Yes, sir. Simply they give me a soap box to stand on so I stood on it.

There is a certain amount of that. Every lawyer will tell you they've lost cases or spent time in pursuing CFA cases that got nowhere and got no payment for them, including the ones that you win on and find that the other side can't afford to necessarily ...

There is always a risk, no matter how good the case is, and you do not know how you're going to get paid or what you're going to get paid until the end of the case. You have to win, and even when you win you don't ...

Well, my hourly rate is £390 an hour. However, the idea that you get that on a CFA is -- you only find out what you're getting at the end.

So if you take, for example, the NMT and Wilmshurst case where I acted on a CFA, gave two years ...

I'd rather not discuss the negotiations, save that the total sum has been put forward. There wasn't any -- you know, I've been asked about the costs negotiations. There wasn't a costs negotiation with the newspaper. There was a global sum that was paid, et cetera, that ...

The whole settle -- I have a difficulty because the whole settlement is -- I can see the press will say that he wouldn't talk about what had happened --

I can't remember the exact date. I can tell you the circumstances of the deal, because it -- one presumes that this must be -- there was an article, as I alluded to last time, that went on a website from Associated through Daily Mail who said I was holding out ...

Certainly. Maybe the strategy was correct, but the facts that it was based upon were just wrong.

There are things that they have suggested about me that are just wrong as a factual basis, so the facts that they were planning to rely on, the fact that I have a chip on my shoulder because I went to a secondary modern; I didn't go to a ...

Can I just make some points on the pages that you've been through?

Yes.

Maybe. It may be said they thought that. I think there obviously were other people who were very much involved.

I apologise.

No, I -- sorry, sir, I wasn't suggesting that it was. It was just that because there are so many factual inaccuracies --

I'm tempted to say it was from the Star, but it was nothing -- it really isn't from the Star so don't suggest that, but it has so many factual inaccuracies --

I think firstly that that is an ex post facto justification in 2011 to explain why the rules had been broken, because there was no probative value whatsoever in the inquiry that was being made by them. They were looking into my private life in a way that had no ...

Yes.

Leading counsel said that I was a wide boy, that he'd met me. He'd never met me. I've never spoken to him. There are other Mark Lewises in the profession so it's possible that one of them might be a wide boy, but I do think ...

Can I just deal with one point out of that conference?

News Group Newspapers wanted to pay for a client to sue me, even though the client hadn't proposed to sue me.

Apart from that, it was a great case.

Well, to keep me -- stop me from acting.

I understand that.

Of course, I mean the previous paragraph, the final sentence, appears to be to cause embarrassment and then use this in other cases against NGN, and then -- that was the context of it. And then say the key interest is to stop me, to stop me, to stop Charlotte Harris ...

But there were two parts to that, because apart from it being virgin legal territory, so there was no legal authority for doing it, he had to develop a body of evidence because the evidence that he had didn't support the case anyway.

So apart from the facts being ...

Oh, absolutely. There was some liaison and co-operation between Gordon Taylor and his solicitors and News Group. It's an oddity, really, that you have a union chief executive who's supposed to represent his members, seems to be more concerned at protecting a newspaper that's attacking his members ...

Can I just deal with that in case I didn't make it clear? The complaint that he made against me, Gordon Taylor, was nothing to do with any leak or anything. It was to do with he said that he had agreed with me that I wouldn't act ...

Yes.

Phenomenal. Actually phenomenal that leading counsel could find it on his own behalf to suggest that News Group Newspapers ought to persuade one of my clients, someone I had acted for, someone I'd got a lot of money for, to sue me even though he hadn't threatened to ...

RXC is Rowena Cordery. The chances are that she doesn't have a middle name and that's why solicitors often use X as a middle initial because I'm sometimes MXL if there is another ML.

If I go through these attendance notes, I'm not sure that the client, although the client is shown as News Group Newspapers, the last one, which is Kelly Hoppen, has a different reference number, so I suspect there's a second client from that. The first ones are News ...

Tom Crone is on record as having said he didn't investigate me or authorise investigations. I think one has to remember that because quite clearly black and white suggests otherwise.

No, not at all. It was on the contrary. What was happening around that time is I'd been instructed by someone to pursue a claim, and in order to attack me and attack my client, I was acting for somebody called -- it's on public record -- I'm acting ...

Absolutely. It was an intentional tactic to attack me. Look, I take it as a huge compliment that I had the News of the World and Tom Crone and Julian Pike calling me untrustworthy. I'd count my fingers if they thought I was trustworthy.

This report talks about this being very good for my career, or one of the reports talks about this being very good for my career. If my income, if I can put, went down to less than 3 per cent of what it had been before, if that can be ...

Yes, I did, but in context I came back on the Saturday. On the Sunday, I went to see Max Clifford. I went with Charlotte Harris, who is at another law firm, JMW. I was at George Davies at that time. It was to be dealt with and Max Clifford ...

-- he told me about that. I was away. I didn't come back until the next day -- until the Saturday. I think that was a Thursday, 9 July. I came back -- it would have been a Thursday because the flight's only on a Monday and Thursday. I landed at ...

On 9 July 2009 I was away. I wasn't on Newsnight or anything. They've got the dates wrong in this report. There is so much that is wrong with what they're doing. I was away at the time. This story had broken in the Guardian. I was ...

That's correct.

I was not the source of that story, never gave information out. It was complete arrogance and idiocy by Julian Pike at Farrers and Tom Crone. They were so busy navel gazing that they hadn't realised that there were so many possible sources of this story and that the ...

According to the document, yes.

News International sought to destroy my life, and very nearly succeeded. I mean, the whole thing, when you look at these documents, is the interaction between a journalist who is doing a report for whatever reason, because the journalist -- it's another report but there was a comparison of notes ...

Correct.

I was shown that.

It was taken about April/May 2010, when my youngest daughter was 14.

That was horrific. That was truly horrific, that my daughter was videoed, was followed by a detective with a camera. I mean, just followed. That shouldn't happen to anybody's child. I mean, obviously there's worse things -- I acted for the Dowler family, so I can't really ...

That's correct.

It's subsequently been said to be Derek Webb and I've seen the documents, but at the time the police gave me the documents and had already shown me the video and the documents refer to the video.

That's partly correct. I don't think they actually told me who the person who took the video was. They just showed me the video.

The statement is true.