Thank you.

No, I appreciate the courtesies you've extended me, and the thoroughness of the investigation which you are carrying out.

Just one. I did neglect to say that one of the points where we disagreed with Mr Murdoch was that I believed the Times should be open to different opinions, and he thought it should not be. For instance, I -- with the articles I published -- I published one by Mr ...

Completely right. Take the BBC, for instance. They have a charter and they have guidelines and stuff. So I agree. No government, no control of content, but we're talking about a Press Commission or a press body which is examining bad conduct or investigating the possibility of bad conduct ...

Well ... [break in transmission] said, what is the alternative? Keep the government out of it. Let's have a body of respectable and good people and a superstructure behind them, as you say, to set it up, with clear parameters written about what should concern them, what the principles are ...

(Nods head).

(Nods head).

Yes. In my view, it's very dangerous to bring a statute to bear on these matters, because I've explained in my life as an editor I had great trouble with statutes and also with common law which had been congealed from very different cases, usually to protect property ...

Mr Dacre deserves a compliment from me for the bravery he exhibited in challenging the Lawrence killing. I thought that was a superb piece of journalism.

On the improvement of the British press, if you're measuring it by quantity, the amount of newsprint now consumed, you can say there ...

Yes.

In my view, my Lord, that is actually the heart of the matter of this Inquiry, because if the relationship between the politicians and the press, which in this particular case the politicians are scared of the press, scared of having some kind of penalty, wouldn't do what they ...

This sounds me like an editorial argument. Show me your sources and I'll show you mine.

Anyway, I thought Calcutt on privacy was extremely good, as I thought the 1947 Royal Commission was good. And the reason my information is -- and we may have a superior witness in court ...

Oh, okay. Perhaps the last-chance saloon was a journalistic colourful interpretation of what Calcutt was saying, but he did say this was the last time Calcutt did say --

Yes, indeed. I was -- I gave evidence in 1947 when I said similar things to the Royal Commission, and then I was no longer editing when the Calcutt report came out, but I thought that the Calcutt report was pretty clear and should have been followed, and he did say ...

Yes. Yes, I still believe those principles, and I would put them in rather gold plate.

Yes.

"The reporter should not do anything ..."

Very hard to read this.

Yes.

Right, okay. I have the article now.

Yes, I do. What tab is that?

Well, I did invoke the national directors when I was being harassed in the fall of 1981, I was in touch with Lord Robens and Lord Roll and Denis Hamilton and also with Mr Edward Pickering. Sir Edward Pickering was the Murdoch appointee to the board, and so I asked ...

The one I took out, the one I gave you. There it is, right. I'm set.

Yes.

Okay, okay.

I've just found the email that he sent me.

If I could --

I will do, I will do.

Mr Emery told me that, and after we heard Mr Murdoch say he couldn't remember ever saying that to Mr Emery, Mr Emery sent me an email in New York in which he -- and I think he also sent it to the Commission -- Inquiry, in which he said -- he ...

Yes, I can.

Yes, I can hear you.

Okay.

I have no picture of you at all, no. We'll see if we can get somebody in.

Okay. So it's my loss, not --

But I can talk. As long as you can see me.

You vanished as a picture. I can hear you. You're speaking from outer space now.

Yes.

Yes, I suppose you could say that I was kind of so furious about all the five promises being broken. It was objectively true they were being broken, and it's objectively true that I was angry about this, and it's objectively true that if he'd observed those ...

Yes.

A fair summary would -- I think the sequence of events was as follows. It became clear, particularly if I can mention the -- when political pressure was brought on me to support the government, even though my own editorial board thought it was wrong. And of course therefore I continued with ...

Sorry, I didn't answer. I was trying to amplify that first six months. You're quite right, something changed. It must have changed at the same time for Denis Hamilton, who was then being forced out, but what changed I think, Mr Jay, and this could be checked, in ...

Yes, that's correct. That's a fair summary. In the first six months, Mr Murdoch was just the kind of owner one would like: involved, not bullying. He came into a few things -- for instance, when he suggested I attack the Royal Family in the first budget because they ...

Okay.

Indeed, but the chapter leads to a denouement which you're presiding over at the moment. The excessive concentration of power which the Royal Commission on the press in 1947 under McGregor said was a real threat to British democracy, that was what was initiated in the seminal acts of ...

My Lord, if I might make this comment on that? What happened in 1981 is entirely relevant today because it's a manifestation of the same culture of too close a connection between a powerful media group and politicians.

My Lord, if I might say so, the seminal event was 30 years ago. All flowed from the excessive concentration of power in a single media corporation. That was -- sorry?

Yes, just a minute. (Pause).

I was told by someone I know that Mrs Thatcher had determined it must go to Mr Murdoch because she valued his support. In this belief, I was supportive of Mr Hugh Stephenson at the Times, who had it from a friend in the Cabinet ...

It's a sound observation. In fact, in my very first conversations with Denis Hamilton when he indicated that he had been offered the chairmanship and was willing to change his long-held views of Mr Murdoch, he said, "Of course, there's the Monopolies Commission", but that was the last ...

I do, yes.

Pleased? Horrified! Horrified!

We knew that he couldn't have given it a minute's scrutiny. I put the figures in my book. He clearly hadn't because he missed out £400 million of revenue. Not at all pleased! Our whole hope of the management buyout committee, of Donald Cruickshank ...

No, I was going to say I'm not particularly -- I wasn't particularly fond of Mr Wyatt, I thought he was a bullying character, but I did find his diaries, his journals a remarkably accurate portrait of the feelings in Britain at the time, and having been at his ...

Well, if you read all the Woodrow Wyatt diaries, yes, he's very close to her. Intimately close to her. It may be a touch of exaggeration, him glorifying his own role, but not to that extent. And many things like the Westland deal and so on and so on ...