(2.00 pm)
MR NICK DAVIES (recalled)
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Mr Davies, you're still subject to
the oath or affirmation that you gave at the end of last
year.
A. Understood.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: The subsequent period revealing quite
a fair amount of further material.
19
A. Yes. Just yesterday alone was pretty extraordinary.
Questions by MS PATRY HOSKINS
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Before we start with Mr Davies,
I understand that there are a number of statements to be
read. If I could just make clear which statements they
are.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Yes.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Mr Brian Adams, Mr Magnus Boyd and
Ms Jane Winter's statements will be taken as read.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Thank you very much. I repeat what
I've said before. The fact that these individuals are
not being called does not minimise the importance of
their evidence, for all of which I am grateful, but it's
the inevitable consequence of the timeframe within which
this Inquiry must be conducted. Each of these
statements will, of course, be considered and taken into
account.
Right.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Mr Davies, I'm going to ask you about two
distinct topics this afternoon. First of all, I'm going
to ask you about your involvement and interaction with
the police over the years that you've been a journalist,
official contact and unofficial contact, and then very
briefly I'm going to touch on some of the sections of
your book, Flat Earth News, where you deal with police
20
corruption. The reason I say "very briefly" is,
of course, because you gave evidence about this on the
last occasion that you attended and I don't want to go
over anything that you've previously said.
A. Okay.
Q. Let me start with your interaction with the police over
the years. Before I ask you any specific questions
about that, I do want to ask you just a very few
questions about the context in which you've had contact
with the police. You've told us in your statement, in
your second statement and your first statement, that
you've been a journalist now for some 35 years; is that
correct?
A. Mm-hm.
Q. You tell us in your first statement it's essentially
since 1978 you've worked as a Fleet Street reporter.
You've specialised in crime and home affairs and more
recently in long-term investigations of issues, such as
social issues including poverty in the UK, failing
schools, the criminal justice system, falsehood and
distortion in the news mediA.
A. Mm-hm.
Q. And of course, you've become very well-known for your
investigations into phone hacking and so on.
Having set that in context now, I do want to ask you
21
first of all about authorised and official contact that
you have had over the years with the police.
A. Okay.
Q. Turn to the second page of your second statement.
A. All right.
Q. I will always be referring to your second statement,
unless I say otherwise.
A. Understood.
Q. You explain that although you're not a specialist crime
reporter, in the course of the 35 years we've just been
describing you've often dealt with the police in the UK
and occasionally abroad. You start off by saying:
"Normally, if I need a piece of information what
I would do is I would approach a UK force simply by
calling their press office to put a particular question
or to ask for them to arrange a meeting with
a particular officer."
Is that generally the first port of call when you
have a question about a particular subject?
A. Yeah, that's the equivalent of just simply going to the
front door of the house, because that's the easiest way
in. So you call the police, you speak to the press
office, or the alternative I mentioned in the statement
is that it sometimes arises as a side issue from a big
trial at a Crown Court, that as the trial progresses you
22
go and make contact with the senior investigating
officer, and almost invariably the SIO would run that
approach through the press office, and so you get this
kind of officially sanctioned contact.
Q. All right. You point out that it's not just you
contacting the police in this official way.
A. Mm-hm.
Q. Occasionally, you say, you've been approached by police
who knew that you had covered a particular story in some
depth and wanted some help from you on a particular
subject.
A. Yes, in fact, police contacting me could be one of two
forms. Occasionally an officer would get in touch out
of the blue and say, "Here is something you need to
know", and also it has happened as I described there,
that police get in touch and say, "You've been covering
this. Can you help us?" So I have the meeting and then
see how it goes.
Q. All right. This is page 2 -- sorry, the paragraphs
aren't numbered but I'm sure we can find our way
through. At page 2, under the small (b), you explain
that there are boundaries in relation to this official
contact. You explain that you would not expect to be
given any material which violated privacy, unless that
was clearly justified in the public interest, or
23
material which would impede an inquiry or jeopardise the
safety of an individual. Are those the boundaries that
you would see as being the appropriate boundaries in
respect of official contact between the press and the
police?
A. I would see those boundaries as being necessary and
appropriate for both official and unofficial contact
between me and serving police officers.
Q. We'll come back to "unofficial". Sticking with official
contact for the moment, you explain at the bottom of
that page that there might be a question initially of
whether or not an officer speaks on or off the record,
and you conclude that you don't see anything sinister
about having an off-the-record conversation with
a police officer in this way, and in fact more often
than not, if you're conducting an interview, for
example, an office may well say that they would rather
speak to you off the record. Have I fairly
summarised --
A. Yes. I would say -- well, in general terms, 90 per cent
of the work I do is off the record, with whatever
sources I'm dealing with, and certainly that includes
officially authorised briefings with police officers.
They feel more comfortable talking off the record in
various different ways.
24
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: What's the impact of that, by saying
"off the record"? What do you mean by "off the record"?
A. It's a good question, because there's confusion about
it. American journalists and a few British use that
expression to describe material which is being provided
on the condition that it isn't used at all, but I use it
in the way that most British reporters use it, which is
to say that the information is off the record if it's
been given to me for use but not to be attributed to the
source. Is that the current use that you've had in the
Inquiry?
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: So in other words "a police source
says" could be an off-the-record briefing?
A. Correct. If what they're saying is really sensitive,
they would make it clear that even that much of an
attribution would be a problem, and so I would take it
away as raw material and develop it, and if asked, would
deny having had the conversation with the officer. And
that's very common, even with the officially sanctioned
contact.
If all you're doing is to ring a press office and
ask a very specific question, probably they'll give you
something on the record. Quite often -- if you could
quantify it, maybe 30 per cent of the time -- they'll
say, "Here's the on-the-record answer. Just for your
25
ears privately, here's another little bit we can give
you, unattributably."
Where you actually have what we call a briefing,
you're sitting down with an officer, there's probably
a press officer in the room, then before you start
talking you sort out your terms of engagement and very
often -- sorry, the table is squeaking -- very often,
that will involve an agreement by all parties that this
is off the record, ie not attributable.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Why do you discuss this topic of
off-the-record briefings under the heading "official
contact"?
A. Because it's officially sanctioned. By which -- in
practical terms, the police service -- you mean that the
press office has agreed that it should happen. It just
makes everybody more comfortable. As I said in the
statement, it really isn't sinister. I think the
immediate fear that police officers have when they sit
down with a journalist is that they're going to get
misquoted, and if you can say, "This is unattributable,
ie you are not going to get quoted at all", then that
fear is removed. That I would say is the primary reason
why it happens. It really isn't sinister. It's
mainstream, normal, unsurprising, over and over again.
Q. Can I turn to the top of Page 3, please. You explain
26
that all of this, everything we've just been discussing,
would broadly apply across all police forces, but then
you describe that there is an important difference
between a big city force, which might have a press
office that works around the clock, and a smaller more
provincial force which has a more limited service. Can
you just explain that difference?
