Thank you very much.

No. No.

In between.

So that provides the focus in terms of strategically what's happening and then the team are able to sort of execute that requirement.

Yes, the Chief Inspector reports directly into the Deputy Chief Constable.

Yes, some very able people. I think the huge benefit of having the police officer there is to connect that function to the values of the rest of the force and to make sure that it never sits as a sort of an adjunct to the force; it is part ...

I think there is a balance, isn't there, between professional skills and between having someone who is identifiable, and Sally does do some media work on our behalf and can act as the sort of credible voice for West Midlands. I think there's a balance between having that ...

I understand the question.

Sorry.

Yes, because our contact with national media is very limited.

In terms of media?

And it's a policy that we've literally been working on in the last few weeks.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

All right.

I think they're balanced, aren't they, against the public interest of doing it.

That is part of the contract, and as you heard previously, that is making sure that photographs are pixelated and that we don't allow details of people that haven't been charged with an offence to enter the public domain.

Yes. It's not something we do all the time, but we do do it from time to time, and actually the example that Mr Faber used following the riots is a really good example, where, I suppose, from a public interest point of view, we wanted to reassure the ...

I think more generally there is a shared interest in denying the hoaxer the sort of oxygen of publicity that they're seeking. That, again, comes back to the fact that our local media is working in the interests of the wider community, as I think we are.

I think this is just the sort of bump and grind of, you know, daily news that is absolutely getting faster and faster and expectations of information getting quicker, and we can't always resource that, and it's not necessarily, I think, my job to put more and more ...

I'd perhaps just add it's not a wilful approach.

No. No, not at all. No. What I was trying to say in that paragraph really is that there is a -- at the heart of the relationship, there is a sort of healthy tension, really, and having heard the previous witness -- Mr Faber would say that he's seeking more ...

Of course, and that's where you could enter the harassment bit.

Common law.

Contacting the newspaper or TV station, whatever it is.

But in fairness, our experience has always been that if we challenge that behaviour, the behaviour seems to stop.

Perhaps I'll ...

It was that programme, yes. It was partly filmed in Birmingham, partly in Yorkshire, and the device was in a classroom attached to a mosque.

I understand that the people within the mosque that found the device made a referral to Ofcom. Ofcom were comfortable that public interest was being served and there was no further action.

No.

Yes, in general terms. I mean, if you like, the rights of the individual feature as a balancing issue in most decisions.

Yes, I suppose particularly around decision-making, where, along with a number of other forces, we've been doing a lot of work to try and help officers find ways of making what, in our jargon, we call values-based decision-making, which in effect is making good judgments and being able to ...

Yes.

Not entirely. I think -- this is sort of a fairly broad basket of examples that we've put under the heading of "leak". Principally, these are actually dissatisfaction from involved members of the public at the way information has entered the public domain. So, for example, there is a complaint ...

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I think the case I'm particularly thinking of, the person in question appeared as a silhouette on local television.

It has, and we are losing over 2,500 posts over the next few years and having to go through some really difficult decisions and I suppose I'm not surprised that some people would feel that they want to take some of those issues to the media.

Yes.

Not at all.

Well, if I'm here to prove a negative, I suppose, yes.

No, I would put it like this: in all the contact I have with communities in the West Midlands, opinion-formers in the West Midlands, this just has never arisen as an issue.

Well, I think -- and I sit here today, don't I? In some respects, I'm sort of quite surprised to be sitting here today talking about these issues, but they clearly have gathered a lot of public interest, and we need to make sure that not only the facts ...

I suppose it's the nature of the information that we're dealing with, the nature of the product that we monitor in terms of press, TV, radio. There's no evidence of that sort of information coming into the public domain.

No.

I suppose I could have used the word "social contact", perhaps. Going back to the opening page of the statement, I think the contact that exists is a sort of transactional contact that is aimed from both sides at either delivering information, producing a story, but I don't -- I ...

Mm.

Absolutely, yes, indeed.