:00:08. > :00:15.Campbell was among those giving evidence. From me, good night.
:00:15. > :00:23.I do not think that on policy, anything was traded. The cost of on
:00:23. > :00:33.personalities, that sort of thing. There was something going on on
:00:33. > :00:33.
:00:33. > :00:38.The first four-week on the press and politicians, it was something
:00:38. > :00:46.we have not heard too often. The case for the defence of News
:00:46. > :00:52.International. On a day 70, there was a fightback by the firm. It was
:00:52. > :00:58.against that barrister, Robert Jay. He suggested that Rupert Murdoch
:00:58. > :01:04.might be suffering from selected Amasia. It is quite well as Mr
:01:04. > :01:09.Robert Jay did last week. He muddy the boundaries that there was no
:01:09. > :01:15.difference between a newspaper and a politician it agrees with, and a
:01:15. > :01:20.cropped deal between the two. As for that allegation about Robert --
:01:20. > :01:26.Murdoch's memory in the 80s. If he says, I cannot remember anything
:01:26. > :01:30.about it, it is because 31 years later, he simply cannot. Your
:01:30. > :01:35.suggestion that he might be lying is not an argument was to be based
:01:35. > :01:45.on evidence. It is a conviction determined not to face the evidence.
:01:45. > :01:46.
:01:46. > :01:56.And then, God. Or Gus O'Donnell. He was the former Cabinet Secretary.
:01:56. > :01:58.
:01:58. > :02:04.He said a crucial role. He was asked why Andrew Coulson do not
:02:04. > :02:09.have top-level security clearance. In the light of the terrorist
:02:09. > :02:14.incident, the airline bomb plot, it made more sense for him to be
:02:14. > :02:17.deviated before we could give him regular access to these papers. It
:02:17. > :02:23.was not an issue because we thought he would not be interested in that
:02:23. > :02:29.aspect. Lord Justice Leveson asked for some predecessors and their
:02:29. > :02:35.levels of clearance. Lord O'Donnell did not deny there was an issue
:02:35. > :02:44.with the News Corp stock that he held on to without telling anyone
:02:44. > :02:54.else. There was a form that should have been signed. Is this all
:02:54. > :02:59.
:02:59. > :03:05.shareholding? Conflicts, basically. In the light of what we have heard,
:03:05. > :03:12.what such a sign made by it Mr call some? Are a form was signed but it
:03:12. > :03:18.did not disclose shareholding. After all that, he was asked for
:03:18. > :03:28.his views on a Jeremy Hunt, his special adviser has resigned over
:03:28. > :03:31.
:03:31. > :03:37.the handling of a decision-making In terms of authorisation,
:03:37. > :03:41.ministers should authorise their special advisers as to what they do.
:03:41. > :03:51.I expected the minister to be clear about what he thought his special
:03:51. > :03:51.
:03:51. > :03:57.adviser should be doing. A careful adviser -- a careful answer. The
:03:57. > :04:02.next witness was a political appointee, Tony Blair's appointee,
:04:02. > :04:07.Alastair Campbell. He had been vetted at the top level. I remember
:04:07. > :04:15.being told early on that I would have to go through a process.
:04:15. > :04:21.Security clearance looks a distant concern. Tony Blair was hoping to
:04:21. > :04:27.get hostile papers on side. strategy was to counter the
:04:27. > :04:32.influence I had seen as a journalist who supported the Labour
:04:32. > :04:37.Party, and to try to ensure that we had a more level playing field
:04:37. > :04:42.where we could communicate to the public what we were trying to do. I
:04:42. > :04:47.have written about this in my witness statement where there was
:04:47. > :04:53.an aspect of Europe, and we talked about whether to do it and we did
:04:53. > :05:01.not change policy but we knew what they wanted, that requires. I felt
:05:02. > :05:08.uneasy at times. But we should not -- Rupert Murdoch is an important
:05:08. > :05:15.player in the landscape. There was no mystery about Rupert Murdoch's
:05:16. > :05:20.importance on New Labour efforts. The quick -- the question is, did
:05:20. > :05:30.he demand or get anything in return for his newspaper's support of Tony
:05:30. > :05:33.
