No, I think we've sort of -- it sort of came out in a different order than was in my mind to start with, but I'm perfectly -- I think I've got everything out that I've particularly wanted to say.

No, I wish you luck. Thank you very ...

Yes, that's not a bad starting point, from your point of view. I don't disagree with that at all. I think that's very good. And who wants you to be anything other than a winner?

Well, yes, but not if you say: "Here's a lot of things I don't intend the government to do, but they would be pretty horrible if I did." I think you have to take a pretty stern line -- at least I would if I were in your position ...

No, I don't think that's right. I think the existence of the inquiry that you are conducting has, if they have any sense, sent a pretty clear signal to the press, and you will obviously report what you think is the most appropriate dealings. Now, you will report ...

Can I answer you this way? I thinking that Calcutt 2, which the government turned down, was actually the creation of a much better Press Complaints Commission. I would not have been able to do it if it hadn't have been for the threat of Calcutt 2, to which ...

Yes.

Oh, absolutely. That's exactly -- I understand that completely, and I'm just saying that that's exactly what people would have done with this House of Lords bill that's been around for years.

So leave that on one side. That's exactly the danger. He's absolutely right ...

Well, yes. It has been drawn to my attention what David Hunt said, and as he, I say, learnt his trade -- he was one of my whips when I was a chief whip. I'm sure he was right in what he said about the difficulties within Parliament. There will ...

Let me say why it's always been a problem in a much less acute -- we always had newspapers who refused to pay their dues to the Press Complaints Commission and didn't want to be part of it, but they were all relatively small and the view I took ...

And we thought that was pretty clear.

Yes, but we had the picture and it was a disgustingly bad picture, and we had a complaint.

Well, right. The patient complained to the hospital. The hospital then said, "Oh, well, you must complain to the Press Complaints Commission." They didn't tell anybody that they'd invited them in to do it, and we would not have understood that if it hadn't been for the ...

Yes. I accept that the situations that changed from when I started it. I believed it was vital to have the press in when I was running it because I wanted a commitment from the press to try and make it work. I think there is a case for saying ...

It very rarely happened in my time that I can remember. There was something reported in the newspaper and the person concerned would produce the argument and evidence as to why he thought the newspaper had got it wrong. I don't ever -- I can't immediately think of any ...

Absolutely, yes. Absolutely. But 99.9 per cent of the people, having gone to the PCC and had a fair investigation of their complaint, wouldn't take it any further, in my view.

Yes, absolutely. Whoever won or lost, yes. But there was therefore the --

Yes, but I was also suggesting that in that case the person concerned would pay the costs of the PCC. If they then decided to take it on, the costs would be part of the costs of the legal proceedings, so the PCC would get their money back from one ...

In --

Correct, yes, absolutely. And that was right in my day, that was what we did in my day, and I think we did it for a reasonably good reason, because there was a danger of double jeopardy for the newspapers, that they would be clobbered by the Press Complaints Commission ...

Well, yes. I hope it's reasonably there. I've taken the view that the complaints handling of the PCC was pretty good. It was cheap, it was quick. I reduced the timescale down to 35 days from complaint to getting an adjudication, and that was not perfect but it ...

Correct.

Yeah.

Yes, so would I.

Yes.

Self-regulation in a free society is what I would want to achieve, and I thought I had done quite well in achieving it during my time, and since then we've got ourselves into difficulties and we have to find a way forward and I made a suggestion as to ...

No. I mean, the dividing line is quite narrow, it's not black and white, but I think that they made a mistake in trying to take on the job of regulating when they should have been putting it back to the press and saying, "What are you doing? This ...

No, no. I was getting rid of it. I didn't want regulation of the press. I wanted self-regulation. I wanted them to regulate themselves. I may not have put it as cleverly as I should have done, but that's what I wanted. I certainly did not see myself ...

I can't remember doing so. I can't absolutely swear that I never spoke to a journalist at any time about it, but I certainly wasn't representing them. My concern was for the public. The Press Complaints Commission, in my view, was the best way of protecting the ...

I was never a regulator. I never said I was a regulator. I didn't pretend to be a regulator. My task was to try and raise standards in the press by means of a code and by self-regulation. You have to bear in mind that when I meant there ...

Well, I thought -- the bit at the beginning, I wanted to intervene but I didn't.

Yes, and it didn't.

Yes.

I certainly did, with absolutely no chance whatsoever of getting it through the House of Lords, but I wanted to raise the issue, which was important. I have to tell you that Parliament is in favour of strengthening restraints on the press whenever they find an opportunity, and if there ...

That's very kind of you to allow me to explain.

But what happened on the Human Rights Act, I got the third reading speech in the House of Lords. I said I stand ready to talk to the government if they should think -- and then Jack Straw rang me ...

I'm very happy to talk about it.

Well, I'm not sure it provided it entirely in my day, but there's no reason why it shouldn't be made to. In fact, in my original letter to you, I tried to set out the way I think we should develop the system.

I'm not saying we should. All I'm saying is the publicity of a man losing and costing him half a million, it makes it very difficult to see how many other people would want to go down similar roads, but maybe they wouldn't get themselves into the ...

That's what I said at the time and I'm sure it was accurate at the time and I think -- I'll try and tell you what I think I meant from that.

The thing about the Data Protection Act was it was based upon, as I recall, a ...

I'm sorry, I'm looking at the top bit of my speech.

I think they were right at the time, and we got them through and I think it was a significant improvement and some of them were, of course, changes that I had in mind before Diana died, but you have to pick the moment when the press was in the ...

The first thing would be I don't think I could have persuaded the newspaper industry to have accepted a finding. I certainly don't think it would have been proper for editors to have been on the Press Complaints Commission if they were in a position to fine their ...

I certainly -- I'd forgotten about Chris Smith's time until I read the statement in the papers that you kindly gave me, but he wasn't the only one. There were other people, including me, who would have -- who knew about these things. One of the things which was ...

It worked pretty well when I was there, but there were two other things which I think are important to take into account in considering this. One was that it was not unknown for us to send faxes around to all the principal editors, the news editors, if we had ...

You'll have to ask the people who are running the PCC now. It's a long time since I was there.

I think that did happen, a number of the agencies did, and I remember being in the office of the Press Association and walking around with the head of it and on the wall, by the telephone of the photographic editor, he had stuck on the wall the thing about ...

I wouldn't summarise it completely like that. That's part of it, but the changes we made at the time we thought were adequate and we would have had to see how they worked out. During my time there, I thought there was an improvement. I'm not clear ...

I'm not sure it is correct to say they haven't made a difference. I think they did make a difference and I think there was a genuine attempt to -- the crux of what I tried to do was to say the editor is responsible for what appears in ...

No, I did think they were necessary, but I was trying to make -- bear in mind the changes in the code were not a matter for me; they were a matter for the editors under the arrangements, and I therefore had to move carefully to make sure the editors went ...

Oh, very much so, because the bulk of the work of the Press Complaints Commission were dealing with complaints from members of the public, and as a matter of fact, we got as many complaints on the local press as we did from the national press. I mean, 50 per ...

Yes.