Examination of Witness (Question Numbers
1160-1179)
MR TIM
TOULMIN
14 JULY 2009
Q1160 Mr Hall: You know there is
a genuine concern that the PCC have got very little power in these
things.
Mr Toulmin: People do make these
allegations about the PCC; I prefer to ask whether or not the
PCC, in terms of what it is trying to do and what it is set up
to do—which is a mediator and which is to hand down rulings
on specific complaints—is effective or not, and it absolutely
is in that regard. I have a large, bulging file of thank-you letters
from people that will attest to that, from all walks of life.
Of course, if you are setting the PCC up to be some sort of general
legal regulator and comparing it with something that has statutory
powers then, of course, it does not have those powers. I do not
think we should be ashamed to accept that.
Q1161 Mr Hall: What was News International's
response to your 2007 report?
Mr Toulmin: News International,
and News of the World, in particular, had already taken
steps to completely—
Q1162 Mr Hall: Is it fair to say
they ignored your report?
Mr Toulmin: No, it is not fair
to say that at all; they changed the way in which contracts operated—
Q1163 Mr Hall: Was that before you
reported or afterwards?
Mr Toulmin: The News of the
World took that action during the time that we were making
our inquiries. After the inquiry they had all these stands, and
seminars, and they changed the way in which external freelancers
contribute to the paper and the way in which it supervised cash
payments, and so on, and the other titles also took steps to implement
our recommendations. So they certainly did not ignore us.
Q1164 Mr Hall: You put a great deal
of store by the Myler internal investigation. Did the PCC do any
external scrutiny of that report, or do they just accept it at
face value?
Mr Toulmin: In October 2007, which
was sometime after the report, the then Chairman wrote to all
the newspapers and magazines that had taken part in the inquiry—so
across the entire country—to get their response to it. These
recommendations were designed to ensure that the situation improved.
As we have talked about, the PCC's powers are given to us by consent—it
cannot force people to do this—but the response we got,
and we can certainly update the Committee on that because we have
a file back at the office full of these things, did indicate quite
a widespread acceptance of what we were saying, which was very
encouraging because (to go back to what I was saying earlier)
who would want this sort of scandal to arise at their newspaper
again? I think anyone would want to put in place steps to ensure
that there will be no repetition.
Q1165 Mr Hall: That answers my next
question, really, because I was very interested in your assertion
that there were so many different ways of redress that you would
expect most newspapers, now, to comply to an ethical code of journalism,
if you like, but we still have in the Code of Conduct (correct
me if I am wrong) that if it is in the public interest almost
anything goes as to how you get the information. Is that correct?
Mr Toulmin: Not quite, no. There
are some public interest defences to things that would otherwise
breach the Code.
Q1166 Mr Hall: Would `phone tapping
breach the Code?
Mr Toulmin: It certainly would
breach the Code, yes—it would be extremely serious.
Q1167 Mr Hall: Even in the public
interest?
Mr Toulmin: There would have to
be very, very serious and pressing public interest, for instance,
to foil a terrorist attack or something, to justify such a high
level intrusion. The point I was going to make is that there are
different degrees of intrusion; there are very serious intrusions,
like `phone tapping and eavesdropping on some conversations, and
then there are less serious ones, more superficial ones—for
instance, looking at people's Facebook profiles, or something.
Q1168 Mr Hall: Would accessing the
police national computer and accessing records at the DVLA, accessing
people's tax records be a serious intrusion?
Mr Toulmin: Very serious indeed,
and illegal.
Q1169 Mr Hall: Would there be a justification
in the public interest for that?
Mr Toulmin: I do not know. Again,
that is hypothetical; it is difficult—
Q1170 Mr Hall: It is not; if somebody
accesses your tax records and they claim that they have done that
in the public interest, that is not a hypothetical question. Is
it right or wrong?
Mr Toulmin: With respect, it is
because it would depend on what the justification was, which I
do not know. What I am saying is that it is a very serious form
of intrusion, and any public interest would have to be incredibly
strong and impressive to justify it, and it would be illegal as
well.
