more generally the introduction of custodial sentences for of section 55. we have no wish to curtail legitimate and responsible journalism. and when the proposed balances were being designed, it was not considered they would have that effect. we are not aware paragraph 55 has caused any problems. this is a chilling effect since the dpa came into force. the balances were proposed and strongly argued for by the information commissioner to strengthen the protection of individuals' rights, to respect for their privacy. and then if i can look six lines into the next paragraph, but i have reviewed the proposals in the light of the important points which you and others have made. as i explained when we met, i was increasingly minded to consider inclusion of provision for the reasonable belief of someone at the time the offense was committed. i understand there will still be considerable anxiety about the potential impact of this measure.

therefore there is a case of reconsidering it in a slower time. then you say alongside this, i'm faced with the overwhelming need to achieve ascent for the bill by may, 2008, when the existing legal restrictions against officers taking industrial action otherwise terminate. taking all these factors into account, i'm making appropriate recommendation to colleagues, and i will be back in touch. so you're faced here, mr. straw, with arguably a double pincer movement. on the one hand you've got the press stirring up trouble, making the arguments you'd expect them to make. and we can analyze those in a moment. and you'd say even more importantly, you had to get this bill through by a particular kay because there are other provisions in it that were absolutely vital, is that it? >> yes. and it's obviously extremely hard for others outside or, say, for mr. thomas to comprehend, because it was my problem, not theirs. but it may be recalled that at

the end of august 2007, the prison officers association called an unlawful one day national strike and they gave us 15, 1-5 minutes notice of this. it led to huge disruption in britain's jails. it led to the firing of a whole wing of lancaster farms, it led to breakdown in order in a number of other jails and it was completely contrary to an agreement between the prison officer association had voluntarily signed, called the jirpa. please don't ask me what the acronym stands for, because i can't remember. they had voluntarily signed in return for the statutory bar on industrial action being taken from the statute book. now, they broke that agreement and also had given notice that they were going to terminate it in any event. the date of termination was the

8th of may. so absolute imperative, whatever else happened, was that i got this bill through both houses and into royal assent by the 8th of may. because we knew any way, given the state of mind of the leaders of the poa that they would go on -- almost certainly go on strike the next day and it would be a disaster. so i'm afraid other things became subordinate to it. so that's life, that's politics. so what was in my mind at this stage was that i might have to withdraw the whole provisions to increase the penalty for this legislation and then find another bill to put it in in the following session. so that was what was going on there. >> at a convenient moment, just take a few minutes to take a break. >> okay. >> all rise.

mr. straw, we understand this is, as you were, a classic case study. it had to be retained by a certain date for reasons extraneous to the merits of section 55. had it not been for that consideration and/or the pressure that you were under by the press, would your policy position have been either adhered to the original position. in other words, just up the sentence to include a custodial penalty, or were you in fact persuaded by the merits of the argument that the subjective/objective test should be introduced? >> that's a very difficult question to answer, mr. jay, because i became persuaded. if you follow -- have to work out why you were persuaded.

if i might just explain this about this deadline. the deadline not only meant that i had less time, but it also changed the balance of forces in parliament because although we had a majority in the house of commons, we never had a majority in the house of lords. and if the house of lords had decided to block the bill, as they could have done, or to delay it, i would have then been faced with a situation with where i lost the whole of the bill or i dumped this particular part. and indeed, i faced exactly that dilemma ten years before over the crime of disorder bill where a proposal to lower the age of consent for gay people to the same age as heterosexual people was defeated in the lords, and i was about to lose a whole of that measure. so i had to drop that part of it and introduce it simply. so what would have happened if i'd had more time, if we'd been

able to take this bill through in normal time, which would have been to the end of that session, which would have been october, 2008, i could have drawn breath and then, i think, found it easier to satisfy mr. thomas, who i wanted to satisfy, so i couldn't have the prisons going into meltdown. that was the difficulty. so i'd like to think that even in slower time i would have made the same judgment about the subjective defense that was inserted. but i can't say for certain. >> what happened subsequently is clearly explained in your statement, paragraphs 86 through 88. there was an effect at the prime minister's insistence a negotiation involving mr. thomas on the one hand and representatives of the press in the other. the end point of that

negotiation is section 77 and 78. the documents substantiate that. >> if i may say so, the one thing that wasn't -- i mean i would believe and still believe is that there was a clear understanding with everybody that these two measures would be introduced at the same time. now, subsequently there have been suggestions that we -- that we should have introduced, for example, just the additional defense rather than the penalty as well. and although the record is rather defective on this, i'm absolutely clear that the two went together. and i now regret the fact that i didn't then bring in the amendment to section 55 before the election. and i think it ought to have been brought in by now, but there we are.

>> i'll come back to that point about activation, but one participant wishes me to take up your point about conditional fee agreements, which you also refer to in the letter of the 12th of february 2008. because on the occasion that mr. mcclellan, mrs. brooks, mr. dakor saw you, not merely was the dpa discussed, but also cfas. we can see the views that you held on that matter on the second page of the letter of the 12th of february. first of all, in a nutshell, what were your views about cfas in media privacy cases in particular? and were you succumbing to press pressure about it? >> first of all, my views about cfas generally was they had not worked as intended, and that was

why this preceded this. there were already discussions with the senior judiciary about establishing what became the review by lord justice jackson. i think that was slightly later but it was certainly in the year. on cfas, i received a lot of representations actually from the regional and local press rather more than the national press about the effect on the finances of the regional and the local press of telephone way cfas were operating. and i recall a case which affected not my own local newspaper, which is the lancashire telegraph, but the adjacent one where for a very minor defamation where i think the payout was 3,000 pounds. and even that really wasn't