:05:33. > :05:43.Blair? Nothing was traded between Rupert Murdoch or any other owner.
:05:43. > :05:53.They work telephone conversations between the two people. It was a
:05:53. > :06:01.
:06:01. > :06:05.I would not want to put too much significance... When he was
:06:05. > :06:08.speaking to presidents and prime ministers around the world, I would
:06:08. > :06:14.not overstate the significance of a couple of phone calls with Rupert
:06:14. > :06:19.Murdoch. Me deer moguls have prime ministerial intention -- attention
:06:19. > :06:29.that other business people do not. Alastair Campbell admitted there
:06:29. > :06:37.
:06:37. > :06:41.was an issue there. There was a They had good access to government.
:06:41. > :06:51.The fact that businesses believe media, that does not give them
:06:51. > :06:52.
:06:52. > :07:00.What did his familiarity with the press breed in Campbell? Not the
:07:00. > :07:09.highest of opinion. They expect openness and transparency from our
:07:09. > :07:14.natural lives, apart from themselves. Even at the very top of
:07:14. > :07:20.the political tree, no-one is immune to a fascination with middle.
:07:20. > :07:24.I remember being struck once with George Bush. He asked me what
:07:24. > :07:34.Rupert Murdoch was light because he had never met him. I found it
:07:34. > :07:34.
:07:34. > :07:44.surprising. He was criticised by people at the height of his power.
:07:44. > :07:46.
:07:47. > :07:53.There were times he was to I ask you to bear in mind, the
:07:53. > :08:03.sheer volume of issues we were expected to deal with, 24/7 media
:08:03. > :08:10.means just that. You are dealing with these 24/7. You are trying to
:08:10. > :08:14.be charged with overall strategy. On day 71, former News -- Rebekah
:08:14. > :08:18.Brooks and her husband and four others were charged with conspiracy
:08:18. > :08:25.to pervert the course of justice. Both denied wrongdoing. She said
:08:25. > :08:29.she was baffled by the decision. Events have not gone unnoticed.
:08:29. > :08:35.Labour asked Jeremy Hunt to remain accountable to Parliament, despite
:08:35. > :08:39.his appearance before Lord Justice Leveson. One Conservative MP said
:08:39. > :08:48.that they should get all the material first. The judge had a
:08:48. > :08:52.warning. If the evidence had been forced into the public domain, so
:08:52. > :08:56.that mines are made up and conclusions are reached, Mike
:08:56. > :08:59.reaction would be that I would consider it unfair to subject the
:09:00. > :09:09.witnesses for further question before the inquiry. That would
:09:10. > :09:11.
:09:11. > :09:16.require them but only to answer to the inquiry, -- is parliament
:09:16. > :09:26.published material on this affair, Lord Justice Leveson would not ask
:09:26. > :09:36.questions about it at all. But he did say that he heard from Jeremy
:09:36. > :09:38.
:09:38. > :09:44.That will be explored under oath. A political editor of Sky News said
:09:44. > :09:54.that swore honesty had not been the hallmark of every government.
:09:54. > :10:01.
:10:01. > :10:07.obligation to tell the truth at all One famous episode, a Perth the
:10:07. > :10:17.celebration for Rebekah Brooks, hosted by Sarah Brown, it let him
:10:17. > :10:24.
:10:24. > :10:28.baffled. You can be blamed with The famous Wendi Deng pyjama party.
:10:28. > :10:37.I remember at the Cabinet telling me about that at the time. And I
:10:37. > :10:41.just thought, this is completely bonkers. That this sort of intimacy
:10:41. > :10:45.is being indulged him between the Prime Minister add the Prime
:10:45. > :10:51.Minister's wife and the senior proprietor of's wife. Assault at
:10:51. > :10:57.the time, it will end in tears. News is part of BSkyB which is part
:10:57. > :11:04.of News International. There were three discussions with Rupert
:11:04. > :11:14.Murdoch. Even in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, politicians
:11:14. > :11:20.
