Thank you, sir.

It is appropriate for you to ask and that is the answer. Clearly, there were huge issues in relation to the numbers of potential victims, as you well know, but the matter was being thoroughly and proportionately investigated.

Absolutely. It was proportionate, balanced and appropriate.

Yes. We did look at that and it was about the process, the staffing and the resourcing, the appropriateness of the lines of investigation and inquiry, the priorities, and the large number of victims, to make sure that we could provide some reassurance to the executive of the force that ...

It wasn't the latter, it wasn't a reinvestigation. I would still be there.

Mr Godwin was Acting Commissioner. It was actually Mr Hogan-Howe, when he was Acting Deputy Commissioner, he commissioned it. Sorry, there's a lot of "commissioner" here, sorry. He asked me to undertake the review, and I reported to Mr Hogan-Howe as the temporary deputy and then when he became ...

I'd have spoken to, in the first instance, the officer in overall command of the investigation, and if it couldn't be resolved there, I'd have taken it higher and there would have been absolutely no difficulty with that because we had a very calendered frequent set of ...

100 per cent. They were terrific. Right from the workers on the -- in the major incident room up to the Commissioner of the Met himself. There was nothing held from us and we received really good co-operation. It's not to say that we agreed about everything, because we didn ...

I think that's a good way of putting it. I think it's about ensuring that the investigation had integrity and was doing absolutely everything that it could within the limits of the various quantities of data and the vast numbers of potential victims that everything was being done ...

The objective was really to provide some reassurance and objective reassurance to the senior management team of the Metropolitan Police that Operation Weeting and the inquiry was going in the right direction and maximising the opportunities.

Yes. We started towards the end of August and we put an interim report in on 29 September, and then a full report on 22 December, so we finished it within four months. Between the two reports, we made a number of recommendations.

In terms of the field of major crime, in particular homicide, yes, it is. It's acknowledged as good practice. Normally from within the force, so if it's a conventional murder, you would put together a review team within your own -- from within your own force and ensure that ...

Ocean Grove.

I think that we have been -- I think we've been fortunate that we haven't had a major issue in terms of disclosures or leaks or inappropriate contact. I think what Barbara and I are saying is that we are reviewing everything we do, we are keeping a very ...

It might be, I'm not sure.

It might be.

There's nothing I want to add except to say that I think we recognise that this is a changing landscape all the time, that social media has really changed the dynamic in terms of how we control conversation with our communities and the media, because we know that the ...

No.

As I understand it, the filter can be adjusted to suit the force, but one in ten seems to be the standard default position, yes.

Yes.

Yes, that's correct.

Yes.

Not to the media, no. We've had -- again, they're in my statement somewhere -- a number of inappropriate pieces of use of either national or local systems and I've outlined in there what the outcome of some of those investigations was: resignation, requirement to resign, cautions, no further ...

Yes. PNC Guard -- sorry, I should have been clearer. PNC Guard is exactly that. That's what it does. It's a commercial piece of software that we've invested in. Most forces, I think, have something similar or the same, and it enables us to ensure that there is ...

Yes. Both local and nationally, we have random sampling and within the PNC guard, which is referred to in my statement, there is a facility to, randomly and intelligence-led, do some screening of the usage to ensure that it's done for an appropriate purpose, whether it's training, crime ...

That's correct.

That's right.

I've been at Durham now for nine years and I can't think of any from the police. I was reminded, however, that -- it's in my statement -- that there was an inadvertent disclosure of a sensitive Police Authority paper which found its way into the media's hands ...

No, I was under the expression that the media advice was that for neighbourhood teams, just in case, err on the side of caution by all means but consider every briefing to be on the record.

I think that's a fair reflection in terms of where we are. On occasion, the ACPO team do have lunches not with the media, but with contractors, other organisations, suppliers, people with legitimate interest in the policing business. I think this whole investigation/Inquiry will rightly cause all forces ...

That's correct.

I thought that's what I answered, actually.

I do think that -- initially I think there will be some grumbling, but I think that once they understand why and the awareness is raised, I think they'll feel absolutely that this is the appropriate thing to do.

I agree, sir.

We already keep a record -- Barbara keeps a record of those contacts on a daily basis where the access is through the press office. I think that perhaps my neighbourhood inspectors need to email or ring or phone or directly input into a system that we could --

No, but the reality is I don't want to be complacent about it, sir. I want to make sure that we actually challenge our culture, and perhaps it's by accident rather than by design that we are where we are.

I've thought about this very hard, actually, since I submitted this statement, and I've moved from kind of agreeing with the Filkin recommendations of informal contact -- more is better than less, but recording things in pocket notebooks to protect the police officer and the media as well.

The ...

Mm.

I'm not sure that's what I was trying to say. I think that what I was trying to say was that forces may already have above and beyond exacting standards, and that you can't just impose a national standard or a national solution across without first doing ...

I don't think it's the geography; I think it's the scale. But I think it's also the starting point, that forces are at different points in their maturity or their relationship with the media and some forces, to comply with it, would maybe be going backwards ...

And then clearly inspected against -- whether it's by HMIC or internally, both and from outside as well.

I think that what's happening today, I think, with the IPCC and ACPO and the HMIC in relation to both Filkin and the HMIC integrity scrutiny, I think that should provide some strong national standards, national guidance. I think then the solution, the work about, could come locally, because ...

Well, we train our police officers. Barbara's already acknowledged that we need to do more in terms of media training with Durham cops, and we do trust PCSOs, who have a very important community role, and are very popular in county Durham and Darlington, but the reality is: what ...

I think that this is the kind of difficult issue that we have in terms of relations with the press. On the one hand, we need to have a healthy, searching, probing press to hold us to account as public servants. On the other hand, we want to be able ...

Yes. Pretty disappointed, I have to say. And I have to -- I have very grave concerns about overfamiliarity with police officers from each and every rank. I would hope that we can establish something from this that would go some way to eliminating that. I think the culture, just by ...

That's correct. It's a very healthy culture within Durham Constabulary and it's partly a product of the fact -- as Barbara's alluded to, we're a small organisation, compact, and although there are a number of newspapers, we have healthy respect for their position and they have ...

It wasn't -- it was about off-the-record briefings, sir. We used this as an opportunity to provide a background context to a really good operation that we were running and we wanted national awareness, national media, to show how good we were in terms of dismantling this organised crime group ...

It was.

Yes, that's right.

I think I've already mentioned I probably have more contact with television and radio than I do with local written media. Notwithstanding that, I know the editor of the local paper quite well, sit on a couple of strategic partnership boards that he also sits on. He used to ...