Thank you, my Lord.

It could do. I mean, I can't -- I can't say that that couldn't happen. I mean, I think the BSkyB thing was quite interesting in this respect, in which the press split on the issue.

It may not work, although considering how editors watch each other like hawks, if there appears to be some kind of advantage accruing to one newspaper group rather than to another, then you might it find some kind of balancing position taken by -- how can I put it? -- the disfavoured ...

I know, but I can't think of anything else which is more to your point.

You see -- yeah, I see exactly what you're saying, my Lord. The first thing to say is that politicians should be grown-ups. They know with whom they are supping and they know the boundaries of what is permissible and what is not permissible. So they have to make a ...

Yes, it did, but the difference between my ex curial statement and my ex cathedra statement was two years, and two years is a long time in the life of the PCC.

With difficulty. You referred earlier on, Mr Jay, to -- you suggested I was rash, so early in my career as chairman, making a number of ex cathedra statements, having had very little experience in the job, and I suspect that applies to those remarks in conveying the optimism that I ...

With difficulty.

I do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I don't think so. This thing had been rattling around Whitehall for god knows how long, a draft White Paper. I inherited it from my predecessor, Gus O'Donnell, and it had manifold problems. Problems of drafting, of concept, of defining public interest -- all kinds of problems in ...

Yeah. I mean, it is an accurate reflection of my memory, which I think on this is pretty accurate. Do you wish me to repeat this -- what I said in the witness statement?

Mm.

No.

Quite.

I think, to be fair, I wasn't expecting that question, but you've lobbed it at me.

I -- I think what I have to say to you, particularly as I'm on oath, is I need notice of this question. But I can remember people coming in.

Of a private meeting between a Prime Minister and a proprietor, for example? Is that --

And most of these occasions were considered as party occasions to be organised by the party, rather than by the civil servant government spokesman. It is part of the rich tapestry of political life. It happens. It happens to this day. It's happening now, maybe, over lunch. No, it ...

Well, I'm drilling. Right now I'm drilling!

I'm just trying to remember how many of these meals I was present at. I mean, although I was the press secretary, I was not omnipresent, not least because I was a civil servant and not an employee of central office. Now, we were in the curious situation of ...

Private contacts? Well, over meals, for example. That happened.

Yes, of course it did, because private contacts between the politicians and the press are as old as sin itself.

Of course not.

Oh yes, of course they do. I mean, that's part of the partisan parcel, isn't it? If you are a partisan newspaper and you have a line to peddle, you'll go for policies, you'll go for people.

No, not especially. There was an attempt to get alongside Rupert Murdoch, but if my memory serves, it failed utterly, because I think Rupert Murdoch considered John Major to be a loser, and by all accounts, Rupert Murdoch was not interested in losers.

I do recall an occasion when they ...

Well, by the time I turned up in Downing Street in early 1994, the government of John Major was in some trouble, and in the two years that I was there, that trouble got worse. Polls got worse, new Labour leader made things worse, and so the number of editors ...

So I was pretty skeptical about the power of newspapers.

Well, which way into that? Enormous attention was paid to editors of national newspapers -- this extended, to a degree, to regional editors, but not much -- and so a considerable effort went into courting them, bringing them around for privileged one-or-one briefings, for example. This was in the early 1990s. I ...

Yes. The practice was nearly always to have a civil servant doing the job in Downing Street. Not invariably.

Absolutely. So I was less frank to him than I have been to you.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes.

I think I might -- sorry, I don't want to sound arrogant. Maybe I was scratching my head trying to think about failures and regrets. But I mean, it's a fair interview, this. It's a good interview in which he does a decent job and I'm not ...

Well, what is your question? Is your question: what are my failures and what are my regrets?

Oh, very bottom? I'm sorry, I'm on the wrong page. I do apologise. I was looking at the first page. Oh, yes. About his failures and his regrets?

Where is in? Which paragraph?

Yeah, yeah.

No, that sounds plausible, but actually it's heretical. Let me put it like this: the threat of an adjudication doesn't drag the issue out. As I said, we turn these -- I used to turn these round, on average, within a month. The pressure is on the editor, because ...

Well, there was a -- there is a philosophical difference between Roy Greenslade and myself on this. If you go back to the original Calcutt insight into the then new PCC, the notion of mediation was a the centre of his recommendations. Now, if you can bring a complaint to a ...

This was an old debate between me and Roy Greenslade about adjudications and what I meant by that was actually, if you could say, instead of: "We've done 39 adjudications in a year, or 49 or 51" -- which doesn't sound very much, given the large number of people ...

Of course.

Yes, and I would rest on those words even now.

Well, I think in an interview with Roy Greenslade, to have said, after six years, in answer to his question, "A hell of a lot" would have been perverse. So I said, "Not a lot", but this does not contradict what I have said in my witness statement, that things ...

Absolutely.

Yes.

Yes.