You know about him. Those of editorial experience, I think it's fair to say, come from the broadsheet or the BBC end of the market.

-- a former --

I think the -- I can't speak for -- Mr Peppiatt, of course is --

I don't think so. I mean, it is -- certainly my professional experience over the last 20 years is that the -- there are many occasions on which the media has abused its position, particularly in relation to privacy cases, which are -- I've had a lot of involvement in over ...

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, as at present.

Yes.

Yes. And this is a rather reduced version of what currently applies, and the idea is to make this, as it were, to continue to apply to non-participants, so that -- again so that members of the public have remedies against non-participants, because against participants they have remedies through the MSA ...

Yes.

Yes, and one of the points that Lord Justice Jackson made, which I'm sure is right, is that from a defendant's point of view qualified one-way cost shifting makes more economic success because the amount -- the amount you recover when you win from insurance policies is much less ...

You're entirely right. They can, of course, take out the insurance, but what they can't do -- but it's a cost that they must bear, come what may.

Lord Justice Jackson made two recommendations. One was to very much reduce the size of the success fee, which the Government accepted. The other was to abolish the recoverability of after the event insurance premiums, but to replace it with qualified one-way cost shifting.

The Government agreed to abolish the ...

They're exempt from the duty, yes.

Yes.

Well, the right of correction. It may be if there's a dispute about the facts that a reply is the appropriate way to deal with it, and very often there's no dispute about the facts. But if there were to be a dispute about the facts, the court ...

Whether it's an appropriate reply or correction. So if a newspaper publishes an article to which the complainant takes objection, the complainant says, "That's inaccurate, I require you to publish this correction", and the publisher says," No, I stand by my article", in which case the complainant has ...

Yes.

No, that's a refinement which, I would agree, is a helpful one.

Yes.

Yes. And indeed, the draft at 87.1, one of the factors to be taken into consideration is the extent to which the conduct in question was not in accordance with the code. So the idea would be that a nonparticipant publisher, if they behaved in a way which had ...

Well, the phrase "additional damages" is used in the copyright context. It regards it as a statutory version of exemplary damages. It's Lord Devlin's third category in Rookes v Barnard for exemplary damages, and there's a specific statutory provision.

But guided by the determination of the adjudicator.

Well, I think different considerations apply in the different causes of action. The intention is that if a publisher is engaging in public interest publication, gets it wrong and gives appropriate redress, they shouldn't have further claims against them.

In relation to privacy, I think the view that was ...

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

The reasons for the decline in the number of libel trials are complicated. One of them certainly is the case law which limited damages effectively to GBP250,000. So now the most you can get is GBP250,000, and if you conduct a long libel trial, the costs are in ...

Yes. In reality there are, these days, something like half a dozen libel trials a year, of which most are certainly less than a week or less than a fortnight.

Well, they're relatively uncommon. My own professional experience is I once did a construction adjudication which lasted a week, which resulted in an award of payment of several hundred thousand pounds, and then the other party didn't like the result, went to litigation, and there was then a ...

Yes.

Well, if the position is that defamation is a tort actionable per se, and therefore, if defamation is established, damages are always awarded, even though they may only be nominal, if the adjudicator decides there's been a defamation, then the adjudicator will make an award of compensation in accordance ...

Well, it would be slightly different from Reynolds in the sense that Reynolds is directed towards effectively looking at whether your journalism is responsible or not, whether you have taken appropriate steps to verify and so on.

This would be, if the position was that the adjudicator had said, "You ...

-- would clearly require statute.

Sorry, so would that. The adjudication system --

Yes. I mean, effectively forcing people into a quick, cheap, alternative dispute resolution system, which one would hope would dispose of the large majority of complaints, at low cost.

Yes.

No. At the moment, as I'm sure has been discussed before, under the new system for access to the family courts, you have to have a form of accreditation to be able to report on the family court as a journalist.

At the moment it's done through the ...

Yes. Well, quite. I don't think that that would be a very powerful incentive in most cases. Although the idea is that this could be available to bloggers, to much smaller publishers, and as an indication of a small publisher, as it were, a badge of responsibility, it may ...

Yes, I don't think they would be sufficient.

Yes. I mean, I think an inquiry is necessarily inquisitorial, but a tribunal system that's dealing with essentially individual complaints is a slightly more difficult process.

I mean, it's often mentioned as a way of solving the terrible costs problems that the law experiences.

I have not seen ...

I'm always slightly sceptical about the value of inquisitorial systems. It's often suggested as a kind of shortcut to saving legal costs and so on.

I mean --

Well, the issue is that if you had a media tribunal which was like an Employment Tribunal, which effectively just decided on causes of action against newspapers, you would have all the advantages and disadvantages of a tribunal system.

In other words, you would have potential inequality of arms issues ...

Yes. But a system of incentives, as I'm sure the Inquiry well knows, as Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, before this process began, made a speech making suggestions on those lines.

And you see that there are people from the Financial Times and the Guardian in ...

Without giving away any confidences, I think it's already been said in evidence to the Inquiry that -- I think Lord Black made the point that there were favourable editorials about statutory regulation in the Financial Times and the Guardian and the Independent. Those kind of newspapers are obviously not ...

It might. Obviously we've discussed this with newspapers and some newspapers are absolutely adamantly opposed to any kind of statutory underpinning, and their current official public position is that they will not join in if there's a statutory underpinning. But some newspapers are in general happy, and favourably ...

Well, or -- I mean, I'm not an EU lawyer, so I'm not purporting to give an opinion on the subject, but it does seem to me that if you were printing your newspaper in France or Ireland or another EU country, there would be considerable difficulties in preventing ...

Well, there's a subtle balance of sticks and carrots. I'm sure you are going to come on to it, but one part of the proposal was to have a few big sticks towards the end, which newspaper publishers might wish to avoid.