clip, mr. campbell, of materials. can we just get the chronology right? there was a piece in the "mail" on sunday -- >> no, i think the "spectator" was the first piece. >> right. >> april the 13th. peter oborne. how tony blair tried to muscle in on the mourning. totally untrue. >> the piece certainly one of the pieces you complained about to the pcc was published in the "mail" on sunday on the 14th of april -- >> that's correct. >> -- 2002. do you recall that? and we got a proof print of this story. downing street wanted tony blair to have a bigger role in the sermon to mark the queen mother's death.

it was revealed last night. a senior blair aide telephoned blackrod and asked her if the prime minister would be able to meet the coffin when it arrived at westminster hall. sumner was told by blackwell that there was no role for mr. blair, made it clear he was not opposed to change his plan. the government officials wanted buckingham palace to reduce the lying in state from four days to three because they feared there would be insufficient numbers," paraphras paraphrased. and then toward the bottom of the page about ten lines from the bottom. blackrod, a former army officer, told her that miss politely but firmly that mr. blair would not greet the coffin, he's seen hundreds of -- as well the plan had already been drawn up. and on the next page four lines from the top, "downing street

spokesman said last night we did not suggest the prime minister's role should be changed in any way, nor did we put pressure on anyone." >> correct. >> and you then complained to the editor in the "mail" on sunday on the 15th of april 2002. >> mm-hmm. >> so this was obviously the monday morning the following day. you say in the mail on sunday yesterday simon waters repeated the false claims. so that must be reference to the earlier claim in the spectator, is that right? >> yeah. >> that downing street sought to chait royal family's arrangements for the lying in state tone hans the prime minister's role. the prime ministers asked me to tell you that unless you print a correction and apology, which makes clear unequivocally that this story is untrue and you accept it to be untrue we'll be making a complaint to the pcc

and clause 1 of the code. >> i think you made the complaint on the 24th of april, 2002 to the pcc. but there was an intervening letter from mr. wright on the 16th of april where he came out pointing, as it were. the third paragraph, "i did not believe it's in dispute clair sumner telephoned sir michael wilcox to discuss the arrangements. it's our information that mr. sumner indicated surprise that mr. blair would not be meeting the coffin and the royal family when they arrived at westminster hall. so michael told miss sumner that that was indeed the established ban, he was not prepared to change it. in fact, you did make one change. and then mr. wright asked three questions to be answered. and finally, there was a letter by blackrod to the pcc which we

see at the back of this file. it's dated the 8th of may, 2002. it came after a request by the pcc made the previous day to respond to your complaint. blackrod in this letter effectively said that there were conversations with miss sumner and the efforts were made to change the plans. would you agree with that? >> if you look at page 3 of his statement, the indented top paragra paragraph, he writes the statement that he gave to us, that we were then able to use to rebut these totally untrue stories. he says "in the immediate aftermath of the news of the death the queen mother was tacted by the staff to brief them on the pm's role. i did so in explaining the

ceremony. at no stage was i ever asked to change these arrangements." so why on earth he told us one thing when as his letter then subsequently shows he clearly for whatever reason having this discussion with simon walters. but the point is that it became impossible because the pcc said that they were not in a position where they could adjudicate on fact. and and so we with all the other things going on said this is a complete waste of time and we dropped it, which of course the press took to say oh, that means the story was true. the story was untrue then and is untrue now. i've given it -- this was sent to me yesterday. i asked the cabinet office to dig out the file. and i sent to your team the copies of the correspondence on it from our perspective so that you do actually have the broader story. and how we handled it. >> what blackrod says toward the end of page 3, finally we come to the mail on sunday articles.

here i did have contact with simon walters before publication. he came to see me on 11th april to research the story on the costs of the lying in state. operation. at the end of the interview made it clear that he had sources which in effect substantiated the underlying thrust of the "spectato "spectator's" original article. though i repeated my on the record statement i was surprised by the quality of information because i could not in truth deny the main force of his contentions. >> in which case it's very odd that he denied them on the road prior to that. so if you're interested in this you'd have to talk to blackrod because he does appear to be saying different things on the same piece of paper. all i know is that a very damaging story was run, first in the spectator, then the standard, then the mail on sunday and the story was completely and totally untrue. clair sumner, whose job in downey street was parliamentary liaison. she had to establish what the prime minister was meant to do on an event as important as the death of the queen mother.

