commissioners comprises publicly appointed lay commissioners who have no connection whatsoever with the newspaper industry, plus the fact that the permanent staff at the PCC, a dozen of us give or take, have never been employed in journalism and I do not want anybody to be working on our staff who is any way previously beholden to the newspaper industry. That is why we are independent. Q188 Chairman: Can I move on to the number of complaints that you receive and what happens to them. It has been suggested that the fact that the number of complaints upheld has steadily fallen and that this is a mark of your success. On the other hand, the number of complaints that you have been receiving has been rising steadily and the vast majority are resolved without any formal adjudication. You will have heard the comments from witnesses earlier that whilst it may be obviously in the interests of the complainant to resolve, there is a wider public interest that the PCC should lay down markers, they should publish adjudications, they should produce case law which other newspapers can then see and be guided by in future and that is simply not happening now. Sir Christopher Meyer: It is happening, Chairman, and I beg to differ, if you allow me to do so. On the matter of setting down standards publicly and very visibly, all our adjudications are published on our website. The website has a full compendium of all adjudications made and people can refer to that very easily. Q189 Chairman: The adjudications have fallen to a trickle. Sir Christopher Meyer: May I go through my critical path as quickly as I can. Again, as a result of changes introduced in 2003 we now have a booklet called The Editor's Handbook. Mr Toulmin: The Code book. Sir Christopher Meyer: Sorry, the Code book, which effectively in summary form brings together the jurisprudence around each clause of the Code so that journalists, but not only journalists, can see how we have implemented the Code over the last 16 years. I would like Tim to speak on the point about the arithmetic of this. There is one very important point, there is almost a direct arithmetic correlation between the decline in the number of adjudications and the rise in the number of resolved complaints. I would simply point out to you that in 2006, last year we resolved, to the complainants' satisfaction, more complaints than we had ever done in our entire history. Mr Toulmin: May I say a point or two about the charge that we adjudicate too few complaints. It ignores two things, firstly the subject matter of the complaint and, secondly, what the complainant actually wants. I did not hear in that criticism of the PCC anything about the complainant's wishes. A lot of the time what they want is very quick, discreet resolutions, sometimes in the paper, prominent apologies and so on. They do not want to pursue it to full adjudication. Secondly, some of the types of things we are dealing with, the subject matter is not sufficiently grave to merit a whole adjudication, it is more suited to the type of internal resolution that you were hearing about earlier. There is a third point which is that every press council or press complaints commission in the world which starts out and then gets to the maturity that we are has exactly the same experience. There are a lot of adjudications in the early years setting the boundaries, then they become less necessary as the culture changes within the industry and also editors make increasingly good offers. If the offer that the editor makes to the PCC is inadequate we will proceed and adjudicate and uphold the complaint. In virtually every adjudication we make which criticises the editor it has involved at some stage an offer made by the editor, we do not simply accept everything to be resolved just because some form of offer is made. Q190 Chairman: The fact that you have set boundaries as a result of experience, in actual fact the number of complaints has been steadily rising so it is not that those cause the newspapers now to know what is acceptable and what is not, the difference is that you are not adjudicating, you are resolving. Those resolutions are actually all breaches of the Code, are they not? Mr Toulmin: They may well be, yes, they probably are breaches of the Code, but in any system of conciliation you do get editors going the extra mile and actually sorting out something to the satisfaction of the complainant where it may not necessarily be a breach of the Code if it has ended up being considered around the table with the full board. That is one of the other advantages of having a system of conciliation where there is not a winner-takes-all outcome and you can bring two parties together. Q191 Chairman: Are you concerned that there appears to be a creeping privacy law coming in through the courts operating the Human Rights Act and the European Convention? Certainly one of the explanations which has been given for this is the fact that the courts have felt that they have to intervene more and more because the Press Complaints Commission has not been establishing a clear body of its own rulings. Mr Toulmin: I think that is extremely unfair and Chris will no doubt expand on that. The volume of privacy cases that we deal with is enormous compared with the courts. The range of what we do on privacy is much greater than what the courts consider, it runs right through from early stage inquiries