Episode 10 The Phone Hacking Inquiry

came to the conclusion that a fresh start was needed with a new body

It was a major mistake... Yellow beef, I wanted red meat. -- I

wanted beef. We had to resort to calling the police to arrange for

this journalists to leave. -- this journalist. A former News of the

World reporter jailed for phone hacking. Alongside a private

detective. An editor resigning. That was how the truth began to

emerge. A newspaper scandal doesn't get much bigger. So what was the

Press Complaints Commission, the newspaper watchdog, doing about it

at the time? The key question on day 33 of the inquiry. There was a

report by the PCC after the convictions of Clive Goodman and

Glenn Mulcaire, but that didn't mean, according to its director at

the time, that there had been an investigation. Instead they ran

what they called an exercise. Was it in any sense an exercise in

seeking to ascertain what had happened at the News of the World?

We weren't going over the facts of the Goodman/Mulcare case which had

been exposed by the court. There were questions about that situation

and how it had arisen in terms of culture and so on. If the PCC

wouldn't go over facts that left the jailing of the reporter and the

resignation of an editor, what sort of body was it? Is this the truth?

Is the error that everybody has made, in calling the PCC a self-

regulating body, it has believed it is a regulator when in fact it

isn't. Yes. When in 2009 the Guardian revealed the news of the

world had made payouts to victims of phone hacking, including Gordon

Taylor, the PCC looked back at that original exercise. The commission

decided that there was no evidence that any body other than that

reporter and detective who went to jail had been responsible for

mobile phone hacking. And they were pretty dismissive of the Guardian's

story as well saying it did not quite live up to its dramatic

billing. The PCC view on that report has changed. It was a major

mistake and a hostage of fortune. But the board of the commission, so

far as I can certainly attest, these were people approaching this

matter in good faith to use it. BPCC later withdrew its 2009

Berdych -- the PCC. The current director of the commission accepted

the system did not work as it should -- the verdict. The key

question that has come out, not only the precise nature of the PCC,

but they needed a proper mechanism for stopping it happening in the

first place. On day 40 for a more defined tone from the man who was

chairman of the PCC when the phone hacking broke, who argued the

current system works -- on day 44. Today the press is quite closely

hemmed in by the statute and the code of practice. It is a situation

which is as good as it's going to get. This is a witness who did not

accept BPCC had failed to deal with hacking. -- of the PCC. The idea

that we should work on the assumption that the police inquiry

was inadequate and we needed to add to the efforts that they had made

by sending some kind of quasi police investigative force into the

News of the world, I have to say it is entirely fanciful.

commission's initial report into hacking was monumental, he said. So

why didn't they interview Andy Coulson? The News of the World

editor during the hacking and press secretary to David Cameron after he

resigned, rather than just his successor, Colin Myler. At the time

the decision not to interview Andy Coulson, by that time he was no

longer editor of the News of the World and had no powers over him at

all, was exactly the right one to take. Although it has made things

difficult for me. It seems to me whole the improbable that at that

time he would have told us more than Colin Myler. And he insisted

he had been independent. I think when you mention the word collusion

even to dismiss it, with a kind of whiff of flat. Here -- lap dog here.

He knows I had my conflicts with editors on all kinds of things. If

you think I was sitting in my pocket not daring to do things that

they dislike, think again. Press Complaints Commission had not

been inept when this man, who was then the information commissioner,

warns that journalists might be prosecuted for breaking data

protection laws but he would not give any details. I was saying

please give me the evidence. He was the only person who could supply it.

How could you possibly deduce from that that I wasn't interested? I

really wanted to know. Otherwise I wouldn't have gone, "Do you think I

would have spent good money on taking him out to lunch at that

restaurant in Wellington Street just to hear him burbling away?"

unwanted beef, I wanted red meat and he didn't give it to me -- I

wanted beef. They struck this pair as rather comic as well. It is like

interpreting the Rosetta Stone, it is impossible. Not quite like that

because it is not in three languages. If you look at the

second document in to have 10 -- tab 10. It sounded like there

wasn't that much time for levity in the PCC today according to one

current member of the commission, a former chairman of the BBC and ITV,

who said the complaints commission hardly have the funds it needed to

do its job. It has been start of They are getting calls from night

editors at 11pm across the weekend, it is extraordinary what they do,

they are unpaid, overworked, overstretched and the newspapers do

not recognise the work that they do and the budget is ridiculous.

current chairman of the PCC may have been expected to announce

another El-abd group defence, lots of tales of how things went wrong

in the past -- elaborate defence. Instead he set out the case of the

abolition of his own organisation in its current form. I have come to

the conclusion that we do urgently need a fresh start and a totally

new body with substantially increased powers to audit and

enforce compliance with the code, to require access to documents, to

summon witnesses where necessary and also to impose fines, all

backed by commercial contract. newspaper industry was backing the

idea, including Richard Desmond who publishes the start and the Express

newspapers, and to pull out of the PCC -- the Start. How are we going

to get people to join up? By asking them -- the. -- the Star newspaper.

