Thank you.

In relation to the sort of public policy issues and the relationship of the politicians and the media, I always tried, through the whole of my time as Secretary of State, to approach issues of press regulation, media policy from the point of view of what is going to be ...

Yes.

Ordinary people don't.

Always difficult, interesting, frequently infuriating. Politicians need the press. Politicians would love the press to be constantly adulatory about them. They never are.

However, I would draw a distinction, I think, between the way in which the press deal with politicians and the way they deal with ordinary people who ...

Absolutely. I know in a very small way -- and I hold a range of strong views -- if a view that I hold would in any way run the risk of jeopardising the impartiality of a decision that the ASA council had to make on a particular adjudication, I would resile ...

And so enabling a government view to be stated openly, transparently, put into the process alongside the overriding principle of the public interest as identified in legislation, and then to have an entirely impartial body then making the decision seems to be much better than placing what is ultimately going ...

Yes, but also there must be protection against any possible suggestion of a decision being made for partisan political reasons rather than for reasons of the national interest.

Because, sir, they would place a very clear requirement on Ofcom or the Competition Commission to judge the public interest when coming to their decision and presumably that decision would be reviewable by a court if it were inadequately made.

There's just one further point that I would add, rather separate from most of the issues that we've been discussing and which has risen in one or two discussions in the House of Lords recently. That is in relation to decisions that are taken at the moment by ...

Yes.

Absolutely.

Yes.

No, although we will, from time to time, remind the world that 99 per cent of advertising does not break the code and is indeed legal, decent, honest and truthful.

And I think one of the important things that I think in any reformed PCC is that it has primarily to regard itself as a regulator. Certainly the ASA views itself as a regulator.

I can absolutely see the dilemma in this dual role that he performed and that up to now chairmen and women of the PCC have performed.

It's a very big ask, and the nearest we have ever come to it was Lord Wakeham, who did, I think, in both the changes that he managed to persuade the press to accept and the way in which he followed them through, I think he was -- he did ...

The ASA system is financed by a 0.1 per cent levy on all advertising spend, whereas, of course, the PCC is financed by direct contributions from newspaper groups.

That is indeed true and that is why it is more difficult both to devise sanctions but also to get buy-in from right across the press. One of the reasons the ASA system is effective is that there is buy-in across the whole of the advertising industry. Everywhere recognises that ...

Yes. It is the advertiser who is -- who carries responsibility for the advertisement, although, having said that, in the case of broadcast advertising, it is the broadcaster who ultimately carries responsibility, but they will, of course, pray in aid the case that the advertiser themselves has made to them.

Yes.

But the industry has always -- the advertising industry has always recognised that in order for advertising to be effective, it has to have some degree of trust from consumers, and this is a way for them of ensuring that it happens.

In relation to the non-broadcast media, there is no statutory provision about advertising responsibility. If the ASA didn't exist, I suspect any government would have to put together something to replace it.

In relation to broadcast media, yes.

If you still maintain a body that is voluntarily put together by the press, as we discussed earlier on, but make sure that its decisions are enforceable by having some sort of statutory authority underpinning it, I think that might provide a more effective ability to have -- for the press ...

I think the potential for having a backstop in order to enable decisions of a self-regulatory body to be enforced effectively might well have quite a lot to be said for them. Rather than having direct statutory control or direct -- a government-appointed body making the decision --

In relation to the broadcast media, it's Ofcom. Indeed, all our work in the broadcast arena is done on a co-regulatory basis on Ofcom's behalf rather than on a self-regulatory basis.

I think having those back stops in place, which are hardly ever invoked -- we've referred, I ...

I think the two things I would add, apart from the importance of perceptible independence of the council that makes the decisions, are firstly finding effective sanctions in relation to the press -- the most obvious sanction would be a requirement for equal prominence. A system of fines of some kind ...

As things stood at the time, I think the role that Lord Wakeham played in relation to the press meant that if you wanted to find a collective view that was likely to find purchase across the editors and proprietors of the press -- remember, these are fiercely competing individuals quite ...

Yes.

I think he and others. I don't think he was solely responsible, but he was a very effective voice in arguing that case and certainly he gave every impression at the time of believing in it rather more than as a tactic.

As I point out in my evidence ...

No, I mean both the press and Lord Wakeham. It was an argument that was being put quite strongly by a number of editors and proprietors, by Sir David English particularly, who was the chairman of the PCC Code Committee, and by Lord Wakeham, and in a way, when we ...

And I have to hold up my hands and say the changes which we were able to secure in 1997 and which lasted for a two to three-year period in terms of their impact and effect, I regret that I didn't see properly at the time that this wasn ...

Mm.

No, clearly someone who breaks the law, it is their responsibility for having done so. One of the problems, I suspect, in all of this is the culture that develops within the press -- not all parts of the press, but in some parts of the press -- where it is assumed ...

Yes.

You're not wrong at all and that must be what all of us, and especially, I hesitate to say, you, sir -- where all of us have to get to. The difficulty is finding the precise framework that will take us there.

There are clearly activities which are plainly illegal ...

I don't equate them, I have to say, but one of my reasons for wanting to find a way of securing the genuine freedom of the press, whilst at the same time ensuring that behaviour is proper -- and that's a very difficult equations to make. One of my ...

I think it's probably fair to say that for the two or three years following the Wakeham changes immediately after the death of Diana, the conduct of the press did improve. Certainly in terms of the specifics of the changes, their approach to the coverage of the princes, handling ...

I think there were some changes that did endure, but as I say, I think in paragraph 20 of my submission, where I say:

"Looking back, I should probably have been more active in continuing to press the case for further change, especially once the immediate public concerns had died ...

Short of introducing government legislation, probably not, because bringing pressure to bear both on the PCC and more generally on the press through public statements and speeches and so on were the tried and tested ways of bringing government pressure to bear. The possibility of including legislation was something that ...

Well, he was able to be successful because the proposals that he was making were relatively modest. The proposals that I was making would have been considerably stronger in their impact on the press.

The other reason that I suspect he was quite successful was that there was external pressure ...

I think the three principal changes that I think had crystallised in my mind and in the mind of government colleagues following the meeting on 24 September with Lord Wakeham were those three that we identified from that meeting which related to sanctions, the definition of public interest and the ...

No, and it's a matter of some regret to me that I didn't perhaps often enough return to the fray subsequently over the course of the following three years.

The answer is both.

That would be an entirely fair assessment, yes.

Yes, although we did have a considerable amount of discussion, of course, as I've reflected in my statement, about the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law and the potential impact that that might have on the press and press freedom and also on press ...

Probably, I would estimate, for no more than two or three months.

It's something that I raised from time to time, but I have to say with as little success subsequently as Lord Wakeham himself had had at that early outset.

I suppose it's worth saying that one of the difficulties in this whole area is that the balance of ...

Yes.