through to publication, decent remedies for people that does not invite the type of scrutiny that the courts would inevitably bring. As to concerns, it is no secret that there are people within the industry who are concerned about the power vested in a very small number of judges to prevent information from coming out. If you look at the totality of what is going on in privacy complaints and resolution, the overwhelming majority of things are still going on through the PCC despite the fact that the Human Rights Act has now been around for quite a large number of years. Sir Christopher Meyer: I think the only thing I would add to that is that if you look at recent privacy decisions, they are often interpretations of the law of confidence or confidentiality, I never quite know which term is right. If you are sitting in the editor's chair, and I sometimes try and put myself in that position, and you look at the totality of these decisions in the last two or three years, I think one of the things that does strike you is their incoherence, it is very hard to link them all together and have a clear sense of what they are trying to say, whereas I think if you look at the hundreds of privacy decision rulings that we make every year - we did several hundred last year ‑ there is a clear corpus of "jurisprudence". Whatever may be going on in the legal world, there may be genuine cause for concern here, there is a role for the law and there is a role for us and we should not see it as a zero sum gain/ Q192 Chairman: Would you accept that certainly recent rulings by a small number of judges do mean that the role of the law seems to be getting bigger and bigger and it is beginning to intrude on to your area? Sir Christopher Meyer: It may do and one should not be complacent about this. Some of these cases to which you refer are, at the moment, subject to appeal so we do not know what is going to pop out at the other end. I think there are intrinsic advantages on the privacy front to encourage people to come to us which they are in increasing numbers. It goes back to something I heard when you were interrogating witnesses previously. One of the great advantages of coming to us if you are a complainant is, unlike in the courts, you are not turned over in public time after time after time so that the original sin, if you like, is not endlessly compounded by adversarial public conflict between the prosecuting attorney and the defending attorney. As long as we can do that and it is free and you do not need a lawyer, I believe people will keep on coming to us in very big numbers. Q193 Rosemary McKenna: Can you tell us a bit more about the work that you do to proactively prevent publication? Can you prevent publication? If someone comes to you to say, "Look, this is going to be published, I do not think it is in the public interest", can you do anything to help in those areas? Sir Christopher Meyer: Tim will develop this. What I would say is that one of the lessons that we drew, and you were there, from the last hearing of this Committee in early 2003 was that although it was always a bum rap that we were just reacting and did not act proactively, nonetheless, one of the lessons that we drew from the previous hearing four years ago was that we needed to do more proactively and I think we really have done that. A lot of the work involves, for example, at times of great tragedy like 7/7, before anybody gets harassed by a journalist making sure that we are using the Cabinet Office as a disseminating unit, going to hospitals, going to centres for victim support, making sure that they are liberally supplied with the literature and the instructions on how to complain and how to deal with harassment. We do this time and time again to anticipate events where indeed vulnerable people may feel themselves under threat. We have the ability through the so‑called desist order to stop harassment. You have had an extensive discussion about Kate Middleton and one of the things that we did immediately after her birthday scrum was to make sure that the desist notice went around all the newspapers and I think there was direct cause and effect there. Most of the time we do this for people with who lay no claim to celebrity at all, I think we had about 30 which we did last year. We issue guidance notes, we are on the road all the time evangelising, teaching and explaining what it is we do. The other thing we do is we almost go to the seed core if you like, go to universities and colleges, and hold seminars that teach how the system works, so we are out there. Q194 Rosemary McKenna: You will be surprised to know, therefore, that I did a trawl of members of both the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Opposition and very many of them, including Government Ministers, had no idea that they could come to you prior to a story being published, which I think is certainly an area of concern for me and which we can deal with. If that is the case, are you having fewer cases brought to you because people do not know and do you need to do more? Mr Toulmin: It is important to say that I think the PCC has no powers of prior restraint, we cannot simply order a newspaper not to run something just because somebody phones us up but to answer your question, do things change, are they altered, do stories or pictures not appear after the PCC's intervention, I think it is fair to