Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1420
- 1439)
WEDNESDAY 9 JANUARY 2008
Mr William Lewis
Q1420 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
You did not say that, but I heard it.
Mr Lewis: I said they set the framework within
which we operate, so it is different actually. I set our agenda,
what we pursue on a daily and weekly and yearly basis, as you
would expect. I also did not say that the proprietors are neutral,
I do not think one would ever describe any proprietor as neutral,
proprietors tend to be passionate and engaged and anything but
neutral, it is their thing after all. Other than that, I am not
sure, quite, how to answer the question really.
Q1421 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Let me ask you very simply: what is the nature of your relationship
with your proprietors that determines the political direction
of your newspaper? Where do the proprietors fit into that?
Mr Lewis: No one can be in any doubt at all
about what the Telegraph stands for. We have been very
clear about that in recent times and I am sure it has been clear
in years gone by, we stand for a smaller state, not a larger state,
we think it is a good thing to pay less tax not more tax, we think
our public services under-perform and there is poor value for
money and you need to find new ways of engaging with the private
sector to improve, we believe Brussels has encroached too much
in our lives here, we want to be generally left alone more, we
are passionately against ID cards, we think the Government is
far too involved in our lives. I could go on, but there is no
lack of clarity, I hope, about what we stand for. I happen to
believe all of that as well, it is me the party drives at but
it is a Telegraph ethos; that is our political environment.
It is set, which is why you find us saying "Well done"
when the Conservative Party produces proposals—as we have
done this morning—that speak to what we believe should happen.
It also is why we would find ourselves saying "Well done"
when Gordon Brown produces policies that speak to that agenda,
it is a Telegraph agenda, it is one that is not being dealt
with in its entirety anywhere else, which is why we pursue that
agenda on a daily and weekly basis.
Q1422 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Would it be fair to say that that would continue, irrespective
of who actually owned the business?
Mr Lewis: That would just be speculation.
Q1423 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
We are trying to get at the relationship between you and your
proprietor.
Mr Lewis: I just would not know.
Q1424 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall:
Can you tell us a bit about how those decisions and that general
direction is influenced or acted upon in any way by the proprietor?
Mr Lewis: It is a range of different factors.
I have mentioned the readers at some length and they are an important
part here; they feel very much that it is their paper and rightly
expect that it speaks to the subjects that they feel passionately
about. The next factor would be that you tend to go and work at
the Telegraph if you believe in that outlook on life, in
the same way, I suspect, if you believe in paying more tax and
wanting to be encroached on more in life you go and work for the
Daily Mirror. I suspect also you tend to be attracted to work
by the Telegraph as a company if you also believe in that
approach to life; there is a set Telegraph approach to
life that we work with and that we feel passionate about.
Q1425 Chairman:
If you were going to change any of the policies that you set out,
say you wanted to do that; would you have the authority to do
that or would you consult with Aidan Barclay?
Mr Lewis: I would have the authority to do that.
Q1426 Chairman:
So you could do that entirely off your own back?
Mr Lewis: Yes.
Q1427 Lord Maxton:
When the Barclay brothers owned The Scotsman it was not
some form of Scottish edition of the Telegraph, it had
a different viewpoint, so I am still not quite clear, has it made
any difference, the ownership of the Telegraph at all?
Mr Lewis: It has made a tremendous amount of
difference.
Q1428 Lord Maxton:
But not to the general ethos, if you like?
Mr Lewis: I hope it has and I think we have
given it a chance at having a future. We inherited a place that
really had been run down to the ground—no investments, woeful
IT, no launches of any new things for years. The owners have put
an additional £70 million of investment into people into
it, so I would hope that we have given it a crack at having a
future and reinvigorated it in quite a substantial way.
Q1429 Chairman:
That is the difference between the ownership now and the ownership
under Conrad Black.
Mr Lewis: What we inherited from the previous
ownership was a place preparing for death. There had been no investment
in it for years and years and years. They were waiting there to
see out their time, and what the new owners have done is to reinvigorate
it through a substantial financial and managerial commitment,
and give it back a chance—more than a chance now—of
having a prosperous and vibrant future.
Chairman: That is one side of it, the
economic running of the newspaper, the investment in it. The point
that Lord Maxton is making is rather different.
Q1430 Lord Maxton:
The point I am making is the political ethos or the social ethos,
whatever you like, that you project as a paper, has not really
changed as a result of the change of ownership. It is the money
that has gone into it to promote that rather than the actual view
itself.
