Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Considerably so.

No, no, I'm talking about self-regulation works, but the current manner in which it works needs to be strengthened.

I think there's an acceptance, an acknowledgment that that definitely needs to happen. I mean, my experience of the PCC is that self-regulation does work. I hope that through this Inquiry you can see that self-regulation is and continues to be the way forward.

Yes.

Yes. Precisely.

Yes, it does. It does have commercial and economical issues. But I think one of the things that this Inquiry so far has brought to the public's attention is the despicable way, in many respects, or in some respects, that some members of this profession have behaved, and it ...

Absolutely. It's fundamental to whether or not the industry survives.

Yes.

Yes, it is, and maybe it's a time for the industry to reflect on certain matters of decency. I know there might be some guffaws of moral indignation that the former editor of the News of the World can be talking in these terms, but that actually is what ...

Yes, perhaps it is.

Unacceptable, yes. I think that if you make an approach to ask somebody to be photographed and they make it clear that they're not interested, they don't want it, increasingly my experience has been that the public's knowledge of how to deal with that, if they feel ...

Is this where there was harassment outside the house?

Mm.

Mm.

No, absolutely. I do think, sir, it is important to try to -- some of the stories that have been put before this place really do belong in a place that was a long time ago. Those actions were perhaps regarded at the time as being it's okay. There's ...

Unacceptable, yes.

No.

Totally. Absolutely not.

Mm.

Yes.

Emollient language, Mr Jay. I think it's all about -- it's all about personal standards, really, and I think that, you know, you don't learn on the job, as it were, as an editor, but certainly experience is probably the most important factor in it.

I think one ...

Yes.

Absolutely.

I have never, to my knowledge, been involved with any set of photographs that have been doctored.

No. Forgive me.

Doctored?

Yes.

Unless there was a public interest defence in using photographs that had been taken under subterfuge or whatever, but that were evidence of supporting the story that met the criteria legally, lawfully and within the PCC code, I wouldn't be interested in them, no.

Yes.

If it was in breach of an individual's reasonable expectation of privacy, in other words if a celebrity, for example, had gone to a specific resort or an island where, as a result of doing that, it was abundantly clear that that expectation was reasonable, and it was private ...

Yes. Yes.

That it was in breach of the privacy?

No.

Because an individual was, on this particular occasion, was on a private beach.

Yes, I have.

I can only speak from the way I dealt with my picture desk and the picture editor, and that was that before he would bring them to me, he would have made sure that the photographs were taken properly, not in breach of the code, and if they were some ...

Mostly. A lot of them, yes. Not all, but most, yes.

Yes.

No, of course not, sir. Of course not. And thank you for allowing me to explain.

I don't think there is. I think that there were some aspects through particularly the McCann era, the early days when Madeleine went missing, that were truly appalling, and by any standards of journalism they should never have appeared in stories in this country. And I think that the ...

Yes. Well, I've never been of the "lob it in" school of journalism, and I may have been accused of being negligent, but I haven't gone into a situation intending to be negligent.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yesterday you took me back to the example of the Sunday Mirror story and the footballers, and a few years ago I was involved in another case that resulted in the High Court involving a very well-known pop celebrity. We had run a story that alleged that he had gone ...