Everyone who I have asked have agreed so far. While the press are

willing to embrace change, they must fight off one thing that will

be regulated by a new law for all stop there are very strong views in

Parliament that there must be stronger if it's on the power of

the press. -- strong limits. This would open a Pandora's box. It

would be for many of my colleagues in Parliament a wonderful moment if

they were given the opportunity to debate a Bill regularly to the

press. I just do not know what would emerge the other side, but we

are determined that what would emerge the other side would be 2005

-- in the 2005 Act would be independent judiciary. You think

that Parliament might seek to use any form of legislation, how

whether it was cast, as a way of controlling the press. Yes. They

have told me so. Many of them. In both houses. On day 35 another

voice from inside the world of press regulation. A chair of the

body that both finances and chooses the chair of the PCC itself

insisted that the old system had its merits. I think that in the

areas that are reference there, such as harassment, the treatment

of children and hospital patients, has improved in standards over the

years. But he accepted a new regulator should be able to levy

fines, something he once opposed. Something we have seen laid bare

for the first time is the very real lack of powers that exist within

the self-regulatory system to conduct regulations. It probably

took a scandal like that to show us that we needed a new body which

could enforce the terms of the code. So it is that which has led me to a

change of opinion. Although Lord Black, a Conservative peer himself,

did not accept the suggestion that too many Tories are on the

Commission and the body he led. am not asking this question

disparagingly, it is just an observation, we see a preponderance

of Conservative Peers wherever we look both in the PCC and also in

the press corps at the moment. That doesn't necessarily create for

public confidence in an independent system. Would you accept that

observation? No. I would point out the joint chairman of the

commission was a Liberal Democrat peer. This is not a political

appointment. All this talk of great change begged a question, though.

It's the press push on with her own regulatory reforms, where did that

leave Lord Justice Leveson -- if the press pushed on with their own.

I made a comment contrary to the press reports overnight, I don't

for a moment think that I can just sit back and consider myself

redundant. I am going to press on with the inquiry that I am

conducting. That is not to say that you shouldn't equally press on.

Things are rather different for Ofcom came to the inquiry to

explain that while editors make the decisions... We have people who are

engaged a very actively in the industry. That did not mean the

broadcaster has always got things right. Of confined �150,000 --

Ofcom find the BBC �158,000 for the messages Russell Brand and Jonathan

Ross left on someone's phone. had a prodigiously egregious case...

The BBC themselves confirmed relatively quickly there was

substantial editorial failure. There was editorial misjudgement.

There were procedural compliance issues as well. In addition to the

fact the BBC Trust said, this was a truly unacceptable breach of

privacy. The complaints were not all serious. A view a court last to

complain that someone set fire to joey... -- called us. Some cases

are quite easy to roll out. Press regulators do not have to deal with

complaints about animation at the moment. When I was growing up, I

knew there was a printing press, I knew what that was and I knew what

it produced. There was a television transmitter, I knew what that was

and what that did. Today, when I am consuming media, I have no idea

where it comes from in digital form. I know what a newspaper is and I

knew what broadcasting is, but that is not where the future is. The

future is in digital form. In digital form you do not have these

fixed, separate physical digital media to which we can adopt

separate regular Tory structures. Security or lack of it was central

to the phone hacking saga. These mobile phone companies said 270 of

their customers for victims of phone hacking. Listening to mobile

phone calls was difficult but possible. It is reasonable to say

that it is possible to do that. Doing it live is incredibly

difficult. You have got to have a lot of technical skill to do it.

You would have to have significant financial resources behind you to

buy the equipment needed to do it. Of course, it is illegal. Illegal

activity by private investigators sparked this scandal. Groups

representing them told the inquiry about the problems they face.

2009 we had a very unfortunate experience where someone who had

been granted provisional membership was brought to our attention by

police that he was actually a convicted sex offender. His

activities was consistent with the job they were trying to do keeping

an eye on him on the sex offenders' register. He had lied on his

application form. He had not declared his conviction. We needed

to expel him. It then became apparent that the clarification

system was insufficient. Things just had to change. There are so

many associations... It needs regulation. The man who already

regulates the Security Industry said those involved in private

investigation should be licensed Darfur we have failed -- licensed...

We have failed to implement that so far. There are a number of issues,

concerning the availability of training, issues around the

availability of parliamentary time to get the order through. Then

there are more issues at an organisational level. Nothing I

have heard in the last three months persuades me that this is an

industry that requires regulation. Beyond the inquiry the Labour MP

Tom Watkins reveal the Metropolitan Police had written to him informing

him they were investigating the now hacking. The editor of the Times

and the editor of the Sun were called back to give evidence.

Plenty of people have been in touch with Lord Leveson asking whether

they can give their evidence. On the last afternoon he had

disturbing details of what can happen when the media becomes

crime. She was attacked in front of her son, stabbed in the neck and

paralysed in 2005. Once that news became public the media attention

was immense and immediate. We did now by newspapers, we did not

collect articles about her. People gave us articles. It was just shoot

the amount of coverage. It was incredibly intrusive. On the first

day the police had to ordered journalists out of the garden where

my daughter was living. They were upset about being asked to move.

They were camping in the garden of her house. A journalist who arrived

at my mother-in-law's house, she was terminally ill at the time. She

was 200 miles away. One journalist arrived and said he would not leave

until he received a photograph. We had to revert to calling the police

to arrange for the journalist to leave. The family got used to

telling reporters to go away. Four days after the attack, the News of

the World was able to reveal that Abigail was pregnant, something

those closest to her only just learned. Hospitals routinely do

pregnancy tests on women admitted to hospital. This was news to the

family. It was very intimate and very sensitive information. There

was no way that information should have been in the public domain.

time passed she grew stronger, but when she went on a pilgrimage press

photographers were waiting. On this occasion... They took photographs

of her children without their knowledge. This is not a picture

taken close-up with their knowledge. Years later, when she had another

child, she found her home was staked out. We took what evidence

there was in the car. We had a laptop. There was the Daily Mail on

the back seat and on the front seat. It was not the same car every day.

It was a journalist who had to be leave. It was a journalist,

uninvited, trying to take photographs. They followed them

when they went out. BPCC said it would need the journalist names