Thank you very much.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I think it's -- on occasions, it would be a local note. If it's a borough officer talking to his local paper on a weekly sort of catch-up, I don't see that we need the bureaucracy of bringing that to the press office and I wouldn't like ...

Yes.

On some occasions we will have a tape recorder when we are facilitating a press interview, but certainly we are not keeping that for the purposes of that record. It is a note that the meeting has taken place.

Yes, noted that the meeting too many place and general subject matter. Certainly not a full note of the meeting.

I believe the management board, they are recording their contact with police -- with the press, and the guidance that is coming out that the Deputy is working on, the interim policy, is also going to -- is covering that. I believe it's been shown to the Inquiry.

From memory, it did, yes.

Yes, and we also -- when the IPCC are involved in a case that we're putting some lines out on, we'll say, "Refer to the IPCC as well."

Yes.

Yes.

I believe they have, but actually within the Inquiry, that's where I heard that that had been a formal decision. But it's -- certainly they haven't taken part for, I think, a year or so, but they were organised by my specialist operations press desk and I think ...

No, I consider them more experts in their field, and they do have members that come and go and join the CRA. So in terms of a clique, no. I suppose they're privileged in that they are crime reporters and that's why they join the Association.

It's an opportunity to reach new audiences. There's opportunity within social media to have a conversation, and our borough Twitter sites -- certainly that is one of the top reasons why we're doing that. It's an opportunity for us to get out context around issues to the ...

Yes.

Yes.

That's correct.

Different journalists have different agendas and different newspapers have different areas of interest, so certainly we're aware of that as a press office, but I don't think that changes my behaviour towards them to any great extent.

I think all journalists are capable and should be capable of doing both. Journalists that I've come into contact with that deal with our press office will write both favourable and unfavourable stories and judge it on its newsworthiness.

That's correct.

Yes.

It depends what they were talking to them about. If it was a particular operational story or bad news story, I'd be surprised if you would go to a journalist to talk that through and how that might be presented, but if they have a personal contact and relationship ...

I can't recall an occasion where I would do that. I'm content with the professionals that work with me and the knowledge of the police officers as well that might be involved in that particular case.

I'm not quite sure I understand. We have conversations with journalists, but I'm not quite sure I understand the nuance of that -- of what you're suggesting, sorry, Mr Jay.

Sorry, could you clarify that for me? What, you mean that they were advising us, if they wrote the story, what the outcome of that would be? Or --

We're a large organisation, so I think it would be naive to think that information isn't leaked from an organisation that is London's biggest employer. So I'm sure that it did and it will happen in the future, I'm sure.

Yes.

Within the DPA?

No.

It depends what -- I mean, there's different journalism, obviously. My own experience is print journalism. It's -- you're very -- you may be told to go from one end of the country to the next at the drop of a hat, with little consideration, perhaps, for what your personal ...

I worked in newspapers and certainly it's a very hard-working environment. I work hard now, but it's a very demanding environment and -- with anti-social hours, often not particularly family-friendly, and I think once people have come out of journalism, they would see it, perhaps for personal reasons, quite ...

Yes.

I have no direct evidence of that.

Absolutely.

I've been content.

We have a form that the journalists sign. We brief them. We have press officers who go on the operations with them, who -- and they are briefed by them as well, and most journalists, to be fair, are well aware of their responsibilities.

I do follow you.

Yes.

I don't think that it means, if you are meeting a journalist, that you are going to divulge a lot of information that you shouldn't be doing. I think it's -- it was a way -- and there are several ways -- of networking and building contact with people that ...

I would say on average, when I first started in 2008, perhaps for the first couple of years, around once a month, if that.

Lunch. Never dinner. Occasionally a drink without lunch.

Yes.

I believe that we've got a clear position where we are with that, and my view is that that's a good one, in where we're going with the guidance that the Deputy's been working on, and I think that gives us a very clear set boundary ...

We're an organisation of 53,000 people and there will be occasions -- I'm sure there still will be occasions where that can happen.

No, not always. The information to the journalist comes from many, many different areas, and, no, I wouldn't agree that I would always assume that it's officers, certainly not.

And it can still do.

It did.

I think there's potentially a bit of both. I wouldn't say "gratifying", but if there are officers who are still talking about areas that are not their responsibility and they don't know enough about and causing problems potentially for other investigations, I don't see that as ...