Yes.

I think that's working, sir.

I'm taken with the discussions that I have seen so far at the Inquiry. Potentially let's call it the sort of three pillars. I think we want to continue to be able to resolve complaints swiftly. I think that a standards arm -- yes, a compliance arm, a standards ...

Yes.

Yes, but I think that we never queried the points that you made.

Yes.

Yes.

Mr Barr, I don't think there is, really. I think we perhaps got caught up at that point on -- I would hate to diminish it by calling it a technicality but caught up in process.

I think the concern was that there wasn't malice aforethought -- from our legal ...

Yes.

I don't tend to have a lot of personal correspondence with the PCC, but you will -- I mean, you can see how I responded to it. They would tend to write to me or have done on more specific matters if they felt they really need drawing to my ...

Yes, yes, I do.

Sorry, this is 10 October?

I think that whatever business you're in, expenses need to be claimed as part of business. We have a very tight system in which expenses can be claimed, so I think it's just -- I see it less as a moral hazard and more about the fact that it ...

I'm fanatical about expenses. I would fire people if they abused expenses without -- immediately.

No, I can't be sure. I think it was around 2005, I think, but I can't be sure.

I don't have any. I never have.

I wouldn't say regularly. From time to time. What I tend to do is host regular lunches for senior politicians, cabinet ministers, predominantly for our regionals editors. If you're an editor of a national newspaper, you can pretty much get to see whomever you want to. It's ...

As you heard from Richard, listings are a key driver of the paper and as an ex-listings publisher, there are very technical ways of presenting listings that make more or less appealing to readers, so that would be, frankly, the biggest area that I have ever given feedback on.

But ...

No, I don't believe that I have, and I think that there are some important key differences in our portfolio. For a start, all of our regional newspapers are apolitical. That's enshrined in their articles and they're very much champions of local issues and local causes.

Insofar ...

Yes.

We've also, as part of the review, written to third parties and made it very clear to them as to what our expectations are and the fact that we expect them to comply with those. Certainly what we discussed last week was making them part of any future contracts ...

I'm certainly aware of them now. For the record, I think that some of the things that our journalists said were regrettable and my preference would have been that they wouldn't have said them. I do take comfort from the fact that we didn't pay for anything ...

I really can't be sure. I'm not sure that I've ever seen the film myself.

I have become aware of it, but I couldn't be sure exactly when I became aware of it.

Indeed. I think on lots of our titles it would indeed have been happening and would have been standard practice. I think what we've done is add an additional control by saying, "This is our expectation, this is our process, this is how things must happen."

Yes.

Yes, it was a very key part of the review. It is in place. That guidance note has been issued and it also resides on our internal intranet.

I think that we saw that across the group there were examples of very good practice and there were examples of some not such good practice, perhaps in terms of frequency of training, so we thought that it would be a good idea to introduce more standard practice across the ...

Good progress. I'm chairing a compliance committee and reporting back to the board. I last chaired -- well, I chaired the last compliance committee on Thursday of last week and we are meeting monthly and I'm satisfied that we're making very good progress with the recommendations.

I have not, Mr Barr.

The BBC in July -- are you referring to the Newsnight piece? I think that's a terrible piece of journalism, as we pointed out to them at the time, and they have no evidence and have not come back to us with any evidence. They were running unsubstantiated allegations as ...

I think what we have done is send a letter to our -- I can't remember whether it's 43 or 44 senior editorial personnel across the group asking three very specific questions of them, which clearly shows the company's position and how we would never condone such activity ...

I don't think it's the way to run a healthy organisation is to go around conducting investigations when there is no evidence to say that our journalists have hacked phones.

No, I don't.

You're correct, Mr Barr, we have not conducted an investigation.

We haven't --

We have only seen unsubstantiated allegations and I have seen no evidence to show me that phone hacking has ever taken place at Trinity Mirror.

There was no evidence and we saw no reason to investigate.

I think that was one of the reasons for reinforcing what we said in 2007 to make sure that our editors were being very clear in reminding their people what was acceptable and, you know, our absolute adherence to the code and the criminal law.

I can't remember the specific, as you put it, allegations that were flying around, but there was certainly no evidence and we simply therefore didn't see a need to do that.

No, we didn't.

Indeed.

I think lots of journalists were speculating on that in media pieces, but certainly without any evidence.

I might have been. I'm not sure.

I did listen to his evidence last week, yes.

I don't believe that I was, I can't be sure but I don't believe that I was.

I simply thought it was an appropriate point to reinforce our policies, procedures and the criminal law.

It was.

It was reiterating our existing policies, and clearly the PCC code and the criminal law.

I would not have a problem with that.