We heard from Lord Hunt just before Christmas about the hope that by reforming the way in which we regulate internally will reduce the workload on the current complaints body, which will free up resources to pay for the enhanced functions that are being talked about around the edges of ...

Absolutely. Very dangerous, too.

I think the suggestions about the Reynolds defence enhancement for any organisation signed up to a new system I think looks good on paper but would have to be demonstrated in fact. I think Mr Desmond was up last week. The root of his decision to be outwith the system ...

Yes.

It's very difficult to know how you can compel without some kind of statutory background. That's the issue we're all wrestling with, and even the proposal to have some kind of civil law contractual underpinning still doesn't answer the question about how you compel someone to ...

Yes. As I said this week, we would have a situation where if there was a separate Scottish body, then most of our organisations would have to deal with two bodies and two sets of regulations, and that would involve a cost and a considerable complication for us, that a ...

Sure. I think from a very straightforward point of view I think whatever system we have in the future, I think what we in Scotland need is an assurance that we have the same kind of representation that we have just now, not necessarily from a point of view of ...

I'm not close to any of the politicians. I know them but I'm not close to any of them or the parties. Certainly no version of lavish Chipping Norton parties in Scotland as far as I know. I think that's probably the way it should be, a ...

I suppose I'm satisfied with the situation the way it is, because if I wasn't, I would do something to change it.

Over 300.

I've never had a discussion with anybody at Johnston Press senior management level about the direction the paper is going in. I've never had the conversation.

On a major decision we will let the managing editor know what we're going to do but we don't consult them as such. We don't seek permission to take a position. It's a courtesy to inform them what position the paper is going to take, but ...

Yes.

I'm not sure that I would necessarily describe it as an ethical one. I think it's a necessary part of our job to listen to all sides of any argument and come to a view ourselves as long as we feel that our view is being honestly held ...

Responsibility in what regard?

I think it puts us as being an important part of the debate and that's the way it should be. Certainly we're fortunate enough to live in a country where we do have a great variety of publications and a number of different views would be held, and ...

It's the other way around. They want our support to help them. Especially there's a little debate going on in Scotland right now, for which both sides would like our newspaper to support them. In fact, we've been asked just recently when is the Scotsman going to ...

There is also a balance for us as editors to make sure that our pages are not crammed full of depressing news about our communities and the only picture we paint of our communities is a relentless one of crime ridden estates where everybody lives in fear of their lives ...

I think that's a very good point because there's different kinds of publications. Now I live in Edinburgh. I have heard the Chief Constable say that we've got to be very careful about creating a fear of crime where, as far as we're concerned, you people ...

I think the principle of reporters talking to other members of the human race on an on the record or off the record basis should not be up for debate. That's what we're about. I think it's as much for public bodies to decide how their employees ...

I think the public expectation is that any rectifying of an error should be proportionate and that the proportionality, I think we have to accept proportionality has to be part of the process of deciding what is the right level of correction to take place, in order for the industry ...

There's a growing number of requests/complaints to us from people who have appeared in the paper at some point in the past, some black mark in their lives and they want it erased. It's not rare for those requests to come in and that will grow and ...

I think there's a clear clash in the availability of information, particularly for local newspapers, for the access to details about relatively minor offences and the principles behind spent convictions. It's very obvious that if something is a spent conviction but the public can easily access information about ...

Yes.

There's a difference between remaining on the website and being part of the electronic archive and I think that we have a very extensive electronic archive. If we decide to take a story down, then the story remains down. Now, how this story -- the first I knew of it ...

We're very fortunate, we have a large comment and opinion section, and it's a variety of different lengths in there, so we're quite happy to give people the right of reply that is neither a follow-up story, which is a disguised correction, or something in the letters ...

I'm the same as Spencer really. Complaints come to me and I either -- we will publish a large number of these, I'll engage with the complainants either by writing to them directly or by publishing my views alongside theirs in the paper. We don't have a formal ...

They affect us whether they're in Scotland or in England. We do come across them, the Chris Jefferies case being one in point.

It's certainly a factor. You know, for instance in a criminal story where you know that you're not perhaps going to be -- there's no chance of prosecution for contempt of court, but there may be a chance of action for defamation, so that by and large you ...

Yes, it does. It's just the fact that if you don't go through the Scottish process, you still have a choice open to you as to whether or not you go ahead and publish, but it doesn't protect you from further action anyway, so you still have ...

Perhaps if I can come back, what I was referring to was that once the Sunday Herald had taken the decision to publish Ryan Giggs' name, we had a discussion about whether or not we should follow suit and name the other people who were known to have injunctions against ...

It was the Sunday Herald.

Yes, subject, "What is your reaction to our findings?" And that would be pre-publication, not post. But in terms of an invasion of someone's privacy, I can't think of an instance, other than something like that club, where it was an issue. At the Scotsman we tend not ...

I can't think of an instance where that's been a scenario we've had to deal with, but we would always -- in general we would go to the source of the story and say, "Here is the story that we are considering publishing" --

No, I just don't think that the full information was obtained because the situation these people were in was not one where you would normally say, "What do you do for a living? What's your second name?" It wasn't that kind of environment and that might have ...

Not so that they could be identified. There were names given, but not full names and addresses or occupations or anything like that.

Yes.

Exactly. I don't think you'd have to jot that down every time you sent somebody out to have a surreptitious meal. I suppose the swingers club might require a minute, though.

Yes.

I think it's very easy to put up an argument against it, but the sense of it seems to me to outweigh the objections. Given that we have daily conferences, it's not that difficult to make sure that there's a minute of a discussion that took place ...

Yes.

I think it's fair to say subterfuge has played a part in most journalistic careers to one degree or another. In particular, I remember an instance where we sent a male and female reporter to investigate a new swingers club just off Prince's Street and of course they ...

No. As a result of all this we asked many of our reporters if there's ever been an issue here, they were asked for money and it's just not something that's come up for us at all. Many, many years in Edinburgh covering many stories with local ...

No.

Trust me, yeah.

Just to come back on that, I would say that if I'd worked with a reporter for a long time and knew and trusted them, then they're unlikely to have any problem telling me if I asked --

As we're finding right now in Scotland, where someone who is suspected of being the source of a story in one of Jonathan's stable has been summarily dismissed, without any hearing or anything like that, because he's suspected of being a whistle-blower, and we have to do ...

Yes, that's right. Because the person who's told us may well find themselves exposed --

I simply want to be confident that what I'm about to put in the paper is true, and that if I'm going to publish a story that is going to be attributed to an anonymous source, that I have the confidence that that source is trustworthy. I don ...

I think the good news such as it is just now will come in the form of tablet apps, Kindle devices and things like that, because what they are doing is they are reconnecting an electronic audience with the principle of paying for what they are reading. The basics of ...