say that does happen, and that is the editor taking a decision under the Code not to proceed. We are available 24 hours a day, we give advice both to people who phone directly to us who may be in the papers about how they can talk to editors and journalists and also we have calls from editors themselves saying, "Give us some advice here, what are the boundaries likely to be?" Things either get changed or do not appear as a result of that sometimes. We are equally concerned to hear if people are genuinely encountering problems that they do not know how to get hold of us. Christopher and I met a couple in Liverpool at our open day last year where they had clearly encountered press harassment and I think we were upset to hear that they had not known about us because we would have been able to deal with it in an instant. Clearly, there is more to do there. Q195 Mr Evans: I want to finish up on the Goodman case if I can. In light of everything that has gone on, are you yourselves happy that the practices that were utilised there are not widespread? Sir Christopher Meyer: One can never know but what one can do is introduce better procedures, tighter guidelines, higher standards, and that is the purpose of the investigation which we are now actually in the middle of. I suppose after Goodman and Mulcaire were sent to jail and Coulson resigned we could have sat back and said, "Well, the law has taken its course, that is it", but we initiated an investigation and it is going to have three stages. First of all, with the new editor of the News of the World, which Mr Hinton referred to, we are in part trying to establish what went wrong, what are the lessons to be learned and what is now in the light of all that best practice. When we are finished our dialogue with Mr Myler we will then, if you like, use that as a platform to address the entire industry of the United Kingdom - the newspaper and magazine industry of the United Kingdom - to establish what is their practice, what have they got in place to ensure that none of their journalists do the same thing. When we finish that, we will draw some conclusions, discuss them on the board of commissioners, we will then publish a report which will set out our findings, make our recommendations. I cannot quite see the shape of it at the moment but we will probably embrace a set of guidelines drawing from this case to try to ensure that it will not happen again. If I could abolish sin I would but I cannot, so I cannot put my hand on my heart and say it is not happening anywhere, I pray to God it is not happening anywhere. They should learn their lessons from this. Q196 Mr Evans: You heard perhaps what I said earlier on about the Chris Tarrant case as well. The manager for Chris Tarrant gave a submission about the way that the family were being harassed following revelations of Chris Tarrant's private life and he says how remarkably effective the PCC were in ensuring that the family were left alone. Sir Christopher Meyer: Good. Q197 Mr Evans: Have there been instances whereby people have approached you because of harassment where you think that it has not really worked, that even with your guidance still people are being harassed? Mr Toulmin: In theory, editors could say when we pass on one of these desist messages we should try to make ourselves available as well to give advice on the back of them. In theory, they could say there is a public interest under the Code for carrying on, there is an urgent need to get answers from this person. In practice that has never arisen. When we have forwarded these messages and talked to editors about their journalists and photographers being there there has not been the case of people continuing. No formal complaint of harassment has then had to materialise. Of course, there may be circumstances where it is necessary for journalists in the public interest to remain asking questions. Q198 Mr Evans: Kate Middleton has been mentioned time and time again this morning and clearly the "paparazzi scrum" that occurred outside her house on her birthday. Whereas you have clear influence over what happens with journalists and photographers within this country, you have none from outside of this area other than if newspapers domestically decide not to buy photographs or stories because they feel that somebody has breached the Code. Do you want to comment on that, Sir Christopher? Sir Christopher Meyer: It is an issue. I think one of the things that we observed with the Kate Middleton case was having sent round the desist order and shut off the demand, if you like, for pictures from the domestic industry, this seemed to have a calming effect on everybody else as well. We know that there are paparazzi out there who are supplying the Spanish market, or the Russian market, or the American market, and we do not have the powers to stop that; I am not quite sure who has the powers to stop that. There is no doubt at all, and I noticed this in early incarnations in my life, that foreign journalists and photographers do tend to feed off what is of interest to the domestic industry. If British newspapers and magazines say, "We are not going to buy these pictures anymore, we are not going to do this", it does tend to shut down a lot of other people. It is not foolproof, it is not failsafe, but it does help. Q199 Rosemary McKenna: After the scrum all went away there are still photographs being