That would be the line I would certainly take. I mean, I cannot see -- a regulation of content, there would be no chance of them signing up to that in any case. But if they did sign up to the behavioural side of things on the basis that they would ...

It is possible. I think the Huffington Post editor when she came before you, suggested she would sign up. I am not madly impressed by that because it does not mean that their US operation is under similar control, so readers, if they wanted to see material that was not ...

Without any doubt, yes. As will all the other newspapers that are part of the PCC's successor.

That's right. There are 170,000 of those. So you could say that there are 300,000 people who have access to our digital products, and then you have all the people who buy the paper as well. So it has helped the Times in terms of revenue. We ...

Well, I was put in charge of the Times website after ending my stint as political editor and at the same time as we decided to charge for digital content. So within days of taking that job I have seen the number of hits on the Times website fall by ...

I wouldn't say it is uncommon, but in all these -- the books get written about ministers briefing against each other at reshuffle time. It is absolutely true that when we came to write stories about who was going to be in the Cabinet our sources would be other ministers ...

Yes.

No, I can see the dilemma. There is also the dilemma between, and you have seen it here, that you want a consensus, but there already is not a consensus on this question of whether there should be a statutory regulation. Some of those who have come before you think ...

I do.

Mm-hm.

Yes.

Yes, I am aware. I am also aware of all the solutions -- you have seen Lord Hunt's and the Lord Black one you saw last week. One disadvantage of them from your point of view and the politicians' point of view, it is the press solution to this problem ...

That is very hard to tell, and you have several times -- I have heard you hope that there could be consensus emerging among the parties over the reforms that you come to recommend.

Mm-hm.

Well, without sounding like somebody asking for one final drink in the last-chance saloon, there could be, without putting it into a statute, an agreement of some kind, I presume, that, were this to happen, were one of the newspaper groups to pull out at any stage in the future ...

Well, I know there has been a division on that among the politicians, the senior politicians, you have had before the Inquiry. I personally would much prefer this to happen without a statutory backdrop, if that is at all possible, and if it were felt a contractual relationship, backed up ...

Yes, I mean, the Times, from the outset, has called for an end to -- I think my editor called it "marking our own homework". We accept that there is a need for a stronger independent regulation. Like everyone else from the newspaper world who has been before this Inquiry, we ...

Yes, I would be certainly against the statutory regulation of content.

Well, I think we are probably getting pretty close to that point now, after what we have seen in the last year, after the evidence that has been given to this Inquiry. The Inquiry has heard from a number of politicians who have lamented the fact that they possibly did ...

They certainly didn't stop talking to us. I think it was a lesson for them. I think it was a lesson for them that they realised then that these things are not going to appear exactly as you want them.

No. There were several classic examples of what -- of stories that were sent my way that ended up completely the opposite of what was intended. I remember being leaked an IMF report in the early days of the Labour Government which in its early chapter appeared to be extremely laudatory ...

Well, I felt -- the New Labour operation was a very professional press operation. I think they had a market for stories. There were certain stories that they thought would sit well in the Times, certain stories that would sit well in the Sun. I can't pretend that in those ...

Certainly, as you say, that was written some time ago, but I think there were stories about welfare, about -- which, again, has come up again this weekend, but I think there were some stories that were being put out that time about cracking down on benefits, those kind of stories ...

Well, there are a handful of people that you get to know so well that certainly in my case I would consider them friends first, politicians second. But because they are friends, they would know that in any awkward situation where they were in some kind of trouble, you would ...

No, I didn't at all. As I said to you earlier, I regarded myself as the news gatherer in chief. The Times readership, I know a few years ago, split about 40/30/30 between the parties, so the readers of the Times expected the Times political editor to ...

I am not aware of any blacklist of people we wouldn't have at a party, no, no.

Well, if it was the governing party, every member of the Cabinet would be invited, almost certainly most of their special advisers, senior MPs, MPs who had particular influence, chairmen of select committees. I would always be sent a list of the names that they intended to invite just to ...

Mm-hm.

We would have the meals in the evening after a hard day's work at the coal front. Very convivial and this would be the opportunity for members of the office who did not work in the lobby or House of Commons to meet politicians and for politicians to meet ...

I think it is common to all forms of journalism. I think wherever you are, whichever branch of journalism you are in, whether you are a medical journalist, an education journalist, a legal correspondent, you will meet, dine and have lunch with people in your world, you will speak to ...

Oh, I think so. But journalists are also very selective about who they invite to lunch, I think. You would invite to lunch people you felt were in a position to perhaps tell you information, to pass on tips. I personally was quite demanding and if I didn't get ...

Yes.

I think it is working. It is just my view that if there are going to be changes in the whole set-up, the whole relationship, as a result of this inquiry and others, this may be the opportunity to solidify that in law.

No, I think --

Yes, I can see that.

I see your point. All I would say is that I just hope that in today's climate -- and I hope it continues to be the climate -- newspapers would not do that in a misleading way. That is my hope.

I can see the point. I think in the wake of what has happened over the last year and more, newspapers would have to take a totally responsible approach to such investigations and there would have to be an audit trail from the start of the investigation to show that ...

I mean, we do it, but I think we would like a firm defence of public interest journalism.

No. I don't know what is going to come out of this inquiry or the joint committee's inquiry, but if there is a strong public interest defence, which of course is not available at the moment in law -- the stronger the public interest defence written into law, the ...

I think it is, and I think you are on to an issue that we discussed in the Times office over recent weeks. We did not want to go on a fishing expedition, which I think is what you may be referring to. We found from our own sources certain ...

Huge care. I mean, I know that we had several weeks of discussion about how to carry out that investigation at the Times and it is bearing fruit now and it has produced, I think, stories that are very much in the public interest.

You would have to go into it in considerable detail. I am sure the Sunday Times did in that case. In our series that began last week of exclusives -- the disclosures about the tax system and tax avoidance -- we too used an undercover reporter to become involved in that. I ...

I am happy with it, yes. I am perfectly happy with that code, yes.

Well, the Times is an independent paper. It switches between parties. It has switched between parties in recent years. But I would say that papers like the Mail and the Telegraph, which are associated with the Conservative Party, make a very strong job of reporting factually what is going on ...

I think the Times is a living example of the fact that that can happen. I think it does happen now and I think it should continue to happen.

Yes, when I talk about the commentariat, I am talking about those people who appear on the op-ed pages of the Times, the piece set aside for commentary.

Most reporting now of political stories will have a commentary alongside it, and your previous witness, Peter Riddell, wrote the commentaries in ...

It comes from all the people we would call sources around the place: civil servants, advisers, MPs, ministers. All of those people are our sources of information, as well as government departments.

I would say it has increased considerably over the years. The space -- certainly at the Times, we once had -- we always had, in my early days, a full page of the Times, eight columns, without an advert, devoted to gallery reporting. All of that space and more has been taken ...

Yes, I would, yes. I think in all cases they began with good relations. John Major built good relations with the press on his way to Downing Street, but he became very quickly disillusioned with the press afterwards.

Oh no, you have to be sure about what you are writing and the biggest certainty there is that you would never use that source again if that source gave you a piece of information that turned out to be totally wrong. That was always the discipline that I would ...