then he goes on in his letters to say they happen to be the prime minister's protection team that advanced wherever he goes. forgive me if i don't take this as seriously as the people who wrote at the time but this story was total nonsense. >> blackrod for better or worse on the last page says i find it rather difficult to fault the mail on sunday -- >> he's obviously somebody who's very friendly with the mail on sundays and didn't want to say anything untoward about them. all i know is the story's untrue. >> then finally, i'm asked to put to you, you didn't reply to mr. wright's letters of the 12th and the 17th of june. >> i have no idea whether i did or i didn't. >> i'd like to think they would have included them had you -- i think that's as far as i can take. >> i think blackrod ended up taking a position on the pcc but i could be wrong about that. >> pardon me, mr. cam snbl. >> i think blackrod ended up taking a position on the pcc.

>> i think you may be right. >> come on, mr. campbell, don't overdo it. another question i've been asked -- >> this wasn't one of the half dozen that i mentioned earlier that always gets raised. >> the other question i've put to you -- i'm asked to put to you, excuse me, is in paragra paragraph -- of your statement. >> yeah. >> you say "nobody with the prms prime minister's or my authority briefed the sun on election day in 2001." you look at the third volume of your diaries, page 567, entry for saturday the 31st of march,

2001. you do refer to a conversation with trevor cavener in these terms. my chat with cavener had been written hard as a june election. then you move on to a different topic. and the first call of the day was db, that's mr. blunkette saying he was pissed off it came out in a newspaper like that. or maybe he was still on the same topic, namely, the timing of the election. >> i'd have to check. but i think that refers to a story about david blunkette's position in the government. i could be wrong. because i think he was moved after the election. but the point i make in my witness statement is valid. the sun ran a story -- look, it's obvious. now we have fixed term parmts. so this question may not arise. but the timing of the election is a story that every single political journalist is looking

for the whole time. and they speculated about it all the time. the truth is we had been planning to have the election on may the 3rd and it was postponed because of foot and mouth. trevor cavener had run a story earlier saying may the 3rd, election day, official. no didn't come from us and nor did the subsequent story saying it was going to be on whatever date in june it turned out to be. and i think while i'm reflecting i was probably speaking to trevor cavener every day at this point. we were in the run-up to the election campaign. but at no point did i give anybody -- at the time anybody until the prime minister announced the election date, although by then we were frankly running out of dates. >> but some would say that it's fairly clear from that first sentence of the diary entry that you had a conversation with mr. cavener and he certainly gained the impression from it that the election was being put back to june. >> he may well have done, but

what i didn't do is brief him on the election date. >> what's the difference, mr. cam snbl. >> the difference is he phones me up and says alastair -- just imagine being in my position where i know the information. he thinks that he knows the information. he's trying to tease it out of me. and he reads body language and he reads the way that i say things. i don't want to mislead him. i never -- again, contrary to the sort of oborne thesis i never told him lies. but i sometimes didn't tell him everything that i knew. he reads the language. by then it was blindingly obvious when the election was going to be, frankly. >> if it wasn't going to be may, wasn't going to be july because they never are in july, it's going to be june. >> it became a huge contention

because the mirror became convinced we'd given them the election date. and no such thing. didn't. >> can we look to the future, mr. campbell? it's 25 to 5:00. we have time do that. you pick it up in paragraph 32 of your statement. 00813. and just some ideas which we throw out. we're not going to cover all of them. we've read your statement. you say in paragraph 34 this is a very difficult area in which to regulate. you understand that. i'm interested in paragraph 36. >> you're suggesting there should be greater transparency. and the new regulator should be able to investigate the extent to which really opinion is being

presented as fact. the extent to which they're fair and reasonable in their reporting. and the extent to which they're being sufficiently transparent in the interests which were driving their content. >> mm-hmm. >> how would one go about properly exploring these regulations without seriously impeding the preeminent concern, the freedom of the press? >> i think by being aware of thats a possible concern. but if you look at -- we talked earlier about the fact that every other walk of life has some sort of oversight and scrutiny and regulation some of the reports that the broadcasting regulator publishes from time to time would be similar to this. i'm simply suggesting that whichever body replaces the pcc as well as investigating individual complaints against a code -- and as i said in my

first statement i think 9 pcc code is a very good basis. but also to look at trends. you took evidence from the mccanns. had there been a regulator who as that story was developing could actually have said we are going to have an investigation into the way this is being covered, that might have had an effect, and i think it would have been an effect for the good. i mentioned some of the specific issues there. the editorial line about the bbc. i'm not saying you can't have a bias. but i think if an outside body were able to analyze whether they felt there were one -- and inevitably there's going to be some subjectivity attached to this. but when this inquiry finally writes its report, judgments are made. that's what people are put in these positions to do. so i'm suggesting somebody, somebody's put in that position