A. That was something I came across talking to provincial
reporters when I was researching that book, that some of
them complained that the press office of the local
police force was so understaffed that the routine was
that they would call the press office and get a recorded
message saying, "Here's the story we've selected for you
today", and they would just be expected to copy that
down and put it into the paper. They couldn't even
pursue it.
Close to that also is press officers posting stories
on websites, their own websites, for journalists to put
into the paper, and there's a big reporting problem with
that, because you're allowing the police force to make
all of the editorial decisions about what should be
reported and with what angle and language and quotes,
and I think that's not done for -- maybe I'm being
too -- I was going to say it's not being done for
malicious motives. It's about shortage of resources
27
cuts, not enough press officers, whereas a big city
force like the Met, I don't come across that. You can
get a human being on the end of the phone.
Q. You've told us a bit about the forms of office contact,
the contact through the press office, the contact where
a police officer will come and speak to you off the
record but nevertheless that's sanctioned and then you
go on to tell us the problems that you see with the
current system. This is page 3, so that you can remind
yourself.
A. Okay.
Q. You explain that this kind of authorised conduct can
also be problematic and you set out some reasons why
that might be. Is there anything that you particularly
want to add to --
A. Firstly, just to note the fact that it can also be very
good. So there's a whole chunk of stuff there where I'm
saying: clearly this works in everybody's interests.
The journalists get good stories, the public get
information, the police get credit for their work, they
can send signals of various kinds. There's lots of good
stuff goes on with these official and -- including the
off-the-record contacts.
The problem really isn't peculiar to police forces.
There is a general problem in the relationship between
28
reporters and press officers, which is that a good
press officer works in the interests of the organisation
or individual who's paying that press officer. That's
what they're there for. It isn't controversial or
wrong. That's what they're there for.
But the reporters' interest is different, and
therefore there will frequently be a conflict between
the two as to what they need, and so it can be -- the
officially sanctioned route can be deeply unsatisfactory
as a way of covering that organisation because the
official channel is designed to protect the reputation
of that organisation.
So in small ways, this is to do with -- if the
organisation has a choice of stories. Which stories
will we put out today? They are highly likely to choose
the stories that make them look good and not draw
attention to the story that makes them look bad. It's
as simple and natural and uncontroversial as that. But
if we're trying to cover the organisation and tell
people what's going on inside it, it cannot be enough to
rely on them to choose what we cover.
It can get a bit more subtle than that. If there's
information which they have to put out because they
think it's going to be found out or because there would
be a terrible row if they concealed it, there are all
29
sorts of games that can be played. You remember that
famous thing about: "This is a good day to bury bad
news." You choose a day when there's masses of news
going on, put out your press release -- it isn't going
to get attention. Or you put it out, as they did on a
famous occasion, during the hacking scandal. The
Metropolitan Police had a piece of information which
they put out at 7.30 on a Friday night. Any press
officer, any journalist knows you're not going to get
any coverage, and lo and behold they didn't.
So there are ways of manipulating the whole system,
and occasionally it is a fact that press officers
generally, confronted with a reporter who has an
embarrassing story, left with no wriggle room, they'll
lie. It doesn't happen terribly often, because it's not
in the press officer's long-term interest to lie because
it damages their credibility and therefore damages their
chance of influencing the reporter the next time they
speak, but certainly, occasionally and in principle,
press officers will, if they have to, lie.
Q. That leads me neatly onto a question that I've been
asked to put to you.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I'm not sure that I quite see the
link between the words "in principle" and "lie". I find
those quite difficult, actually, to put together.
30
A. Because it's not a principle? Okay --
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I understand what you mean, but it's
the concept.
A. Badly expressed. Okay, as a matter of general
experience, dealing with press officers from all sorts
of organisations, if you put them in a corner and no
option is left, then occasionally they will lie. They
hate it if you say that, but of course it happens.
The mainstream problem is about them making the
editorial judgments for you and occasionally
manipulating the release of information so that it
doesn't get coverage.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: I was simply saying that that leads me
neatly to a question I've been asked to put to you about
these incidents of lying or misleading by press
officers. You say in your statement that it's unusual
for a press officer to engage in knowing falsehood, and
you tell us why:
"However, under pressure, some press officers will
certainly lie to reporters in order to protect their
organisation."
Was that comment intended to be limited to
a particular police force or to the police in general?
A. No, there I'm talking in principle. I'm talking in
general terms about the way that press officers work
31
with journalists.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: You're not talking about police
people necessarily; it's anything?
A. Exactly. It could be a private corporation, a trade
union, a police service, whatever.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Have you ever reported these incidents of
lying or misleading to anyone, either at the MPS or
other organisations, if it was another organisation
involved?
A. No. I mean, on the whole, you wouldn't bother. What's
the point?
I can remember one occasion when I felt a senior
officer from a particular force was giving the press
office misleading information, so I asked the press
office if I could submit one final question to this
officer, and they said yes, so I said, "Could you ask
him how stupid he thinks we are?" So it's not an
official complaint, but it's: "Don't for a second
believe that we're fooled by what you're telling us."
Q. Before we leave official and authorised contact, can I
ask you please to turn to the top of page 4, where you
refer to a worrying development. You say this at (g):
"The underlying difficulty is that it has become
accepted policy -- in police forces and some other
organisations -- for the press office to be a monopoly
32
supplier of information. This has been reinforced by
internal regulation which has made it a disciplinary
offence to speak to the press without permission. In
a particularly worrying development, the last six months
has seen some attempt to make it a criminal offence for
an officer to speak to a reporter without permission."
Why to you see that as a "particularly worrying
development"?
A. First of all, I need to tell you what's been happening,
I think.
The way everybody's focus has been on the four
enquiries which Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers
is running -- and I think in total they've arrested
37/38 people -- outside the ambit of those operations,
nothing to do with the four Sue Akers is running, there
have been a couple of arrests of police officers in
cases where I know quite a lot about the circumstances,
and what has happened there is that the officers have
been arrested and bailed, they've been told they will be
charged with the common law offence of misconduct in
a public office, and to the best of my knowledge, being
quite familiar with these cases, there is no allegation
of any kind of bribe or inducement. There is no
allegation of the kind of harm that I'm talking about
behind boundaries where you've interfered with an
33
ongoing inquiry. What those officers are being told is:
"You will be charged and you can expect to get a prison
term of up to 18 months because you've spoken to
a reporter without permission."
Now, those two things are live and we don't know how
they'll turn out. No charges have been brought. It may
well be that the Crown Prosecution Service will say,
"Hang on a moment, this doesn't apply", but I think it's
worrying that -- it's in the aftermath of the phone
hacking thing -- that this has happened, that you have
a sort of backlash where -- a completely unjustifiable
and unnecessary reaction to the allegation of collusion
between News International and the Met, which is one
thing. Police forces -- it's not just the Met. I've
heard of several police forces going way overboard in
the other direction, and that is the most alarming
example you can see of this backlash.
