Thank you very much, sir.

Sorry, my sentence rather tailed off. I don't think that the pluralism is going to change, just because you have a press commission which is backed -- has a few powers and enjoys public confidence, which the current arrangement palpably doesn't.

No, I think that's a very good idea, yes, and I think that would work too.

Just going back to this issue of state control, I mean the Commission is not going to be sending around Gauleiters into the newsrooms of newspapers, or even explaining to editors they won ...

That you were given.

Yes.

That would be a very good idea, I think, yes.

Yes, it was, page 10. I mean I didn't come to a -- I thought about this a lot and talked to a lot of people before I wrote that paragraph, and it is -- and of course well informed by a lot of the discussions I had over in the ...

Yes.

Yes, it was.

Yes.

So if we're talking about the -- I mean let's deal with that part of this body or that body which has enforcement mechanisms. What it is enforcing there is behaviours which are found to be in breach of the general law. They're not -- I am not proposing ...

Yes, and we query whether the adjudicatory body would also do the standards, you might have to do that separately.

Well, I mean there could be people in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, who after all number going up to 1,400, who may have this view, that their business is to emasculate the press. I've yet to meet them, it has to be said ...

Yes.

Lord Hunt, the chairman of the PCC at the moment?

Yes.

Yes, sir. Of course I'll do that, and if I may, I'll reflect on it and prepare a written statement.

I was also just reflecting on the experience of setting up the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, because it's a -- which I had -- fell to me to do ...

Yes, I accept that.

I will, sir, provide you with more details.

Yes.

Yes, and it has -- it's really interesting that in that building, the one at Wapping and now the other one, they just have a very different culture, even though they're only a floor apart. It's just how it is. And, of course, you might say that it ...

Can I say, sorry, it was triggered in my mind by Lord Justice Leveson's reference to the Times. The only thing-- probably I think it is quite important to understand is that we tend to talk about the News International papers as a single body, but what is striking ...

I don't think there will be state control over the content of what newspapers can do. I mean, by what process could the state -- I mean -- control what they were doing? They would be still free to publish anything they wanted within the general law. If I may say ...

Yes.

Yes, I think a statement like that is of -- would be of value. I'm sure it would be. And I mean picking up your point about the Constitutional Reform Act, the 2005 Act, not only -- I know you are familiar with its terms -- is there this requirement about the ...

Yes.

Mr Harding?

No, I mean, on that basis you should never change the law at all because it could be changed again. It's not easy to amend primary legislation. I mean, for -- it's quite -- I mean, I've obviously -- in abstract theory it's easy, because you introduce a legislation ...

Yes, I am. One discrete reason for having statutory underpinning is that if you don't, if it continues to be voluntary, there's no way that I can perceive by which you can then bring in those newspaper groups that don't want anything to do with the regulator ...

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Look, I'm not in any doubt, sir, that there will be a concerted effort by some of the newspapers to argue against any form of more coherent regulation than you have today, and I think Mr Dacre has made clear he holds a perfectly honourable view, which I respect ...

I think that really -- it -- you could only make progress, I think, on a -- in an area like this by consensus. That doesn't mean without any argument, but it does mean there has to be backing for the principle and backing for where you get to in the end ...

No, I know.

So far that's there, and it's -- the whole sort of politics of this are now very different from where they were before.

Yes.

I understand that, sir, and there will then be a responsibility on the body politic, in my view, to ensure that your labours have not been wasted.

No, I understand that.

Well, I hope not.

Yes. I was struck how much this is a piece of ancient history when I reread that paragraph.

Yes.

I think on your first point, Mr Jay, you can deal with that by drafting of the legislation, so I don't -- I think you can overcome that.

On your second point, the answer isn't -- what would be the difference? Not much, is my answer. I accept that, and ...

Yes. And I mean there isn't -- and for the reasons which I set out, that the public have a right to expect the same explicit protection available to them as they do in respect of defamatory statements, breach of copyright, and every other tort. At the moment we're ...

Sorry?

Yes, it is, and indeed I say that in the course of this lecture later on, that there ought to be -- we ought to pick up what Calcutt proposed, which was that -- for a separate tort. And I've -- later on --

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.