Thank you, sir.

We came here today, at your kind invitation, wanting to put forward our approach to help solve the problem. The BPPA is an organisation of professionals and we want to be part of the solution. We don't want to be seen as part of the problem, because we don ...

Yes.

I'm afraid --

I think that would be a very fair assessment, yes.

Precisely.

There's two answers to that, I'm afraid. The first is that if those tests did exist and were applied, then those images wouldn't be purchased. However, if publishers want to purchase those images and want to publish them, then they would be somehow in breach of the ...

Okay, I'll take that for sure. But I mean certainly kind of outlining which areas of the law photographers could be in danger of breaching and hopefully, because we're professionals, we would do the background reading that goes behind all of that and kind of, you know, be ...

What we would be seeking really would be -- and I'm quoting from myself here -- a simple and robust explanation of the relevant legislation that recognises and encapsulates best practice. A credit card size pocket note, if you like, and pages on websites that outline all of the relevant statutes ...

Yes. Sorry, could I just refer to a couple of notes I've made?

Absolutely. And actually, you know, can I make one small kind of subcorrection here: the UK Press Card Authority does already suspend and cancel cards. The BPPA is a card-issuer and we have done that. So the press card scheme already does have the ability to do that, and re-reading ...

I think that's a fairly good summation. I think -- the UK press card scheme already requires that you have a track record as a working journalist to get one, and I think in parallel with part three of this four-pronged approach, I think it would be fair to say ...

I do not pretend to work on a picture desk. I don't think that I'm the right person to answer those questions.

I think we haven't set out a series of tests because, you know, this set of proposals was put together reasonably quickly and we felt that until we'd had a great long conversation about what we thought the tests should be, then maybe we should just talk about ...

Yeah, I mean, the duty should be placed on all editors of all media -- not just newspapers but certainly websites, possibly blogs, if it could be done -- that when they publish photographs in their newspapers, show them on television, have them on their websites, that they have had to go ...

Absolutely not.

Cultural elements notwithstanding, I mean, people who are in favour of privacy law in this country talk about French privacy law in a way that they seem to want to import it -- not exactly wholesale, because they have a different legal system, but to import huge chunks of it. So ...

I think the assessment would be that the problem with French privacy law, as we understand it -- clearly none of us are French lawyers. We've spoken to photographers who have worked in France and they say it's not necessarily the laws, what it is, it's the interpretation ...

I would not doubt that those incidents have happened, yes.

I have to admit that I've only spent one night observing these guys at work. This was about two years ago. I was in town at night and I thought: "I'll go and have a watch and go to one or two of the haunts and have a ...

Yeah, and you know, holding cameras in strange positions. Working in packs deliberately. Deliberately running in front of people. I mean, you know, hearsay, I'm afraid, but I've heard it second-hand that they've seen one photographer deliberately get into a fight with a celebrity so a second ...

They're very well described in some of the witness statements of some of the core participants in the first couple of weeks, but they do involve chasing people down the road, driving dangerously/illegally. They do involve initiating a reaction and a response from people to get different facial ...

Only that the arrangement -- I've said this twice, but I think it bears saying again. The arrangement was made by photographers, who could see that there was going to be an issue. They took it upon themselves to make those arrangements. No one did it for them.

Yes.

Yes, I have.

I'm prepared to say that photographers working for UK newspapers and/or agencies were ordered in such a way.

That was the agreement made between photographers and the court officials.

Mm-hm.

I mean, as far as I'm aware. I wasn't there personally, but I've spoken to several people who were, and that's what I'm led to believe, so --

Absolutely, yes, yes. And I do believe, unless someone can tell me otherwise, that all the photographs taken on that day were actually taken without breaching the code.

No, we do, we do.

And it became apparent that a lot of the agencies and a lot of the newspapers wanted the photographers to get pictures of JK Rowling leaving, and we've spoken to a lot of people who were very uneasy about that, and all of them ...

Yes.

Yes.

The marketplace, in a nutshell, and a manifestation of the marketplace would be the chain of command within newspapers, but I don't think any particular one group of individuals is to blame. It's just that atmosphere where we see things on television, on live rolling news, and newspapers ...

Well, we have the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct, which we absolutely insist that people sign up to -- or abide by, and if someone says, "I don't want my picture taken", then under the PCC code, you stop taking their picture.

I think there's definitely an element where if people did then, you know, again, a lot of the issues and a lot of the problems that are seen to arise could be sorted out. I mean, this is a tiny percentage of what we do, a really tiny percentage ...

I think that the time has come when it should be investigated whether a single stills photographer or a limited number of stills photographers with, you know, the right equipment, now we can shoot in really low light, be admitted to some of these hearings, because if we want -- or ...

It's not a problem in terms of that's the way it has been certainly since before I joined the profession, but you have to put this into a context where television news has access to the footage from this room, television news has the ability to shoot all ...

It's the overuse of the term "paparazzi" is the primary problem. All of our members would tell you that they frequently get called the paparazzi. It's usually in a jokey way, but professional press photographers are exactly that. They're people who do this for a living. They ...

Yes. I am one of two vice chairman. I have been in that position for several years now. I joined the BPPA quite late, in 2003. Before being a vice-chairman, I was the editor of the website.

It's a very difficult figure to gather. We've spoken to the government sector skills council, Skillset, to see if they have a number. They don't have a number. The best guess that we've seen is probably somewhere in the region of 1,800 to 2,000 ...

No, that would also include photographers like myself, who work on Monday for one employer, on Tuesday for a second employer and then Thursday and Friday on a story that they've generated themselves.

That's correct.

Who syndicates largely their images through an agency.

With various media organisations but primarily newspapers and agencies.

And agencies.

That's correct.

Thank you.

I can confirm that.

My name is Neil Gavin Turner.