What worries me is that the ultimate effect here may
be, if we're unlucky, to prevent -- we're going to come
onto this in a moment -- unauthorised contact between
journalists and police. If you lose that, you're
really, really in dangerous territory. We have to
defend unauthorised contact. Without unauthorised
contact, the Metropolitan Police would have been allowed
to carry on misleading press, public and Parliament
34
about the phone hacking scandal. It's an absolutely
classic example of the danger of the official flow of
information.
Q. I promise we'll come back to that.
A. All right.
Q. The question I've been asked to put to you on this is
that the current media policy on relations and standard
operating procedure makes clear that any officer of
inspector rank or above can speak to the media without
prior authorisation and that officers below inspector
rank can do so with the approval of a senior officer.
That doesn't seem so sit comfortably with what you've
just said about a culture of trying to discourage
officers from speaking to the press.
A. There are two points, I suppose. Over the longer term,
that may be the standard operating procedure. I've
never come across it in practice in the Metropolitan
Police or any other force.
When I was a trainee journalist in the provinces,
certainly then it was the routine that you could call
a police station and speak to any officer you wanted to.
But over the period that I've been working, that has
ceased be common practice. So I've never heard of that
standard operating procedure. Perhaps it's written down
somewhere. In practice, I have routinely been told by
35
ordinary officers: "I can't speak to you. Go to the
press bureau." That's just common practice.
So that's the first thing, and then the second thing
is there are these worrying signs that more recently, in
the aftermath of the hacking scandal, there has been
a real tightening up.
Q. Thank you.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Mm.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Sir, I don't want to interrupt
a question.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: No, I need to think a bit more before
I ask a question. Yes.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Before we move away completely from
official contact, authorised contact, you've told us
a bit about how it works, your criticisms of the current
system, the worrying developments that you've
identified. How would you see an effective authorised
system of contact working?
A. It's really difficult because of that basic conflict.
It would be very interesting for this Inquiry to get to
the bottom of what went wrong with the official flow of
information in this case. I've done something like 90
stories on the phone hacking, and I've had a lot of
trouble getting information out of New Scotland Yard.
This includes, for example -- I mean, really quite
36
simple things like asking them the basic statistics in
relation to the material that was seized from Goodman
and Mulcaire in August 2006. So I asked them way back:
"Can you tell me how many names are in there, how many
phone numbers, how many PIN codes, how many recorded
voicemail messages and how many transcribed messages?"
and I put that through the press bureau and they said
no. Bear in mind this is information that has since
been disclosed by Sue Akers at Select Committees and
I think here without the sky falling in, without any
terrible, bad side effects.
So the press bureau said, "No, you can't have it."
This is important. So I submitted a freedom of
information application and you know they have to be
answered within 20 working days? 20 working days went
by; no answer. I'm phoning, emailing. More days go by.
Eventually, after 40/45 days, they replied and they give
me the number of PIN codes. They said it's 91. But the
rest -- they said it's too expensive for us to collect
this information.
So number one, that was interesting because it said
that they still -- this was, I think, January 2010.
They still hadn't got to grips with all the material
that they had seized in August 2006.
So then I redrafted the application so that it was
37
more general and therefore they didn't have to gather so
much information to answer it, and eventually,
eventually -- I think it took a total of 14 months.
I might be wrong, but months and months and months.
They came back with some statistics on it, and what's
then worrying is that it looks to me as though the
statistics they gave me were wrong.
For example, I was asking them how many transcribed
voicemail messages are there in that material that's
been seized, and specifically, are there any other
transcripts other than those in the email for Neville,
which by then had been a public domain document? They
came back and said there were none. When I queried
that, they said there's one that possibly could be.
Well, for example, as I understand it, Simon Hughes
says in his statement that when Operation Weeting
finally showed him his Mulcaire material, that included
the transcripts of voicemail messages. Why didn't they
say that? Why all these delays? Why say no in the
first place? And then why all these delays? And then
why not tell me that there are transcripts of voicemail
messages? That's the official channel, reinforced by
the Freedom of Information Act.
I asked them similar questions about how many
victims. I said, "How many people did you inform back
38
there in 2006?"
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: When were you making these enquiries?
A. The exact date?
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: No, broadly when.
A. After we'd done the Gordon Taylor story in July 2009,
I'm pursuing it. I think actually it was probably early
2010 before I put in this question about how many people
they had informed.
So: "How many victims did you go and warn back there
in 2006?" And this is obviously important because in
the official version of events, they're saying, "We
warned all potential victims." Not just in John Yates'
original statement but repeatedly to Select Committees,
they say, "If there was the minutest chance of somebody
being a victim, we told them." I say: how many? And
they say, "You can't have that." The press bureau says,
"You can't have it." So I put in a freedom of
information application. It's the same routine. They
break the statutory deadline. They then say no. I then
appeal. You know, the appeal has to go to the
Metropolitan Police in the first place. They knock it
back. I have to go to the Information Commissioner's
office.
Again, it took something like 15 months and finally
they said, "Okay, we informed 28 people back there in
39
2006 and another eight after the Gordon Taylor story was
published." Why not release that information in the
beginning?
So if your question is "what's wrong with these
official sources", it exemplifies it. They are paid to
protect the reputation of their organisation. That's
not a smear on them. That's what a good press officer
does, and therefore a good press officer is frequently
out of step with the needs of the press and the public,
and therefore you have to have official -- unofficial
sources.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I'll now come in with the question
that I was formulating in my mind, because it actually
just links into that which you've said. You may have
heard -- I don't know whether you were in here for the
evidence of Mr Jefferies --
A. No, I missed almost all of it, sorry.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: -- just this afternoon, where he was
complaining, with justification, about leakage of
information from whatever source -- and he believes it's
the police, the police say it isn't; I say I'm balanced
in that immediately -- and therefore he is one of those
who support the proposition that it should be an offence
for the police to disclose inappropriate information to
members of the press, that naming uncharged suspects,
40
the private members bill that was introduced, should
indeed be criminal.
Now, that's the fight-back to which you just
referred, the reaction to which you referred a moment
ago.
A. The backlash. Mm.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: But the question is: do you see the
danger inherent in -- you're not suggesting
a free-for-all but let me use that phrase -- in the
rather more relaxed attitude to the release of
information that's subsequent upon what you have
proposed, and which may cause problems for individuals
in the circumstances of Mr Jefferies?
A. Okay.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: The reason it comes in to what you
just said is because you made the point that it was also
important in the needs of the public for this
information to come out.
A. Yes.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: He might say, "Well, hang on --"
A. Okay. So what we have to do is to identify the source
of the problem and be precise about it. So first of
all, I would argue that it isn't that official sources
are inherently good or that the unofficial, unauthorised
sources are inherently bad. They are equally good or
41
bad, equally liable to operate in the public interest,
equally vulnerable to be being abused.
So that's the first thing. Don't identify the
unauthorised source as the cause of the problem.
I could give you examples, even in the phone hacking
saga, of a press officer calling me up in order to
encourage me to run a smear story. Talking off the
record.
