The House of Commons Culture, Media & Sport Committee today publish the long-awaited report on their Inquiry into Press Standards, Privacy & Libel. It pulls no punches in its view of the evidence given by Andy Coulson, Stuart Kuttner and Tom Crone, respectively editor, managing editor and legal boss of the News of the World at the time of the royal phone-hacking scandal.
       “Throughout our inquiry … we have been struck by the collective amnesia afflicting witnesses from the News of the World,” the report states, and later…..
“We have repeatedly encountered an unwillingness to provide the detailed information we sought, claims of ignorance or lack of recall and deliberate obfuscation. We strongly condemn this behaviour which reinforces the widely held impression that the press generally regard themselves as unaccountable and that News International in particular has sought to conceal the truth about what really occurred.”
Nevertheless, they say, “We have seen no evidence that Andy Coulson knew that phone hacking was taking place.”
Further on, they refer to a story they published containing a verbatim transcript of a voicemail from Prince William to Prince Harry with an “exclusive” front page strap on an issue edited by Coulson. The story could only have been obtained by illegal phone-hacking. When Coulson was questioned closely on this by committee members Adam Price and Paul Farrelly, he claimed, incredibly, that he had any knowledge or recollection of the story. His denial, with a copy of the 0ffending paper in front of him, was broadcast that evening on Channel 4 News. It was clkear to the millions watching that he was not telling the truth.
I asked committee chairman, John Whittingdale at yesterday’s briefing if he had believed Coulson.
Whittingdale could only say that they’d had to “accept at face value Andy Coulson’s assurances that he had no recollection of the major royal story in his paper.

It has also emerged, the report goes on, that substantial, gratuitous pay-outs were made to private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, and royal reporter, Clive Goodman in order to ensure their silence.
Since publication of the report this morning there have been calls for a Judicial Inquiry by Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw and Lib Dem spokesman, Chris Huhne.

Beyond this most politically charged aspect of their report, John Whittingdale and his committee have come to several well-considered and, if adopted, useful conclusions.
       Unless the Press Complaints Commission is extensively overhauled and reconstituted, the report says, it cannot deliver satisfactory regulation of the press. They recommend that the lay (non-journalist) membership of the commission be increased from 10 out of 17 to a two-thirds majority and that its powers be enhanced, to give it effective teeth, although they stop short of advising a statutorily created body. They feel that this shouldn’t be necessary if all the participants are willing.

The PCC should also be more proactive when they see abuses of the Editors’ Code, and not wait for someone to lodge a complaint. They should ensure that all relevant bodies that liaise with potentially injured parties are fully aware of the services the PCC can offer. Victims like the McCanns and the families of the Bridgend teenage suicides should have been referred to the Commission right from the start.

All the national press should participate in the funding of the PCC and their journalists should be mandatorily contracted to adhere to the PCC Code.

The PCC should also have power to ensure that any apologies or corrections appearing subsequent to offending stories should have a prominence equal to the original story. In addition, the Commission should be able to impose financial penalties and, in extremis, the power to order suspension of the printing of a publication for one issue. The committee recommends that PCC be renamed the Press Complaints and Standards Commission, to underline this broader remit.

Under the heading of Press Standards, there are recommendations that the PCC adjudicate over misleading headlines that don’t reflect the content of the piece below them. Public comments on papers’ blog-sites should be more rigidly moderated, and offending text removed as soon as it comes to light.

The use of injunctions and parliamentary reporting was also scrutinised by the Committee, especially as experienced last year in the Trafigura case and more recently in the John Terry case.

They had taken evidence last summer from Max Mosley who explained that as a result of his own experiences he had approached the European Court in Strasbourg in an attempt to establish in England the right of the potential target of a damaging story to have it injuncted until such time as the paper can demonstrate a genuine public interest, on the grounds that a retrospective judgement against a publication will not put the cat back in the bag, after the damage has been done.

The CMS Committee, however, conclude that it would be more appropriate to “encourage editors and journalists to notify in advance the subject of a critical story or report by permitting courts to take account of a failure to notify when assessing damages in any subsequent proceedings for breach of Article 8.” (the right to privacy). Meanwhile, however, the cat is still out of the bag.

John Whittingdale and his Committee have, on balance, produced a thorough and wide-ranging report and have pitched their recommendations within the realms of the practicable, although what legislation will follow a general election, with one of their principal and most elusive witnesses sitting in Downing Street, is another matter.

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