to make judgments so the public's better informed. and i say later that as a result of this inquiry the public have learned and seen things that they didn't know about. i think that's been to the public good already. but if this body were able to say i'm concerned about this issue, i want to -- i'd like to interview an editor or an owner about that, what on earth is wrong with that? i don't see anything wrong with it at all. i think it would be good. good thing for the press. and i make the point that you would probably know more about this than i do but some of the regulation of the legal profession i think has probably strengthened the legal profession and it's been a mixture of statutory and non-statutory. >> if you compare the last

sentence of paragraph 37 with the last sentence of paragraph 39, start with the last sentence of 39. you say, "if, for example, a paper repeatedly distorts the facts in support of a political goal -- stopping the paper from reporting that way, there's value in some respected body pointing out that's what's happening." if the facts were being distorted that would be a breach of clause one of the -- >> i haven't explained that very well. what i mean by that is for example, i talked earlier about the sun has a particular view on europe. or at the moment they have a particular view on ken clark and his fitness to be secretary of state. so you can take a fact, for example, the eurozone's in crisis. accept that's a fact. but then you can take that fact and you can turn it into a comment that justifies your

position on europe. likize if you're ken clark. if a select committee report is published which is critical of the justice department, you can take that and you can splash all over your front page why clark has to go. i'm making the point that the facts will be there in the story somewhere. the distortion is in the way they take them then to build a comment which relates to a campaign they're running. i don't think you should stop newspapers from doing that. it's perfectly legitimate for newspapers to have strong positions. the fact is a fact. but i'm simply saying if you have an outside body that says actually, this paper has a position on europe, has a position on a particular politician, has a position on a particular political party -- i saw a bit about gus o'donald this morning and he was making a point about the bbc and the "times" and this is particularly relevant to this debate about what's being online. the public are absorbing all this stuff not necessarily

knowing what the motivation of an owner is, what the motivation of an editor may be. and i think actually an outside body can help to bring thetrans are never going to shine upon themselves. history would suggest. >> is this what some of the ngos do? is it full fact and the media stands trusted, those sort of bodies get involved in that sort of thing? >> they do. but it's interesting that i mentioned the peter oborne piece in the british journalism review. there are some journalists who do this as well. but they tend as in that article to be treated as outsiders, oddballs. i think that what hacked off in full fact and the media standards trust and these bodies are representing is a genuine public concern about what the

media has become and this loss of face and loss of trust in where fact ends and where comment begins. and i agree with what gus o'donald said this morning but i think it's naive of either of us to think you're ever go to change that and actually a part of me says you shouldn't want to change that. particularly in the internet age newspapers have to be able to take strong positions but you think there should be a greater ability for people or organizations to be able to have a come back against them when they are distorting not just fusing facts and comment but actually rin venting to suit i particular agenda. and we had that the whole time. and so did a lot of people in public life. >> i'm just trying to think through this, mr. campbell. when segregating fact from

comments and fact of course is -- can be scrutinized now, but there are certain types of comments that you feel ought to be scrutinized either because they may be a key to the motivations of the editors. is that right? alternatively the comments themselves are so distorted they are close to being perverse. and then some might sigh almost factually untrue. is that it? >> yeah. and this is a difficult area. i talked in my first witness statement about the whole business of anonymous quotes. to my mind the fact a lot of them are invented. how's a regulator ever going to get to the bottom of that? a journalist says, well somebody said it to me, and you can't disprove it. that is true. but most people who've had a very high-profile, particularly in the political environment, know because we've all been on the receiving end of stories which we know to be true. untrue. we just talked about one of them

in relationship to black rod, where a civil servant was accused of doing something she just never did. and then i of course was accused of having put her up to it. and then tony blair was accused of putting her up to it to put me up to it. based on anonymous quotes. maybe somebody did say something. but it's very difficult when you know what they said sun true. i don't know what a regulator does about that. but i think having a respected outside body that is able to investigate and look at things thematically i think would be a useful addition to this area. now, the other area -- because of course you've got a problem. is that you're looking at the print industry, which is really challenged at the moment for reasons that are obvious. technological change and advance. that's accelerating. but why i think it's still important to keep the focus on the print industry is because

these are the same people who to be fair to them are having to and in some cases are successfully adapting to this technological revolution. so actually, if you do get the regulatory framework right for print journalism i think that will have a profound effect on the way the internet develops. >> this is not so much whether mr. remember lebedev made the point, it's not so much as whether your news comes on dead trees or through the -- >> tablet p. >> the tablet or whatever. the fact is it's about -- or may be about the thing that journalists do that nobody else does, which is to go out, to get stories, to put the facts together, and then to write about them in a way that is accessible to a wider population.