Q1171 Mr Hall: One last question,
and I think I may have misheard you. Right at the start, in answer
to the Chairman, you mentioned that there may have been a list
of journalists that had been involved in these practices, but
their names were not published because of their rights to privacy.
Would it not be in the public interest for those names to be published?
Mr Toulmin: You might well argue
that, and that is certainly something to take up with the Information
Commissioner. I have been in touch with the Information Commissioner
and I think his office is thinking about making some more information
public during this week.
Q1172 Mr Hall: Have I got this right:
we have got a list of journalists who have actually acted improperly
and used the defence of public interest to find stories and then
they do not want their names releasing because they do not want
their right to privacy?
Mr Toulmin: No, no, that is not
right, that is not right.
Q1173 Mr Hall: That is not right?
Mr Toulmin: That is not right.
What is right, as far as I understand it, is that there is a list
of journalists that the Information Commissioner has. However,
they were not charged with any offence, so they were not in any
position to defend themselves, in the public interest or otherwise,
and they probably do not know that they are on this list. Nonetheless,
I think you have been told two years ago that this list does exist
and it may be that the Guardian have seen that list as
well.
Mr Hall: Thank you.
Q1174 Mr Watson: Tim, good morning.
This is my first Committee so go easy on me, will you? I am not
a journalist so I am tracking this back at my own pace, but I
was struck by the Mulcaire case where the judge said there was
clearly a legitimate use of private investigators in certain circumstances.
Do you issue guidelines to your members about what is appropriate
use of private investigators and what is not?
Mr Toulmin: We certainly issue
guidance about the whole issue of subterfuge which may bring in
private investigators, and our report, I think, finished in 2007
by saying: "Any allegation that private investigators are
being used to use subterfuge we will have to look at and test
against the public interest", just in the same way that any
journalist has the Code of Practice and the other guidance that
applies to them. So, yes, we do, because, by extension, if they
are working for a newspaper they are falling under the terms of
the Code.
Q1175 Mr Watson: Do you have any
evidence that there has been a growth in the use of private investigators
since 2007?
Mr Toulmin: No, no evidence at
all.
Q1176 Mr Watson: Is that because
there is not a list of legitimate firms that your members use?
Mr Toulmin: The evidence, so far
as it exists, is anecdotal, and, again, it would be one for the
Information Commissioner, probably, who has been active in this
area. Stories that have emerged in the last week suggest that
it is much more difficult for inquiry agents to get media work
because the press have been brought into line by the various activities
that have happened since then.
Q1177 Mr Watson: Do you think it
might be helpful if there is a central register drawn up of the
firms that big newspaper organisations use?
Mr Toulmin: I think what would
certainly be helpful is a list of private inquiry agents who breach
the law, because newspapers absolutely ought to know that they
are using material from dodgy sources.
Q1178 Mr Watson: Is there a concern—not
necessarily from yourself but across the industry—that the
use of private investigators is essentially outsourcing the decision
over whether an issue is in the public interest or not? Let me
throw a hypothetical situation at you, that you do not like: you
have got a private investigator trying to track someone down and
they can choose to trespass on a property or rummage through somebody's
bin to try and find information. Would it be that they would try
and get permission to do that from someone that has hired them
or would they be in a position where they would make that decision
themselves?
Mr Toulmin: I think what is important
to say there is that however they went about it, if that information
was used then it will be the responsibility of the person who
was using it. So the person who is using it would want to know
how it was obtained, because if there was a complaint to us or
to the police then it is no defence to say "I didn't know
what this person was up to."
Q1179 Mr Watson: Is it your experience
that the person who hires a private investigator to do that kind
of stuff would always check how the information was obtained?
Mr Toulmin: I do not think that
I have sufficient experience of that precise relationship to be
able to answer you, but I think the use of private inquiry agents
generally is much minimised now. So it is probably difficult to
establish. One of the things that these inquiries have allowed
newspapers to do is to terminate their relationships with a lot
of these people.
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