All right.

No.

No, I don't think I've been looking into that. I stand by what's in the book and what I said in November, but I don't think there's anything important to add.

I don't think there's anything special. I mean, clearly there's been an awful lot coming into the public domain, as, for example, from Sue Akers yesterday, but I think there's nothing on Z that I can add beyond what was in the book and beyond what ...

I think we've covered it. I'm happy to answer questions if I can clarify things, but I think we've covered it.

No, I think we have covered those points, unless there's something you want to come back on.

Okay, all right.

They actually put in a written memo, Yates and Williams, in which they were talking about the extent to which they wanted to say they had been in touch with victims and potential victims of hacking and they said that apart from those who had been approached with a view ...

Got it, okay.

Is this on the screen? Sorry, what page are you on? I'm terrible sorry.

I'm not too worried about that. I think we can get overanxious here. I thought Brian Paddick was being overanxious yesterday, "wouldn't even pay for my drink". I think that's silly. I mean, we can all get too uptight about this and I think there is too ...

Okay, I've slightly touched on this already. Brian Paddick was saying yesterday that John Stevens, as Commissioner, set out to build bridges with the news media and that Dick Fedorcio was instrumental in that. It seems to me there's nothing wrong with that. I think there's nothing ...

Yes.

But try falsehood and distortion then. Let's say the police officer, officially or unofficially, supplies the journalist with some information. That journalist is the irresponsible kind, so he or she then goes off to produce a story which is riddled with falsehood and distortion and that produces bad results ...

No. "Mendacious" is an interesting word --

The closing down of whole channels of communication.

Well, to a certain -- we need to be clear what it is the problem might be. I have no problem at all with me building a special relationship with a serving police officer or banker or prison officer or anybody. They're just contacts. I don't have any problem ...

Yes. Again this applies to the official sources as much as to the unofficial sources. Either of them are capable of giving you information which is designed to cause trouble for somebody or which can be distorted to cause trouble for somebody or misused in some way. In order to ...

Yes.

Yes, this is what I was trying to describe before the break. If you want to make sure the system works well, don't go closing down whole channels, but recognise that the problem is twofold. It may be something malicious or improper at the police end or it may ...

I think one of the things that -- if the companion of all reporting life is anxiety, you are constantly worrying about what could go wrong with this story. So when he tells me this thing, first of all, both of the alarm bells are going to ring: am I sub ...

Okay.

Gotcha.

He's a serving police officer?

Can I just ask you, did you say "an ex" as in a former police officer?

Just that it's implied by that that the corollary also is true, that a police officer could be justified in disclosing something that was inherently private or confidential precisely because it was in the public interest to do so.

Yes, exactly.

Yes. But I think if we're just talking here theoretically, the factual position is it's against the law to intercept communications, full stop, no public interest defence written in. It isn't like Section 55 of the Data Protection Act, yes? I'm saying that if we were ...

Right.

Maybe I've misunderstood your question.

Isn't that what you want me to do in a way, to test the boundaries?

Yes. I think it's interesting. If we took the public interest -- because this is -- like you were saying yesterday, this Inquiry is not an attack on press freedom. You have the capacity to increase our freedom. That's an example. You yourself can't do it but if we ...

Yes.

Yes.

And that is the way the law stands at the moment, yes. But when I was here before, I was trying to argue for some advisory body that could tell reporters and others where the public interest boundaries are, case by case, and if we had something like that, I ...

Because it's against the law.

Fine, good. What was the question? I've slightly lost you.

Try and think of an example.

No, clearly that's always illegal. It was interesting when Keir Starmer was here -- I think it was him -- saying there was a residual decision about whether there could be a public interest. I can't imagine the situation, but maybe somewhere in the outer reaches of possibility it could ...

I talked about this in the first statement I put into this Inquiry, that it seems to me that paying for information does create a problem. The problem isn't ethical. I don't mind if a newspaper wants to pay an actress to describe her married life or whatever ...

I think paying a bribe is a rather odd way of putting it. Is there something inherently wrong in paying money for information?

So in this question, it's no longer illegal?

The immediate answer is it's against the law.

Not just with police sources, but if someone is talking generally, your are alarm bells would ring if it's sub judice. Your alarm bells would ring if it's defamatory. You start wondering if you're going to be able to find the evidence to justify it, if you ...

There are some legal ones that I haven't bothered mentioning there, but.

Yes.

Yes.

And then sometimes it could be something like I was describing a moment ago, where the officer says, "This is a story that, from the point of view of reassuring the public or making good the morale of my squad really ought to be in the public domain, but I ...

One force conducting an independent inquiry into alleged corruption in another force. I think theirs was a variation on that, in that they felt there was a real danger that the force that allegedly contained the corruption would conceal that corruption and that by talking to me and other reporters ...

Hang on, I can't remember the other examples I gave you.