:11:20. > :11:28.are keen to turn up at Rupert Last month, I was at the party and
:11:29. > :11:34.all sorts of people were turning up. I see nothing wrong with holding a
:11:34. > :11:39.party or inviting people to it. I was a little surprised that they
:11:39. > :11:48.all tell the need to turn up. People looking inward to draw their
:11:48. > :11:53.own conclusions. A day 72, a ball like links -- more links like those
:11:53. > :12:00.from a man who was 13 years a Labour Secretary and he knew how
:12:00. > :12:06.close MPs and members of the press could become. He suggested Rupert
:12:06. > :12:12.Murdoch had toyed with politicians. The perception I had was that he
:12:12. > :12:17.enjoyed the fact he had been willing to play with political
:12:17. > :12:22.leaders in a way that senior executives of the Other Papers had
:12:22. > :12:26.not because their loyalty is ultimately predictable. In the days
:12:26. > :12:34.before Blair, Jack Straw have felt the smack of the Murdoch titles
:12:34. > :12:44.disapproval himself up. I dug out one example of this from my files.
:12:44. > :12:46.
:12:46. > :12:54.The main story in The Sun in April in 1992 days before the election. I
:12:54. > :13:04.will put this in his evidence. -- in as evidence. It says shadow
:13:04. > :13:04.
:13:04. > :13:08.Education Minister lectures us while living in luxury. This is
:13:08. > :13:13.minor but it had a consequence. Every burglar in Oxfordshire knew
:13:13. > :13:18.that to be one day of the year we would not be in our house was on
:13:18. > :13:27.election night. We got burgled and a lot of property was stolen.
:13:27. > :13:32.the years passed, Jack Straw grew closer to one of their editors. He
:13:32. > :13:42.explained this in his witness statement. He said it during
:13:42. > :13:43.
:13:43. > :13:48.appeared as Justice Secretary would often travel to London. After a
:13:48. > :13:58.while you made arrangements to meet up with an editor and sit together
:13:58. > :14:00.
:14:00. > :14:08.for the journey. In general terms, where the discussions which you had
:14:08. > :14:13.with her on the train other than social or private? There were
:14:13. > :14:19.private in the sense that neither of us broke them up on a blog.
:14:19. > :14:25.Their word social. They were political. We were told about well
:14:25. > :14:30.as in the papers. We would gossip about personalities, that sort of
:14:30. > :14:35.thing. Political reporters don't need to rely on listening in to
:14:35. > :14:39.commuters conversations. The contents of speech is a brave to
:14:39. > :14:46.journalists long before they were delivered. He said it was absurd.
:14:46. > :14:53.It becomes a trip on the public. You get the Today programme
:14:53. > :14:56.desperate for daily sight of the speech said that their man is able
:14:56. > :15:02.to say confidentially what he had learned about what would happen
:15:02. > :15:11.later in the day. He has been left with a pretty jaded view of the
:15:11. > :15:20.media. I'm constantly amazed that newspapers are complaining about
:15:20. > :15:26.low turnouts at elections. And not understanding that they have
:15:26. > :15:33.contributed to a significant degree to a culture in which politics is
:15:33. > :15:41.seen as boring and completely self- serving and is not for smart people
:15:41. > :15:49.to get involved in. I have never taken part in a conspiracy. I have
:15:50. > :15:57.never seen any of my colleagues don't serve. -- doing so. It took
:15:57. > :16:01.part in plenty of cock-ups. That is life. John Major said the only
:16:01. > :16:11.people who have never made a mistake are people who have never
:16:11. > :16:12.
