Thank you.

I think that's a very, very good principle.

I think your colleague has it on his screen.

-- carry the PCC code around in my head.

Well, I can't claim to --

Right.

Oh, you'd have to remind me what clause 1 says other than its commitment to accuracy. Is it fact, comment and conjecture? Is that the -- does anybody --

I think the funding one is difficult because PressBoF -- back to this point about it's their system and they pay for it, but -- so how you would fund this, I think perhaps there does have to be a claim upon the public purse.

I think the Editors' Code has ...

Yeah.

I know that's his view, and I say in my statement I saw Lord Hunt and he asked me for a chat about it. I know that's his view and it's not my view. I think people are seized enough of how serious the issue is and ...

And I think the fact that Parliament then can have recall upon its effectiveness is a good thing. I think the fundamental weakness of the PCC has always been the fact that it's a self-regulatory body run by the people who are regulating it -- or who -- so the regulator ...

Yes, yes. But my point is that if it is -- some of these bodies that I mention -- let's take the Legal Services Act leading to the Legal Services Board. I think the fact that it's flown from an Act of Parliament gives it greater authority.

What do you mean by that, sorry?

Mm. But I sort of sense that this press who have -- who I sense fear most what you may conclude are hoping that first you and then the politicians sort of say, "This is now so complicated we can't -- it's changing so fast we can't do anything ...

Yeah, and I think that is difficult because if you think that ten years ago Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube didn't even exist, and now they are dominant within this space and the newspapers are struggling to catch up, as Rupert Murdoch himself said, in their mind, being ripped off ...

Where you're going to be.

Yeah, but the -- when we had the little break and I was just sort of having a look at my phone and, I mean, the guys from the BBC and ITV and Sky who are covering this, they're not here. They're outside, they're watching it. Why don ...

Mm-hm.

Tablet.

Yeah, and this is a difficult area. I talked in my first witness statement about the whole business of anonymous quotes and to my mind the fact that a lot of them were invented. How is a regulator ever going to get to the bottom of that? A journalist says ...

Mm-hm.

They do, but it's interesting, I mentioned the Peter Oborne piece in the British Journalism Review, there are some journalists who do this as well, but they tend, as in that article, to be treated as outsiders, oddballs. I think what that Hacked Off and Full Fact and the ...

Well, what I mean -- I don't think I explained that very well. What I mean by that is, for example, I talked earlier about the Sun has a particular view on Europe, or at the moment they have a particular view on Ken Clarke and his fitness to be ...

Yeah.

I think by being aware of that, there's a possible concern. But if you look at -- we talked earlier about the fact that every other walk of life has some sort of oversight and scrutiny and regulation. Some of the reports that the broadcasting regulator publishes from time to ...

Mm-hm.

Mm-hm.

Well, I think they'd all worked that out by then. But it became a source of huge contention because the Mirror then became convinced this we'd given them the election date. No such thing. We didn't.

Well, the difference is he phones me up and says, "Alastair, can you tell me when the election it?" and I tell him what the date is. Having conversations -- and this is where it's very difficult. I just ask you to imagine what it's like being in my ...

He may well have done, but what I didn't do was brief him on the election date.

I'd have to check against the cutting, but I think that refers to a story about David Blunkett's position in the government. I could be wrong, because I think he was moved after the election. But the point I make in my witness statement is valid. The Sun ...

Yeah.

Yeah.

This was in one of the half dozen that I mentioned earlier that always gets raised.

Okay.

Good to have friends in the press.

I think Black Rod ended up taking a position at the PCC.

I think Black Rod ended up taking a position on the PCC, but I could be wrong about that.

I have no idea if I did or I didn't.

Well, he's obviously somebody who was very friendly with the Mail on Sunday and perhaps didn't want to say anything untoward about them. All I know is the story is untrue.

In which case it's very odd that he denied them on the record prior to that. If you're interested in this, you'd have to talk to Black Rod, because he does appear to be saying different things on the same piece of paper. All I know is ...

If you look at page 3 of his statement -- there's the indented top paragraph -- he writes the statement that he gave to us that we were then able to use to rebut these totally untrue stories. He says:

"In the immediate aftermath of the news of the death of ...

Mm-hm.

Mm-hm.

Yeah.

Mm-hm.

Correct.

That's correct.

April 13, Peter Oborne, "How Tony Blair tried to muscle in on the mourning". Totally untrue.

No, I think the Spectator was the first piece.