Similarly, it would be a mistake to say off the
record is the source of the problem. Off the record
isn't sinister. Off the record helps people to tell the
truth.
So, having said that, look at official and
unofficial, on the record, off the record, as all being
morally equal, for want of a better way of putting it.
No more likely the one than the other to cause damage.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: But that's not quite right. I'm
prepared to assume it.
A. Just for the sake of my argument, because I think
there's two points that can be made. Basically, you
have the police and the reporters. There's one problem
at the reporters' end, which is that we have useless
media law and useless self-regulation at work, and
therefore -- I mean, that's what you have spent the last
module talking about. Reporters have been free to
42
fabricate vicious falsehoods against people like
Mr Jefferies, probably assuming that he can't afford to
sue them, and who cares about the Press Complaints
Commission? So part of the problem is there, insofar as
it's the reporter who is the active ingredient causing
damage, already module one is looking at ways of helping
there.
Then, insofar as it's the police officer who,
whether for financial reasons, he's going to get paid,
or just because he's an idiot or show-off or he wants to
upset his senior officer -- if there's a malicious
officer, then my argument is the more closed the system,
the more likely it is he'll get away with it. If you
open the system up, then when he says something -- if an
officer -- I don't know the case. If an officer was
responsible for leaking something inappropriate about
Mr Jefferies, then it would help enormously if his
brother officer could tell me, without fearing that he
would be the victim of disciplinary or criminal
offences. The more open, the less likely you are to get
abuse, is my argument.
But what's wrong is to try and close down all
off-the-record briefings or all unauthorised access.
It's like saying, "Because I got food poisoning last
night, I'm never going to eat again." It's too
43
destructive.
What do you think? You're looking pensive.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Sometimes that is so.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: That leads us neatly on to unofficial or
unauthorised contact with police officers, Mr Davies.
This starts at section 6 of your statement on page 4
onwards. Can we start at the top of page 5, please.
You're asked a number of questions and you say this.
I'm going to read out three short paragraphs because
a number of questions flow from them:
"Working in stories that involve the police, I have
often dealt with officers without the knowledge or
authority of the press office. I have worked in this
way with officers from the lowest rank to the highest,
in the Metropolitan Police and in other forces. This is
a common and well-established practice and one which
I believe is essential if reporters are to work
effectively. I have always regarded this as legitimate,
as long as it remains within the boundaries I have
described."
Now, A number of questions arise from those
particular statements. The first question is really
about who has given you information in this way. You go
on to explain that you've been given unofficial
assistance by officers of every rank, from constable to
44
chief constable; is that correct?
A. Correct, yeah.
Q. The second question which arises from what you've said
is how often this happens. What do you mean give
"often"? Do you mean every time you work on a story
where there might be police input or -- what do you mean
by "often"?
A. It's difficult because I'm not a specialist crime
reporter. I said elsewhere in the statement I might go
through a period where I talk to the police every day
for a month and then a period where I don't speak to
them at all for a year.
In principle -- I'm using that expression again --
in general terms, if I'm working on a story and I feel
that an officer could help me, I would try to get that
officer to speak, whether through official channels or
unofficial, and would have a reasonable expectation of
success.
I should say that when I'm talking about
chief constables, it must be the case that they have the
right to authorise themselves to speak to journalists.
Where they're in a more interesting area is when they
talk about Home Office policy, where they are certainly
wanting to speak off the record and without official
blessing, perhaps because they think that what the
45
Home Office are doing is damaging. I mean, that does
happen and it's interesting when they speak in that way,
so just to explain why chief constables could be
included under the heading of "unofficial".
It's a little bit difficult to talk about the scale
on which that happens. It's case by case.
Q. You also say this is a common and well-established
practice. Can I take from that that it's not just you
who obtains assistance in this way; it's something that
you're aware that other journalists do?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you give us anything more on that?
A. It's a little bit difficult but actually journalists
do -- they work together more than you might think. If
there's four or five of us from different titles working
on the same story and the story is difficult, we would
often work together to some extent, and so you would be
aware of other people getting briefings. It's a kind of
"cover your back" thing. What happens is none of you
wants to get shouted the by the news desk for failing to
get the story, so it's better to put your heads together
and work together. It may also be on a really tricky
thing that you can actually help each other out.
So in general terms, through contacts with other
reporters, I would say this is just not unusual, it
46
isn't controversial, it isn't considered illegitimate or
bad.
Q. Two other words you used in the statements I read out
are "essential" and "legitimate". You've told us a bit
about the failings of official contact. Is that one of
the reasons why you consider unofficial contact to be
essential and legitimate?
A. Yes.
Q. Are there any other reasons why such unofficial contact
is, in your view, essential to the work of a journalist
like yourself?
A. The big point is that you can't trust the official
sources because of what we've said. I don't want to say
that official sources are always wrong, but there is an
inherent limit to how much truth they'll give you.
The only other thing is that there may be occasions
when the officer has a perfectly good motive for
disclosing information and everybody would agree it's in
the public interest, but for some internal reason he's
not going to be allowed to do it, and therefore -- so
it's not a question of saying there is some great truth
which needs to be disclosed in the public interest
because it's being concealed. We're not necessarily
talking about improper police behaviour.
You could just have, let's say, a chief inspector on
47
a division in a big city. He's down on the ground, his
people have done a great job and he thinks (a) the
public should know that they've done this great job so
they can be reassured, (b) the people on his squad
deserve the publicity of having done their job well, and
the press office will organise their stories and they'll
say, "We haven't got a gap for it. We're putting this
out tomorrow and then the chief constable's giving
bravery medals and we can't put it out." In that case,
he might approach a local newspaper editor and say,
"Here's a great story." He hasn't got permission to do
it but it isn't quite in the category of the public
interest disclosures. Do you see? It's a complicated
world in there.
Then there's the bureaucratic thing -- I gave that
example of a very senior officer from the Met who showed
me minutes of what I think they used to call the policy
group but they now call the senior management team, and
I can remember him doing this and he was doing it
because he wanted to show me that the Met were taking
seriously a problem that was causing public disquiet,
and he said, "Look, they've told me I can't do this",
and as far as he was concerned they were being
bureaucratic and silly, and he said, "Here they are, you
read them and you can see that we're addressing this
48
problem", and I thought: this is a good man and because
of a little bit of an internal blockage, he's decided to
take the initiative.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: It depends on the eyes through which
you're looking at it. You would certainly say he is
a good man. The guy who is running the organisation,
who might have different reasons for not letting it out
at just that moment, may not take the same view.
A. Yes. I accept what you say. The funny thing is that
all news is built out of these judgments and there's
lots of judgment going on. When you asked me that
question before, I rambled on for a while and meant to
say and forgot to say: the other thing that's been
missing is clarity.