:16:12. > :16:18.made a decision. I say, they are called journalists. One report made
:16:18. > :16:23.imperious. He knew he was responsible for the report on the
:16:23. > :16:28.debt of Stephen Lawrence. It came from someone in Number Ten. There
:16:28. > :16:32.was a leak inquiry which took some time but we were not able to take
:16:32. > :16:37.disciplinary action. We knew who they were and they subsequently
:16:37. > :16:45.left. There was criticism for the way other ministers had handled
:16:45. > :16:52.reporters. I saw that gradually, some newspapers or journalists were
:16:52. > :17:02.being favoured by Downing Street for some particular ministers. They
:17:02. > :17:03.
:17:03. > :17:12.were involved in groups. It was very incestuous and unhealthy. They
:17:12. > :17:16.did not like it. I tried to get on doing things in a different way.
:17:16. > :17:23.Alastair Darling did too. I think there was some connection with the
:17:23. > :17:30.approach we adopted and the fact that we survived the government
:17:30. > :17:35.while others did not. Under a 73, the suggestion that relationships
:17:35. > :17:43.like those left to journalists and ministers and strong. There was an
:17:43. > :17:53.amateur in Fleet Street surrounding the troubling evidence around phone
:17:53. > :17:53.
:17:53. > :18:00.hacking. I feel the scandal was a systematic negligence by the press
:18:00. > :18:04.over a huge period of time. I felt this was a perversion of our
:18:04. > :18:14.democracy because it was starting to become a private conversation
:18:14. > :18:14.
:18:15. > :18:20.between elite groups. Rather than a proper popular engagement. He
:18:20. > :18:24.traced those problems back to New Labour's time in power. People who
:18:24. > :18:29.tried to report objectively and fairly were frozen out, bullied and
:18:29. > :18:34.not given access to information. a journalist faced a charge, it
:18:34. > :18:40.fell to the judge to make the case for journalism. Almost every
:18:40. > :18:47.reporter in the land is decent. I would not say there are some
:18:47. > :18:53.exceptions but I would make use of the opportunity to say that the
:18:53. > :18:57.majority of journalism is people doing their job honourably,
:18:57. > :19:02.honestly with dedication, fearlessly and in the public
:19:03. > :19:09.interest. Perhaps the next witness would have agreed. The long-
:19:09. > :19:13.standing editor of the Sunday Times and briefly the editor of the Times
:19:13. > :19:23.itself up. He accused Rupert Murdoch of misleading, -- comments
:19:23. > :19:27.about a secret meeting with Margaret Thatcher. It was not even
:19:27. > :19:33.known to the Cabinet that Mrs Thatcher had a secret meeting with
:19:33. > :19:42.Mr Murdoch and he kept it secret to the point of telling the officials
:19:42. > :19:49.-- official historian of the time that no such meetings took place.
:19:49. > :19:53.This had to be accepted, although it was a falsehood. In the end
:19:53. > :19:57.there was no monopolies referral. Rupert Murdoch told the inquiry
:19:57. > :20:01.that once he had taken control of the papers, Evans said, tell me
:20:01. > :20:07.what you want me to say. Murdoch had demanded nothing more than
:20:07. > :20:12.consistency. He painted a very different picture of their
:20:12. > :20:22.relationship. That night I took him to my home to meet my wife and had
:20:22. > :20:26.
:20:26. > :20:36.dinner. By the time we reached dinner, it was almost fisticuffs.
:20:36. > :20:37.
:20:37. > :20:43.He had the paper open with his biro pen cowed into the business news.
:20:43. > :20:53.Sport! Didn't dare tell you, Sport! Werribee four pages of sport! I
:20:53. > :20:55.
:20:55. > :20:58.said, just a second. In the wake of those rows, head Ben after furious.
:20:58. > :21:05.He referred to him as evil incarnate, the personification of
:21:05. > :21:10.that. He had his heart removed long ago as well as all his moral
:21:10. > :21:13.faculties and human sensibility. Rupert Murdoch's barrister started
:21:13. > :21:20.the week saying that he had been subjected to allegations that were