which is perhaps different from those that are simply tweeting to one another or otherwise communicating on facebook. >> yeah, but otherwise the -- when we had the little break, and i was just sort of having a look at my phone and -- the guys from the bbc and itv and sky who are covering this, they're not here. they're outside. they're watching it. why don't they want to be in here? because that is now part of journalism as well. so they tweet, they write, they blog, they go on television. they are journalists. what i think is happening is we're going to end up in a position where there has to be a redefinition essentially of what a journalist is. i think it would be absurd to expect you to regulate, have regulation for every single person who's on facebook and twitter because then you're not far off from saying we have to

regulate the content of text messaging and so forth. it's absurd. so i think there has to be a definition of what a journalist is, what a media organization is. and there, this is where i have some sympathy for the print industry, it's not just about the print industry. >> well, i'm sure that's right. the problem is as lord o'donnell made clear that you've not merely got to capture where we are at the moment but do it in such a way to where it's relevant 20 where you'll be in five years' time. >> and i think that's difficult because if you think that ten years ago facebook, google, twitter, youtube didn't even exist and now they are dominant within this space and the newspapers are struggling to catch up. and as rupert murdoch himself said, in their mind being ripped off the whole time for content. that's a difficult -- now, you've been given the specific

area but i think in terms of this debate it's developing so quickly that -- but i've heard you many times and i read you in the transcripts talking about the elephant in the room. maybe for a while the elephant kind of has to be parked a bit because i still do think if you get the press -- the new pcc whenever that becomes, and however it's constituted, if that works better than its predecessors, i do think that will be a big impact on the way the rest of it, the blogosphere and so forth develops because again, mooeg people aren't stupid. they can work out who knows what they're on about. when you see which of these websites get lots of traffic and which don't, it does tend to be the ones that invest properly in journalism and do real stories and so forth, and hopefully the best get to the top. >> well, the great problem is that you so define the issue

that it is incapable of any sensible resolution. and that's a pron. >> but i sort of sense that the press who have -- who i since fear most, what you may conclude, are hoping that first you and then the politicians will say this is so complicated and it's changing so fast we can't do anything about it. i think if nothing is done given how we got to where we are now and the broader cultural issues that we talked about, i think then we will be missing probably the only opportunity that we'll have a for a generation to get this right. and i totally understand what gus o'donald's saying, but it's really not the role of legislators, let alone an inquiry, to say let's predict

what the world's going to be like in ten years and legislate for that. they have to take a decision based upon what's happening now. >> in lord hant's proposals, paragraphs 41 to 43, you make a number of points there. paragraph 41 i paraphrase without obvious carrots it's hard to see what good will and good faith will bring everyone into the sheep pen, as it were. paragraph 43. third line. perfectly possible to have a systems regulation accountability which carried the authority of the government. but independent of government, parliament, commercial-invested

interest. and then you furnish us with analogies oof regulatory spheres. and then you have some full authority. what do you say about the word structure? >> what do you mean by that? >> in other words, it's perfectly acceptable to have a system of regulation that structure frt government in part can confer. >> yes. let's take the legal services out leading to the legal services board. i think the fact that it's flown from an act of parliament gives it great authority. and i think the fact that parliament then can have recall upon its effective neness is a d thing. i think the fundamental weakness of the pcc has always been the fact that it's a self-regulatory body run by the people regulating it. so the regulator is regulating

those who have been regulated. without any real parliamentary oversight of any kind. >> what lord hunt says was that if you even go down that route there are enough parliamentarians who will really want to screw the press down. >> i know that's his view. and i say in my statement i saw lord hunton, i know that's his view. it's not my view. i think people are seized enough of how serious this issue is. and i think -- i'm worried the other way, to be frank. i'm worried that too many of the parliamentarians just want to turn away from this. the ones -- there's plenty who get a high profile with saying what they say on the let's regulate side of the fence. but i think my worry in relation to michael gove and some of the political leaders just want th