So I have just been told there's a standing
operating procedure at the Met. I've never heard of it
in 35 years, I don't know what it's about, and I think
it's been the same from the point of view of police
officers. It hasn't been entirely clear. So it would
be helpful if we said, you said, somebody said --
I mean, my favoured version would be that you should do
something more like an American model, where, on the
whole, police officers are allowed to say things,
because these organisations are funded by the public,
their legitimacy flows from the democratic process in
49
the name of the public, they have these powers over the
public, and only these prescribed areas can't be
discussed --
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: But you wouldn't necessarily restrict
that to the police, would you?
A. No.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: This conversation I've just been
contemplating you could have had with hospital managers.
A. Yes.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: With all sorts of --
A. Every government department, local authorities.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Exactly. So this is not
a police-specific issue.
A. I agree, and I think it's -- one of the things that
makes the police worrying is that when they get upset
with their employees for talking out of turn, talking
without permission, instead of saying, "How dare you",
because they have their hands on the levers of the
criminal justice machine, they start to deploy it
against them. It's your right. But I think in
principle -- there we go again, "in principle" -- they
are no different to any other organisation.
If you look at the Freedom of Information Act as
a sort of theoretical model, the basis of thought there
is: all information should be disclosed unless it is
50
covered by the following exemptions. There are far too
many exemptions in our Act, but I would like to see the
same principle clearly used with the police. The
default position is they can tell us what they're doing.
Why shouldn't they? Well, there are several subheadings
which they definitely can't disclose. If you're going
to interfere with a current inquiry, you can't do it.
If you're going to disclose confidential information
about somebody that isn't in the public interest you
can't do it. Do you see?
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: But then you're making every single
police officer or every single hospital worker or every
single local authority their own judge of the public
interest. You can't get around that.
A. Well, what could happen in theory -- but I can't see it
happening in practice -- is that they could ask the
press office: "Do you reckon I'm all right on this, in
terms of these Leveson rules", as we now call them.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: They won't be called that.
A. Right. But if you had a press office who operated in
that way, as a sort of arbiter, that would be great.
Then the officer would say, "I know that I'm not in
those exemption areas and that it's okay to speak",
because in principle we should speak. You don't want
secret police forces. They've got much too much power.
51
Or secret government departments or hospitals. Patient
confidentiality, clearly it's exempt, but the default
position, the beginning point is: why not be open?
I think that helps with the abuse. Do you see?
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Mr Davies, I'll come back to test the
parameters of the suggestion you've just made.
A. Okay.
Q. Let me just touch on a few points of detail before we do
that. Can we just note a few of the paragraphs under
the heading "Unofficial and unauthorised contact". On
page 5, 5(d), you note that you've never been given
prior notice of raids or arrests. You say that would be
much more likely to happen with specialist crime
reporters. Can you give us any information at all about
other journalists being tipped off in this way?
A. No. I mean, other than what's obvious. Occasionally
you see it in a newspaper or television that clearly the
reporter was taken along for the ride, but it's not an
area I've had experience in.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: It's very difficult to see why
a reporter or photographer should be outside somebody's
home at 5 o'clock in the morning.
A. Unless they've had prior advice.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Yes.
A. But is that always wrong?
52
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: All right.
A. I'm not saying -- you could say, from the police point
of view -- let's suppose there has been some persistent
crime in a community which has caused real fear. I'm
not saying that I have the answer, but could it possibly
be right to indicate --
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Oh, I have no problem with
recognising the public interest, not least in the
support for the police in their exercise of their
responsibilities to reassure the public that criminal
justice is safe in their hands and that they are being
proactive. But it's not quite so two-dimensional.
A. No. A lot has gone wrong, and that's really a starting
point, in a way.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: You then go on to explain the various
types of information that you've been provided with over
the years. So you've already told us that you were
given the minutes of a particular meeting, you've been
given information about crime figures, you've been given
evidence. Is it right to say that each case will simply
be different on its facts?
A. Yes. Bear in mind that it isn't unusual to have this
unofficial contact, but yes, there's different sorts of
stories coming out for different reasons in different
ways.
53
Q. You've told us why you might want to have unofficial
assistance in this way, that you're suspicious of
authorised contact for a start, but why, in your view,
would police officers be motivated to act in this way?
A. Different stories, different reasons. So I've mentioned
here two different occasions on which officers in two
different forces have become aware of the senior command
organising the fiddling of the crime figures, so
misrecording the levels of crime committed, misrecording
the number of crimes solved, and that's done to please
the Home Office and it affects your funding. In both
cases, the officers had tried internally to stop that
happening, because it means that the victims of crime
are being cheated of justice because their crimes are
being recorded as solved when they haven't been.
Perpetrators are allowed to go free. It really matters;
it isn't just about statistics. And having tried
internally to get things done, they got nowhere. So on
both occasion, I ended up dealing with them and putting
lots of material into the public domain to expose that,
which infuriated some of the senior command.
So I suppose that's kind of classic whistle-blowing
stuff, isn't it?
Q. Yes.
A. Hang on, I can't remember the other examples I gave you.
54
Q. They're on pages 5 and 6.
A. One force conducting an independent inquiry into alleged
corruption in another force. I think theirs was
a variation on that, in that they felt there was a real
danger that the force that allegedly contained the
corruption would conceal that corruption and that by
talking to me and other reporters, they could create
a kind of political pressure on that force not to do
that. So you could almost see that as a kind of
operational motive.
Q. Yes.
A. And then sometimes it could be something like I was
describing a moment ago, where the officer says, "This
is a story that, from the point of view of reassuring
the public or making good the morale of my squad really
ought to be in the public domain, but I can't persuade
the press office to put it out so I'll put it out."
I mean, you get bad motives too. There was an
officer I dealt with quite a lot who clearly loathed
another squad who he saw as being useless and
furthermore trespassing on his patch, so he was
extremely keen on disclosing material which made them
look bad. I don't want to give you a rosy picture that
everybody who talks to a reporter is some kind of angel.
It's complicated out there, but then the reporter's job
55
is to try and pick their way through it and work out
what's true and what's worth saying.
Q. I'm going to go back to your suggestion about more
openness, more transparency, and whether or not there
could be any boundaries set on this type of unofficial
contact or whether that's just a pipe dream. Can we
explore it in practice a little.
A. Yes.
Q. Clearly, there is a view that this type of official
exchange is fraught with potential difficulty. For
example, information given to a journalist, not
necessarily you, could, for example, prejudice an
important investigation, could compromise someone's
safety, may violate someone's price. I want to
understand, please, the limits or boundaries that you
impose on yourself in this regard. Can we look, please,
at page 7 of your statement under question 8. You say
this -- and I want you to answer we me this question,
whether this statement I'm about to read accurately
reflects the limits that you would impose on yourself:
"I think contact with police becomes illegitimate or
improper in principle [there it is again] if (a) the
means of acquiring the information is itself illegal or
improper (bribes, hacking) or (b), as above, if
publication violates privacy without a clear public
56
interest justification, impedes an inquiry or
jeopardises the safety of any individual."
Is that the boundaries that you impose on
yourself --
A. Yes.
Q. -- in receiving information in this unofficial way?
A. There are some legal ones that I haven't bothered
mentioning there, but.
