I don't think so, sir.

I understand, sir.

I'd better not mention the Huhne production order. On Glenn Mulcaire, I merely point that the company paid nearly a third of a million pounds to pay his legal fees.

On the matter of the accounts, I did check the accounts in early April, and the company issued a statement that said the accounts would be filed by the end of the month. So they were clearly eight days late and I apologise for not checking.

Yes, sir, there is. Firstly, a former chief reporter of the paper has alleged a conspiracy to blackmail with the surveillance, and if that is the case, I don't understand why James Murdoch would feel the need to apologise to a parliamentary committee for the surveillance. He said it ...

I think that's very possible to do, sir, and yes, I would. You know, people make -- I think the Civil Service are worried about factual errors and making mistakes that are then exploited. Frankly, if we get the model right, yes, there may be some mistakes, but there will ...

Ultimately, this is down to the conduct of individuals but I do think there are ways you can shape that relationship. Certainly transparency is one way, and I've mentioned improvement to the Freedom of Information Act and the way that government presents information. At the moment, ministers publish their ...

"I've never met an MP who would want to do that." But I do accept that there is a fear in the newspaper industry that politicians would like to, in some way, close down their assertive line of journalism and they do require reassurances, in whatever model replaces the ...

I think --

I think with independent -- arm's length removed from government, with some statutory powers. I think the -- I think the simple task of that body should be to oblige an editor to put a matter right when they make a mistake or get it wrong. I understand the remedy is ...

Yes, absolutely.

It might be, sir, but if you're looking at the conduct of journalism and ethics, then part of the reason they've been giving you that they had need to be so intrusive in unusual ways into the lives of politicians is politicians never give them any information, and ...

I think a part of the reason -- when future policy-makers require good research and advice, a body that becomes professional and skilled at dealing with notions of privacy I think is going to be useful to us, and can also actually help the press. I mean, the ICO -- I mean ...

Yes, it's completely different, but the requirement of the state to do that requires public buy-in and confidence from the public, and at the moment I don't think the public are well-served by policy-makers who have these conflicting demands on their time, and like Parliament has recently rationalised ...

Yes, sir. I think they're different, but I think a citizen very often wouldn't necessarily distinguish between an intrusion of privacy by a state or non-state actor, and my real point is I think the idea of privacy is changing in the minds of the public, and where ...

Yes, sir. It's -- I hope you don't mind we observing, but I think one of the dilemmas that your witnesses have is they have a different view of what is private and what is public, and that's partly because of the sort of disruptive power of the ...

Yes, sir. I think one of the issues you've -- that people have been contending with this is on notions of personal privacy in the age of information abundance in the digital age, and as a society we've not reached a settled view on that, nor will we, I ...

Sure.

No. After I'd resigned, there's obviously been lots of discussion since, but not before, no.

No, absolutely not.

That's correct, yes. I think Rebekah Brooks may have said that when she was in front of you, but -- I've never bothered to put the matter right because it's to trivial, but ...

No, and just to put the matter right, the allegation is that I delivered a Postman Pat DVD for Gordon Brown's children. It's a fact that's been repeated many times. I didn't do that. The present was a Baby Gro for the new baby, and I ...

No, not at all.

No.

I've probably met them once in the last year, maybe twice, at the Labour Party Conference.

It's a centre left-leaning satirical website that does, you know, gossipy tabloid-style stories.

I know the guy -- the young guy that runs it. I have no relationship with it in terms of management or anything else.

That's right, yeah. That was the general view at the time.

No, but there was a lot of discussion at the time about the Labour Party's online strategy because it was felt that there was a sort of plan by our opponents to work in an arm's length removed way with sites like Guido Fawkes, but there was no ...

No.

No. There was a weekly grid meeting where ministers were invited or I was invited as a Cabinet Office minister, and Damian McBride would have been invited to that, but I rarely went to those meetings. I frankly found them very tedious so used to hardly ever turn up, and ...

No.

It would be logistics to do with Gordon Brown's movements perhaps or something to do with a Labour Party event. No hard and fast rules to it. Maybe sort of whether there's going to be a meet-up after work, something like that. Nothing significant.

Rarely. I would probably get one or two texts, one or two emails a month, but not a lot at all.

There were just different responsibilities, and, you know, on the press side -- you know, if you're a minister, you have a day job and you don't really cross paths that often. I mean, the portrayal was that there was this kind of tight group of people around Gordon ...

Yes, I guess you could say that, yes.

I would see him about once a week in the -- you know, we would bump into each other. I had no direct line management responsibility for him and I didn't share his responsibilities, and then there would be the occasional social event, probably once a month, that I would ...

I -- I don't know, actually. I can't remember.

We worked at -- for Gordon Brown. I didn't know him that well. He was the press guy, I was a minister, so I would occasionally socialise with him but that was about it.

Yes.

No.

No.

No, it's not -- I spent a lot of time in that neck of the woods and the person -- it is a different person who made contact with me, having read a newspaper article regarding a letter I wrote to the Information Commissioner, and the significance for me was it ...

Yeah. Would you like me to explain about that call?

We're in the same place, sir, yes. If I can find the -- is this the IT insider?

That's right.

Yes. It would be late 2010 or early 2011, so I can -- if you allow me to find the date, I will do.

No, it was a direct call. Gordon Brown wasn't prime minister when he called me. This was after the election.

I could try and date it. Off the top of my head, I can't find it, but I can try and hone in on it.

That sort of thing, yeah.