Mr Lewis: I cannot really answer for what went
on before, so all I can really speak to is what we do now and
it is the approach that one would see now in terms of our political
views.
Q1431 Lord Maxton:
I would not have thought the Telegraph has changed very
much.
Mr Lewis: That would be for you, as an expert
clearly, to make that assessment.
Lord Maxton: I cannot say I am a big
reader of it, but there we are.
Q1432 Lord Inglewood:
In response to Lord Fowler about your discretion to change the
editorial direction of the newspaper, would it be fair to say
that in the event of you deciding that this was going to be a
Left wing-supporting, high tax, very pro-European newspaper, you
may have the authority to change the direction of it but you probably
would not have the authority the following day because you would
have been sacked.
Mr Lewis: I think that is a different question
to the one Lord Fowler asked, but I think you would know the answer,
yes.
Q1433 Chairman:
Just for the sake of completeness, you have commented on this
elsewhere in the press, but as you know we had Dominic Lawson
before us and he said that he was asked by Aidan Barclay not to
run a particular story about David Blunkett. Has this ever happened,
not about David Blunkett, but has this ever happened on any other
issue as far as you are concerned?
Mr Lewis: No, and I was confused by Mr Lawson's
evidence because on the one hand he seemed to be complaining that
he could not get through to the proprietor and then, when he did
get through, he was obviously angst-ridden by what appeared to
be or was alleged to be an attempt to get him to not write a story,
which then was published. It was rather weird. I also was really
quite amazed about the thought that Conrad Black did not interfere,
because the last time I read Max Hastings' book it was full of
clear evidence of interference on really quite an absurd level,
he seemed to spend his life writing memos justifying things.
Q1434 Chairman:
That is why, you see, we are pressing you on these issues.
Mr Lewis: I can see why.
Q1435 Chairman:
Doubtless at the time Max Hastings would have said exactly what
you are saying now.
Mr Lewis: No, I am sure Max would have told
it as it was. Conrad Black's wife had a column in the paper as
I recall; she does not have now. I must say he was also just wrong
on lots of different things, Mr Lawson. I suppose he has been
out of our business for quite some time.
Q1436 Chairman:
We will not go down this wonderful sort of Fleet Street stuff,
but it is fair to say that what Mr Lawson said is I only once
had this, and this was the once example that he gave.
Mr Lewis: Indeed. It is just that he was so
inaccurate on other things that he said about our foreign operations
that one can only presume that other bits of his evidence were
also inaccurate.
Q1437 Chairman:
We will allow you to pursue your differences with Mr Lawson at
some other stage.
Mr Lewis: I am done.
Chairman: If there are no other issues
in this area, let us go on to the business model. Lady Eccles.
Q1438 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
An awful lot of this has been covered already and we do know that
there has been a big migration of advertising income from the
printed press into other areas that perhaps are not quite so lucrative.
You have said that your advertising through the circulation, which
I imagine is through the printed press, is going to remain somewhere
around 50%, which is not absolutely the same sort of message we
have got from every source of the printed media. That is just
a comment; the question really is could you give us some sort
of idea—without actually quoting any numbers, either percentage
or actual cash, because being a private company you must not—of
what the balance across the number of different platforms you
are now using is now and what your projections are for how it
is going to shift? It is obviously very interesting for us to
know which parts of the multimedia which you are now engaging
in will actually be the areas on which you will be depending increasingly
for revenue as time goes on.
Mr Lewis: I suppose the way I would answer it
is this. We do not view it as either/or, we do not view it actually
that if X company was advertising in our newspaper, we have now
got to work really hard to get them to not just advertise on-line
but try and take a cross-platform approach. My colleague Dave
King—and obviously this is his area not my area, I am not
in any way responsible or involved in this—his approach
is to try, with some success, to work with companies to say why
not take a package, you can advertise in our paper which delivers
a certain sort of demographic, you can advertise on our Blackberry
service which delivers a certain type of person and our TV which
is a certain type of person in one part of the world. We can do
it as a one-stop shop and view it in that form, so he is out selling
the multi-platform approach, with some success, which is why I
cannot answer the question specifically because it actually is
arriving in one lump. We are doing deals with people across our
platforms; quite how you say is that new world or old world, it
is together, and it is quite different from others, others are
doing that differently.
Q1439 Baroness Eccles of Moulton:
Do you expect that particular revenue stream, which is the package
you described, to increase?
Mr Lewis: We are hoping that increases and we
are also hoping that in the course of doing this we begin to register
specific advertising in specific areas, so to go back to television,
that is something we are particularly optimistic about at this
time.
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