Q. Would you want to touch on those?
A. Not just with police sources, but if someone is talking
generally, your are alarm bells would ring if it's
sub judice. Your alarm bells would ring if it's
defamatory. You start wondering if you're going to be
able to find the evidence to justify it, if you're
challenged.
Q. Can we just explore the first of these principles. The
means of acquiring the information itself is illegal or
improper. Let's take the example of bribes. Why does
the fact that a police officer may be paid a bribe by
the journalist mean that unofficial contact now becomes
improper? Why do you take that view?
A. The immediate answer is it's against the law.
Q. Assume now for a moment that it's not. Just assume. As
a matter of principle, does paying a bribe somehow make
it worse or more improper?
57
A. So in this question, it's no longer illegal?
Q. Mm-hm.
A. I think paying a bribe is a rather odd way of putting
it. Is there something inherently wrong in paying money
for information?
Q. Indeed.
A. I talked about this in the first statement I put into
this Inquiry, that it seems to me that paying for
information does create a problem. The problem isn't
ethical. I don't mind if a newspaper wants to pay an
actress to describe her married life or whatever it is.
The problem is practical, that where you pay people to
talk to you, you run the risk that you are giving them
a motive to fabricate, to earn their fee. That's the
worst end of it, and at best, I think that -- I've seen
this with other journalists paying sources who I've been
working with without payment. What they get for their
money is the bare minimum, because they haven't
genuinely motivated the person to help them.
So I think there are practical problems with it, but
in principle I am not saying that it is always wrong to
pay. I think there are circumstances in which that's
okay. I mean, there is a lot of nonsense talked about
it. On the whole, newspapers don't pay people to talk;
they pay people to sign a contract not to talk to other
58
newspapers. That's most of what goes on. So it's not
really about disclosure; it's about exclusivity.
If you take the law away, I don't think it's an
ethical problem.
Q. Looking back at the statement at the top of page 8,
moving aside bribes now and turning to the three
principles that you set out there, you would --
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I'm sorry, you mean question 8?
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Sorry, did I say paragraph 8?
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: We're still talking about the
paragraph --
MS PATRY HOSKINS: The same paragraph, the boundaries that
Mr Davies has indicated he would impose.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: The fact is you don't permit the
acquisition of information illegally or improperly, even
if it is in the clear public interest?
A. No, clearly that's always illegal. It was interesting
when Keir Starmer was here -- I think it was him --
saying there was a residual decision about whether there
could be a public interest. I can't imagine
the situation, but maybe somewhere in the outer reaches
of possibility it could be conceivable that somebody
would pay a public official to disclose something and we
would all say, "I'm glad you did that." It's parallel
to the Telegraph paying for the CDs which had been
59
stolen from the House of Commons which contained all the
information about the MPs --
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: It is parallel. Query whether
stolen. Query whether you can steal intellectual
property. I mean, there are all sorts of issues there.
But I just wanted to --
A. Try and think of an example.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: -- analyse the boundaries of that
first example. That's all I'm doing with you.
A. Fine, good. What was the question? I've slightly lost
you.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: My question is: the acquisition of
information that is itself illegal, the means of
acquisition, whether it's because of hacking or because
of bribing, is not made legitimate or proper by public
interest, on your evidence here.
A. Because it's against the law.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Yes.
A. And that is the way the law stands at the moment, yes.
But when I was here before, I was trying to argue for
some advisory body that could tell reporters and others
where the public interest boundaries are, case by case,
and if we had something like that, I would like the
public interest defence to be more widely available for
more laws.
60
To honestly answer your question, I haven't this
through whether -- I think you're asking me: could it
ever be right to bribe someone; is that right? I don't
think I have an answer to that because it isn't
something I've thought through. It feels really, really
dodgy. It feels like the answer must be no, but
somewhere in brackets I kind of think maybe there is
a circumstance where -- I mean, is it that -- okay, so
I'm in a country where there's a dictatorship and the
public official says, "I have the secret that can cause
much good for the public, but if I disclose this secret,
I have to be able to escape the country, I have to take
my family with me, I have to have £20,000." So I give
him £20,000, which could reasonably be construed as
a bribe, yes? He then gives me in the information which
is hugely in the public good and he escapes from the
country. I mean, I haven't got an answer to your
question, I haven't thought it through but I begin to
think it could be right to do that.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Mr Leigh gave evidence, which you may
or may not have seen -- your colleague on the Guardian.
A. Yes.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Who spoke about using a PIN number,
intercepting somebody's voicemail message in
a particular circumstance -- I think I have that right?
61
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Yes.
A. Yes.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: -- which he felt was very much in the
public interest.
A. Yes. I think it's interesting. If we took the public
interest -- because this is -- like you were saying
yesterday, this Inquiry is not an attack on press
freedom. You have the capacity to increase our freedom.
That's an example. You yourself can't do it but if we
legislated to broaden -- to increase the number of laws
for which there was a public interest defence, it could
well be that we would say that the interception of
communications ought to have a limited public interest
defence in principle, that if the only way to rescue the
child --
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: The bands of your advocacy may be
going a tad too far, Mr Davies.
A. Isn't that what you want me to do in a way, to test the
boundaries?
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: As long as you appreciate where I'm
coming from on this.
A. Maybe I've misunderstood your question.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: No, you haven't. You haven't. And
if you'd seen what Mr Starmer was asked to do, what he
was asked to do by me wasn't to suggest that the law
62
should be changed to permit a public interest defence in
relation to any particular crime, but he was asked by me
whether he would be prepared to enunciate a policy which
would be relevant to the public interest test that he
applies under the Code for Crown Prosecutors in relation
to the work of journalists, and he is presently
formulating just such a policy to try to clarify
circumstances in which he, as the DPP, will not consider
it appropriate or necessary to prosecute,
notwithstanding that the ingredients of an offence might
be made out.
A. Right.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: So I've gone that far with you
without suggesting there should be changes to the
substantive law. I say I've gone that far with you;
I've gone that far with you to investigate what it would
look like. Ultimately, that policy is for him and not
for me. But he's doing that, in part because
I requested him to do so. He could have said, "I don't
think this is the right way to go", in which case,
that's the end of it, but he didn't. But there are
limits.
A. Yes. But I think if we're just talking here
theoretically, the factual position is it's against the
law to intercept communications, full stop, no public
63
interest defence written in. It isn't like Section 55
of the Data Protection Act, yes? I'm saying that if we
were inventing the world so that it was perfect, we
might want to consider the possibility which David Leigh
was referring to, that there could be cases where you
would want a journalist to be able to intercept
a communication.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I understand the point, I understand
the point. I think we'll give the shorthand writer
a break now.
(3.32 pm)
(A short break)
(3.40 pm)
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Mr Davies, we're still at the top of
page 7 and the statement you make there under heading
question 4, paragraph 8.
We've discussed now at some length the issue about
whether it's wrong in principle to pay a bribe. Can I
turn to the principles you set out thereafter. The
first one you set out is you consider that contact with
the police becomes illegitimate if publication violates
privacy without a clear public interest justification.
