Thank you.

It's much better -- if I may say so, it's much better your Lordship comes from outside the area.

-- what is a new proposal to me.

I'll certainly do that. I'm sorry not to be able to express agreement with --

How can I communicate?

If something occurs to me that might be a solution --

I didn't know your Lordship was going to ask me about this.

Yes, and the damages are relatively low, and I think it's an insoluble problem, myself, and I fear that -- I wouldn't want to encourage your Lordship, if I may put it that way, to --

Yes. And especially in privacy cases. Because --

I'm sure.

Is your Lordship thinking of exemplary damages and whether they're going to be available in privacy cases? That's a potential problem.

Leaving that aside, I just think it's a line I wouldn't want to cross in any way. I suppose it's partly because I was ...

I fear there's no answer, even though I'm saying that in the context of a privacy case, where I think the arguments are even stronger than in a defamation case.

But I just have a feeling that if you even have the informal mechanism that your Lordship, I think, is proposing -- mechanism is not even the right word, the informal sort of understanding -- I think if you put that to a newspaper editor, and said, well, what's wrong with ...

Yes. I do understand that.

Publish and be damned.

No, he just gives evidence very articulately. I have heard him do so.

Yes, I know. What happened in the Moseley case.

Yes.

Your Lordship -- I'm sorry.

Yes. I have no hesitation in saying I'm not enthusiastic about what your Lordship has just put to me. The reason I think is really a very simple one. There cannot be any -- this is my sort of humble experience. There can never be any justification for compelling, even ...

Yes.

I know what your Lordship means.

Yes, I heard him.

I should have made it clear that that is on offer, because after all you can always by consent go to arbitration, can't you, and that's really what it would amount to.

We would hope, eventually, if the thing were to take off, as it were, that more ...

Do the next step.

Suppose you take a case where there was an argument about meaning, and it's decided by the silk, assisted or not by lay assessors, that the claimant's right or the defendant's right, whichever it may be, that's the moment where both the claimant and the defendant ...

Absolutely. If I haven't made it clear, which I fear I haven't, often it will be meaning which is the key thing.

No. It hasn't. And I think the press stand to gain in some ways more than the claimants.

But I really don't entirely understand why people haven't taken up. It may be that it's new, which it is. That may be part of the reason. But ...

Yes.

There was an element of cupidity in my expression of it, and not in your Lordship's. So can I adopt your Lordship's version.

That's a more attractive way of putting what I was trying to suggest.

That may be one -- if I may say so, I entirely agree.

It may be that the role of some advisers -- I don't want to be critical of everybody, but it may be that advice along the lines that your Lordship has just indicated is being given to claimants ...

It's not been as effective as we hoped, and can I try and explain why that is?

We thought that, for example -- everybody talks about the nationals. The regionals are just as important, I think, to the whole of the dispute with which his Lordship is concerned.

The regional ...

I don't think there are. I don't conceive of a way in which you can, as it were, coerce people in a voluntary manner to join a scheme. I think it's really got to be compulsory, and I don't myself see any sensible objection to that ...

Well, we have got the same objectives. I suppose the only reason that I am a little critical of the MSA is that it's dependent on media organisations being persuaded by a system of incentives to join it, whereas the adjudication system proposed by ER and by the MSA ...

Sorry, I've just noticed.

Yes.

Well, that was the view. There was another committee, if you remember, on -- it was just a House of Commons committee, as I recollect. And that also took the view, having heard a lot of evidence about it, that that was not something that the PCC was really the right ...

Yes, I think then I entirely agree. Pre-publication is a different matter altogether, and it's no part of my brief to be at all critical of the PCC. But I know that the joint committee on privacy and injunctions was highly critical in a number of respects of the ...

Is your question addressing only post publication regulation?

Well, you could put that the other way as well, couldn't you, and say if you have got a mandatory system, you can't have people setting up a voluntary scheme in parallel. I mean, I think they are mutually exclusive, unless I'm missing the point.

I think it wouldn't co-exist at all, would it, because of the compulsory nature of what the statutory scheme would be. I mean, that can't co-exist with a voluntary scheme. If everybody has to go to ER, or whichever other organisation it may be, how can that coexist ...

It might turn out that it did need statutory backing.

Again, I think Lord Hunt said that in terms.

Well, I think we're clearly of the view that it's got to be a mandatory system, it's going to be compulsory, and the only way you can really compel is by a statute.

We say no. We are unequivocal about that. I think I'm right in ...

I didn't know that. But that's encouraging.

That is a potential one. I don't think it's likely to happen. I just don't see that -- there is a sort of floodgates point taken sometimes, but I don't see where the flood is going to come from. There was a limited number of -- even arguable ...

Yes. I think it's easier with free speech in a way than it is with -- because it's such a clear cut thing. You don't interfere pre-publication with what is going to be published. You might occasionally if there's an interlocutory injunction. But interlocutory injunctions don't ...

What can be done about it?

Yes. I think my Lord has already suggested that there is the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, which expressly in terms safeguards the independence of the judiciary. Maybe that's necessary, and maybe it would be a good thing to do in the present case as well. I don't know.