published of the young woman in question out with friends and I think that is such an intrusion on a young person's life. Sir Christopher Meyer: This is another one of the areas where we have the most animated debate in the PCC on what is legitimate, what is not, what is a public space, what are the expectations of privacy? It was clear as a bell to me, although we never had a formal discussion in the board of commissioners, that making it almost impossible for Kate Middleton to get out of her flat, get into her car and drive safely out of a difficult parking space, there is no justifiable public interest for making that hard for her. Going to a very public nightclub where you know the paps are there in their packs and waiting outside and you know what you are going into, it is the place where celebs go to be photographed, that is a different order of things. What I want to say is that when you issue a desist order you are not saying "no photographs ever anywhere", you cannot say that. Q200 Rosemary McKenna: It is about the industry being more responsible. Do you think it would help the industry if the PCC would get more support from the industry in terms of dealing with some of the excesses without necessarily having to have a complaint brought to you but by simply the other editors or members of the Commission saying, "Look, there really are some problems here that we have to address"? Sir Christopher Meyer: I think the editors are quite good at that and I would simply cite what Tim has just said. If you are talking specifically about desist orders and laying off and being able to intervene in a pre‑publication way, it is very rare to come across an editor who has blankly said to us ‑ and I cannot think of an editor who has blankly said to us - "We will not do it". You get grumbling and moaning, lots of moaning, I think it is a sign of very good health when they start moaning about us, I do not want them cuddling us because we are not here to speak for the newspaper and magazine industry of the United Kingdom. If we make them moan and gripe, that is good. Q201 Rosemary McKenna: But is it effective? Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes, I think it is effective. The proof of the pudding is in the extraordinary public demand for our services. It is not just about complaints, but all kinds of general inquiries. I think last year we had something around 8,000 general inquiries, people wanting to talk about the media, we have become a kind of citizen's advice bureau. Multi‑tasking is what they say nowadays. Q202 Chairman: Finally, can I turn to a new area for you which may generate even more inquiries. You have recently announced your intention to extend your remit to take in material supplied by newspaper or magazine websites. Is there not a danger that you are going to create a very curious position where the PCC is regulating a small number of websites that happen to be attached to newspapers, Ofcom is regulating some material that is provided by broadcasters and then there is a complete wild west beyond that which is not being regulated by anybody at all? Sir Christopher Meyer: I think Tim, who is our audio-visual guru and expert, who had the foresight two years ago to start discussing this because we are going to have a regulatory vacuum, if I may pass to him. Mr Toulmin: I think at its heart this is about public confidence both in the PCC and in industry. If the industry is supplying these services online and it is getting into audio visual material then I think that consumers, and the industry also agrees, need to know that the material that happens to be transmitted in a slightly different way from the written word on the website is also subject to its same standard. Also, if you are the person concerned, if you have got some sort of video that concerns you or the spoken word or whatever it is, it is only fair that you are able to complain in the same way and that the same standards and the same restraints apply on the part of the industry. Actually, there should be a commercial benefit to the industry as well because they are effectively saying that their information is rather purer than as you referred to it, the wild west, there are all sorts of extraordinary things out there which are broadly known to be unreliable which cannot be regulated and neither should they be so we think it is in everybody's interest. With regard to Ofcom, there may be grey areas as we go forward. This is early days, we are in dialogue with Ofcom and have been for some time. They have no ambition as far as I know to regulate newspaper websites. If those grey areas at any point give rise to a problem then we have sufficient good relations to be able to talk to them about it. Q203 Chairman: The likely implementation of some form of the Audio-visual Media Services Directive, which is talking about establishing rights to reply is going to complicate this further presumably? Mr Toulmin: Maybe, but that has got some way to go. I think that the industry is in a strong position having made clear without any direct immediate threat to it that it is going to extend the remit of the PCC, to be able to argue that it has taken responsibility already and there is no need for any legal controls, but we will see how that Directive progresses. Q204 Chairman: I think that is all we have. Thank you very much. Sir Christopher Meyer: Thank you, Chairman. |