Just so I can give you an example of that, violating
privacy without a clear public interest justification,
would an example of that be the police officer who tips
64
off a journalist that, say, a celebrity has been the
victim of a particular crime?
A. Yes, exactly.
Q. Is there anything else you want to say about that before
we move on to impeding enquiries or jeopardising safety?
A. Just that it's implied by that that the corollary also
is true, that a police officer could be justified in
disclosing something that was inherently private or
confidential precisely because it was in the public
interest to do so.
Q. Let's turn to then information which -- well,
publication which might impede an enquiry or jeopardise
the safety of an individual. Can we again think about
this practically. Imagine a hypothetical situation
where you get a telephone call from X, a police officer,
and he says to you, "Nick, come in, I need to have
a chat about something" --
A. Can I just ask you, did you say "an ex" as in a former
police officer?
Q. No, just X, as in --
A. He's a serving police officer?
Q. He is just a police officer.
A. GotchA.
Q. "Nick, come in, I need to have a chat about something.
I can't possibly tell you on the phone, come down and
65
see me." Fine, you go down and attend. He then proceeds
to tell you something very interesting, I won't describe
it as a bombshell, but an interesting piece of
information that would be of interest to you to publish.
Can you see that regardless of public interest
considerations, regardless of prejudice to
investigations or to safety or to anything like that,
you now know the information, you as a journalist now
know that information.
At that point, it could be said that the onus is on
you to set the boundaries: you decide whether it's in
the public interest to publish, you decide whether it
will prejudice an investigation, whether it will
compromise safety. But what I want to understand is how
you, or another journalist who's given information in
this way, would know the full context? How would you
know whether it prejudices an investigation, for
example? You might not know the full facts of the
investigation or the full context or whether someone is
at risk.
A. Okay.
Q. How would you ascertain that?
A. I think one of the things that -- if the companion of
all reporting life is anxiety, you are constantly
worrying about what could go wrong with this story. So
66
when he tells me this thing, first of all, both of the
alarm bells are going to ring: am I sub judice here, is
there a trial in place, am I in libel trouble here? And
then certainly, and particularly clearly with a police
officer, it would be less clear if it was a banker
telling me this, but I'm going to think, "Is there
a current enquiry going on, we're going to crash into
it, are we going to get into trouble over it?" So that
sort of basic anxiety is going to be flashing up warning
signs.
In the reality, I would then talk to him and say,
"Just supposing I get sued on this, where are we on
evidence? Is there a current enquiry, are we going to
get nicked? Is this sub judice?" We'd have that
conversation and I would find out.
Plus in those circumstances is it going to be the
case that a police officer says, "Guess what, X is
true", and I'm just going to bung it in the paper? You
go off and you have the to talk to other people to check
it and get all the surrounding context so that you can
tell the story properly, and in the course of that it
would be very surprising if you didn't come across the
material that you need to make those judgments that
we're talking about.
Q. But doesn't that assume -- isn't this one of the
67
problems with unofficial contact? That rather assumes
that you are a scrupulous journalist. Isn't one of the
problems that the information might be imparted by the
police officer to someone who is far less scrupulous and
who just cares that it's an interesting piece of
information that would sell newspapers?
A. Yes, this is what I was trying to describe before the
break. If you want to make sure the system works well,
don't go closing down whole channels, but recognise that
the problem is twofold. It may be something malicious
or improper at the police end or it may be the kind of
stuff you've been discussing in module one: just crazed,
fact-free journalism.
The great prize of this Inquiry is to try to find
solutions to that.
Any time you're dealing with a malicious or
irresponsible journalist, almost any information they
get hold of is potentially damaging. But what would be
horribly unfair would be if we ended up in a situation
where the really destructive behaviour of that very
small minority started to close down channels of
information which all the other journalists need.
Q. I'm just trying to explore the boundaries of your
general principle.
A. Yes.
68
Q. If greater openness and transparency is the answer, I'm
just trying to explore the boundaries of how that would
work in practice.
A. Yes. Again this applies to the official sources as much
as to the unofficial sources. Either of them are
capable of giving you information which is designed to
cause trouble for somebody or which can be distorted to
cause trouble for somebody or misused in some way. In
order to make the system work properly, you need clarity
and some level of enforcement for both parties. The
police need to be clear where the lines are, we need to
be clear where the lines are and there needs to be a way
of sorting things out when they go wrong.
Q. Linked to this problem is the problem of police officers
building up particular relationships with particular
journalists and then that relationship becoming open to
abuse and so on. Can you see that problem?
A. Well, to a certain -- we need to be clear what it is the
problem might be. I have no problem at all with me
building a special relationship with a serving police
officer or banker or prison officer or anybody. They're
just contacts. I don't have any problem with that
across the whole board of human activity. I build
relationships with paedophiles, with fascists, with
communists, with socialists, with the lot. That's what
69
we do for a living. Nothing wrong with that at all.
And if we have a police officer who has a relationship
of trust with me so that within the boundaries that
we've described, he favours me, that's to say that if he
wants to get something into the public domain he comes
to me, I'm happy, he's happy and I hope you would be
happy. It's not a bad thing.
Where it becomes a problem really isn't at the level
of the reporter and the police officer. I mean, other
than those -- if there's abuse of information, all
right, but where -- the problem that is in the
background to this Inquiry is something quite different,
which was a relationship at the top of two
organisations, between the very summit of the
Metropolitan Police, the very summit of
News International, and even that wasn't a problem.
I don't think that, generally speaking, having lunches
and meeting people and having drinks is problematic. It
only became a problem -- or it is a problem if the
reality is that that was part of the reason why the Met
failed to investigate the phone hacking properly.
I still don't quite understand what went wrong.
Something went catastrophically wrong in that Inquiry
and in the subsequent public statements about it.
So the Met are saying it's all to do with resources.
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That was really the core of the argument yesterday. If
you find that in fact part of that failure was to do
with the cosy relationship that existed between the tops
of those two organisations, then you can see how the
relationship can go wrong. But it doesn't seem to me
that if that is the case that tells you anything at all
about what was going on between the lowly reporter and
the lowly officer meeting in a pub to talk about
a story. That's just not what created the -- or the
potential problem.
Does that make sense?
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I can follow that, but I am rather
concerned that you make the point -- let me just find
it -- that if you're dealing with a malicious or
irresponsible journalist, almost any information they
get hold of is potentially damaging, but it would be
horribly unfair for those who aren't malicious or
irresponsible to suffer as a consequence.
A. The closing down of whole channels of communication.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I understand that's your point and
I recognise the point. But freedom of expression
responsibilities make it very difficult to tackle the
problem from the individual's perspective, to say,
"Well, you're an irresponsible, mendacious journalist
and therefore we can't trust you; you are a responsible
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journalist who we can trust", and you can't tackle it
that way because that way leads to licensing, which
I don't anticipate you would support.
A. No. "Mendacious" is an interesting word --
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I'm very sorry I used the word,
because I absolutely didn't intend to. Please, let's
move off that word.
