Thank you.

You have to remember the Sunday Times is a very big newspaper with multiple sections. The culture might vary from one to another because they're aimed at different readerships, if you take style or the business section, for example. The overriding culture must be that we strive to produce ...

Newspapers are caught up in an absolute revolution at the moment. We've never had a challenge like this in more than 200 years, far greater than radio or television, because we're being challenged by the printed word online, digitally, and the vision for any newspaper is: how do ...

Thank you.

Mm.

The Secretary of State did, I think.

Yes, there was. I think several newspapers made representations asking for a public interest --

But if you had a public interest, you could probably avoid some of that. I mean, we are constantly presented with the dilemma: should we break the law because we believe it's in the public interest? The Bribery Act, for example. If we could expose criminality by a bribe ...

I think we have an extraordinary anomaly now where only the Data Protection Act gives us that protection. Other Acts don't. So in a sense, you're challenging the press periodically to break the law because they think it's in the public interest. Is that a good thing ...

But again, the courts can take into account if somebody chose not to go to arbitration.

Yes, and it would replicate the courts, in a sense, wouldn't it?

Yes.

I think your ideas on arbitration are very interesting. Or mediation. We used mediation in some defamation cases.

I know. We're trying to think of ways too. VAT we've explored. I would have thought there would be some financial penalties for not being involved.

Yes.

I wonder if you were not part of a self-regulatory body and you end up in court, that the courts could take a particularly tough line on you for not being part of regulation --

Well, if you didn't --

It does, but I would have thought there are methods one can use to encourage, indeed coerce people to participate. Financial penalties.

I think it's possible to come up with a tougher self-regulatory system that will prevent this. I'm not sure it would always prevent it. I think there is always going to be controversy in the press and the coverage of the freedom of speech in this country and ...

As you've heard from James Harding, I would have very serious doubts about some sort of statutory body that's been set up by Parliament for some of the reasons he said, but also, I think -- and I do think that in future politicians would be tempted to intervene ...

Not a problem, because we don't do that that often, so there's not much bureaucracy. It's maybe one meeting a month you're minuting and then any follow-ups. So no, it's not a problem. I think it's just good practice.

Yeah, I mean --

No, I think we have learnt a lot from in Inquiry already. Some of the practices -- we've already begun to adopt certain methods which I think have emerged from this. For example, we always had a rigorous process over subterfuge: why should we do it? How do we justify ...

Yes.

Mm.

It may be the more responsible ones might wish to be part of self-regulation, because they could see advantages to it, but I think there's always the danger you're going to have rogue elements there that wouldn't want to be part of it and would actually extol ...

You would assume they would be doing it, whether it's by advertising or by some means like that, yes.

I'm not sure there should. What we can't foresee is what will evolve from the Internet. You may have serious publications that begin to appear that have -- can afford investigative journalism, can break stories and can behave maybe in a reprehensible way. There'd be no particular control ...

Well, clearly any kind of regulation that comes out of this process I think has to take into account what goes on on the Internet, and as we transit to digital platforms, we are bound by self-regulation at the moment and will continue to be so. But the great threat ...

Yes, and then their successors have done stories such as Fifa. The name continues.

No.

Because we thought they should be better integrated with the news-gathering operation.

It wasn't closed; it was incorporated into the newsroom. It was a separate entity with a separate office and it just became part of the newsroom.

Yes.

Sounds like it.

I don't know precisely, but he was used by Insight on various investigations. I think he was used on the Fifa one, for example.

Yes.

No, it's not.

It's possible. I don't know how much of this goes on at the moment.

It's possible.

I don't know the answer to that. I mean, our journalists are instructed if they go to a house, they will ring the doorbell. If the person asks them to leave, they will leave and that's the end of the matter. Sometimes they will put a letter through ...

Personally, I think it's unacceptable.

Well, it's familiar in the sense that pieces like this have been written, but I'm not personally familiar with it.

Mm-hm.

A very small number. I couldn't give you an exact figure. And many unsuccessful ones.

Yes.

Invariably the publication is agreed with the PCC.

Not exactly, no.

That's right. They interpreted the code and concluded that it was. We wanted a debate about this. We thought it was worth the question of free speech. They decided against it, so we have taken that into account.

These are not pejorative websites. They are gay websites that use that term in a positive way.