A. But try falsehood and distortion then. Let's say the
police officer, officially or unofficially, supplies the
journalist with some information. That journalist is
the irresponsible kind, so he or she then goes off to
produce a story which is riddled with falsehood and
distortion and that produces bad results for somebody
like Chris Jefferies or for the Inquiry itself. What we
need is a system that is quick and cheap and effective
to deal with falsehood and distortion generally. For
me, that's the biggest problem we have in the media, is
the ease with which irresponsible reporters can
fabricate stuff and get away with it, and what are the
victims supposed to do? Sue for libel? It's
ridiculously expensive and slow and hopeless, and the
PCC -- so if you had a system, if in the future we had
a system that gave the victims of falsehood and
distortion a fair, quick crack at an effective solution,
that would make it much harder for the irresponsible
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reporter to infect the information he's been given with
falsehood and distortion. We don't have that at the
moment. It's the Wild West out there. But it's amazing
how few reporters take advantage of it, actually, if you
see how useless the system is on falsehood and
distortion.
Similarly with privacy, if we can devise a better
way of protecting people's privacy, which is difficult,
then if it's the malicious officer who says, "Here's
some information about a celebrity", there is more
chance that the irresponsible officer/irresponsible
reporter won't be able to do the damaging thing that
invades people's privacy. So all your module one
thinking helps us here.
In addition, if we have real clarity inside the
police, instead of -- I think it's incredible that the
Metropolitan Police are telling us there's a standard
operating procedure which, in 35 years, I've never heard
of. I've never come across an officer quoting it. It's
a muddle out there.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: I need to touch on your paragraph where
you explain that you have an area of concern that the
relationship between News International and the
Metropolitan Police may have become too close. You've
touched on that in oral evidence. That relevant
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paragraph is at the bottom of page 7, and there's a
number of questions I've been asked to put to you about
that.
A. Yes.
Q. What do you believe is the Metropolitan Police's
interest in co-operating in this way with
News International? Is it not simply to ensure proper
investigation of crime and do you have any evidence of
favouritism?
A. Okay, I've slightly touched on this already. Brian
Paddick was saying yesterday that John Stevens, as
Commissioner, set out to build bridges with the news
media and that Dick Fedorcio was instrumental in that.
It seems to me there's nothing wrong with that. I think
there's nothing wrong with the Commissioner meeting the
editors and talking about policy or even specific
stories. If it emerges from that that there's some
favouritism shown by the press office to the particular
newspapers which seem to Dick Fedorcio or John Stevens
to be most powerful, that's very irritating for the
reporters who are left out, but I don't think that's
a great big ethical worry we need to get worked up
about. That was a problem only if we now discover that
it was an active ingredient in the subsequent failure to
investigate News International effectively.
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LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: How about a perception?
A. I'm not too worried about that. I think we can get
overanxious here. I thought Brian Paddick was being
overanxious yesterday, "wouldn't even pay for my drink".
I think that's silly. I mean, we can all get too
uptight about this and I think there is too much
uptightness around. So I think it's all right for
John Stevens and Nick Fedorcio to have lunch with Neil
Wallis and Andy Coulson and that isn't a national
scandal. It's only if that led to the police failing to
do their job.
I can't sit here and speak against favouritism.
I spend my life trying to procure human sources who will
talk to me. I don't want them to run off and talk to
other newspapers. It's kind of inherent in a reporter's
job. I want my story exclusively, if possible. It
makes sense.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Two paragraphs above that, on page 7, you
say that you believe some senior police officers were
the targets of voicemail hacking. This was certainly
implied, you say, by evidence given by the police to the
culture, media and sports Select Committee in September
2009. Again, I've been asked a question about this.
Are you referring there to the evidence of --
A. Is this on the screen? Sorry, what page are you on?
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I'm terrible sorry.
Q. Page 7. It's the third paragraph from the bottom.
A. Got it, okay.
Q. When you say that this was implied by the evidence
given, are you referring to the evidence of Assistant
Commissioner Yates and Superintendent Phil Williams on
2 September 2009?
A. They actually put in a written memo, Yates and Williams,
in which they were talking about the extent to which
they wanted to say they had been in touch with victims
and potential victims of hacking and they said that
apart from those who had been approached with a view to
being -- charges for the indictment, they had also set
out to approach people in four national security
categories. That was royal, government, military and
police. So the implication there was there was at least
one victim or potential victim of hacking in the police.
I followed that up with yet another attempt to ask
for a simple statistic, and it was yet another example
of the press bureau saying no, huge long freedom of
information wrangle, at the end of which they claimed
that there was one police officer who had been
approached and warned. Whether or not that's the whole
picture, I don't know. Are they saying they didn't?
Or --
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Q. No, that's the extent of my question that I needed to
put to you.
A. Okay, all right.
Q. Finally, before we move on to the extracts from your
book briefly, page 8, please, under paragraph 13,
question 9. You were asked in general terms what your
impressions are about the culture of relations between
the police and the mediA. I think you've touched more
or less on all of the points you make there. Is there
anything else that you would want to add to that?
A. No, I think we have covered those points, unless there's
something you want to come back on.
Q. Okay. Before I turn to the extracts from your book, is
there anything else that you would like to say about
official contact or unofficial contact or the system as
it works now, any recommendations for the future that
would make you particularly fearful or anything else?
A. I think we've covered it. I'm happy to answer questions
if I can clarify things, but I think we've covered it.
Q. Some very brief questions indeed about the extracts from
your book. You have a whole section from pages 359 to
379 of your book, Flat Earth News, that deals with this.
You were asked some extensive questions by Mr Jay on the
previous occasion when you gave evidence about
a gentleman called Z. I don't want to ask you questions
77
he's already asked you.
The book was published in January 2008. Is there
any evidence you can give us to update us on the
position as set out in your book?
A. I don't think there's anything special. I mean, clearly
there's been an awful lot coming into the public domain,
as, for example, from Sue Akers yesterday, but I think
there's nothing on Z that I can add beyond what was in
the book and beyond what I said in November, giving
evidence.
Q. You also allege in the book that reporters from titles
that I won't mention have admitted to you that payments
were made not just to police officers but also to public
officials. Again, is there anything other than what's
in the book, that you would like to add? Any up to date
information, other than what is in the public domain?
A. No, I don't think I've been looking into that. I stand
by what's in the book and what I said in November, but
I don't think there's anything important to add.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Mr Davies, those are all my questions.
Is there anything that you would like to add?
A. No.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Sir?
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: No. Mr Davies, thank you very much
indeed. As ever, you give much food for thought. Thank
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you.
A. All right.
MS PATRY HOSKINS: Sir, that completes the evidence for
today, a slightly shorter day than unusual.
LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I'm very upset we have half an hour.
Mr Jay, how have you allowed us to have half an hour?
All right. Thank you very much indeed. 10 o'clock
tomorrow morning.
(4.00 pm)
(The hearing adjourned until 10 o'clock the following day)