justified. the newspaper had to pay out thousands and thousands by way of costs. as a citizen as well as a politician, i'm very concerned that we should not lose the regional and local press. i looked at this, whichever -- i think it was a society of editors who represents the regional and local papers. but they had made representations to me, provided a lot of data. there was also strong representations, however, from the nationals as well. and i thought they had a case, quite a strong case. to cut this short, i then followed it through and i decided that we should reduce it from 100% to 10%. i got ministerial colleagues' agreement to that without any difficulty. as it happened in the rush of

legislation as we approached the general election, that proposal was then subject to what i can only describe as an ambush in the particular committee that looked at it. and so it fell. it would not have fallen but for the election. >> were you lobbied by those in favor of maintaining the existing panoply of arrangements in relation? >> yes, i was. the people who represented plaintiffs in these actions. i can't remember exactly which law firms it was, but they were lobbying. there was some people in the commons who were concerned about what i was proposing. and i remember going through a lot of contrasting evidence about the effective defamation

claims on newspapers and i think lord justice jackson had a view about this as well. >> he certainly did. but let me take a point away from lord justice jackson's comprehensive review, not merely of defamation but of costs generally, and ask whether this is a relevant consideration. there's got to be a bit of a statement surrounding it. before conditional fees, libel, privacy, defamation was very much only open to the wealthy. legal aid wasn't available for it. therefore, you took on what were perceived to be the wealthy newspapers at your peril, and, therefore, that area of litigation could be kept comparatively under control.

the effect of cfas was to, as it were, to move the boot onto the other foot because then people who did not have money but who could persuade lawyers that actually there was a wrong here that stood to be righted could take it on with massive risk as to costs on their newspaper because not only was the success fee, this doubling up of costs, but also everything else, i don't need to describe it all to you, but that actually changed the balance in a way that not merely impacted adversely on the economy, economics of the press or indeed the bbc, it doesn't matter who, but also increased the potential scope of the available remedy for those who didn't have money.

and i just wonder whether by just dropping to 10%, it's relevant because i'm looking for ways and thinking about the way in which these sort of issues should be resolved, whether by dropping to 10% or removing it and removing the insurance recovery, all these possibilities, you haven't just moved the boot back onto the foot that originally occupied it. now, one wouldn't be surprised that the press would think that was entirely desirable in the public interest. equally, one wouldn't be surprised if those who are concerned about their ability to go to law would be concerned the other way. >> yes. my -- what i -- my view is this. i did not want to go back to the situation where the boot was

only on one foot, which was the one you described before cfas came in and where it was in practice impossible to take proceedings for defamation unless you had a very long pocket yourself. just impossible, and that gave the press too much power. but i also took the view for reasons that i have explained that i thought the balance had shift today far in favor of plaintiffs. and some of the cases i looked at in some great detail were, frankly, completely unmeritorious. i mean they really were unmeritorious. but nonetheless -- >> and then the risk is newspapers will say it's going to cost us half a million pounds to fight it, therefore we'll buy it off for a very small sum. >> it was a subset of the abuse of the cost system, which we've ended up with, with most insurance, which wasn't ever

intended but it's the way it's come out. just going back to lord justice jackson, i'm sorry, i haven't briefed myself on this. but my recollection is when i was discussing whether it was appropriate to make this change then, and i'm pretty certain that lord justice jackson took a different view from me on this, but i can't remember, that he produced or his office produced quite a lot of evidence about whether i was correct in claiming that defamation actions were having this effect. but i looked at all this and came to the judgment i did. now, you can never be certain when you make a policy change. my view is it was to rebalance it reasonably satisfactory, and if it didn't, in three or four years' time, you could balance it again. but given the fact that lord justice jackson's proposals overall have broadly been taken into law, i assume that to a

degree, sir, the landscape has changed a bit anyway. >> i think that's right. but the reason i have gone into that discussion with you and would welcome your view is because at an earlier stage of the inquiry, one of the things that i have said that i would like to think about is whether whatever mechanism one puts in to place, if one changes what is to be proposed in any meaningful way, would be the question of some form of arbiter system which permitted privacy, small libel claims, all that sort of breach of confidence type litigation to be dealt with, perhaps inquisitorially in a way that was far cheaper, far quicker, and provided a far

better outcome for everybody with the possibility of course that points of law could come up to the courts and be dealt with as usual. i'd be very interested in your view on that. an i'm sorry to say i frequently have taken mr. jay out of order and it's too bad. >> would you like my view, sir, off the top of my head or would you like me to submit a memorandum about it? >> well, i'm very happy for you to defer and consider it if you're able to, because there are a couple of other hooks in your statement which i intend to pick you up on. >> on which i'm going to be impaled, yes. >> all right. >> so i will send it in a supplementary statement. thank you. >> the issue of activation of section 77 and 78, it never happened. >> no. >> is that a matter of regret? >> yes, it is. i wish i had done it before the election. i can't remember why i didn't.

but anyway, it's a wider issue about activation of legislation and my view is that there ought to be time limits by which sections of legislation have to be activated because otherwise parliaments will undermine it. it's a wider issue. >> well, it is, because if you go back to criminal justice legislation -- >> the 2003 act. it's absurd. and if there were that discipline on ministers and officials, then the laundry list in legislation would be much less and we would have to think through more carefully the consequences. >> next please, mr. straw, general questions about media

influence on public policy, paragraphs 114 and following. just pick up some isolated points. paragraph 119 on page 02559 where you refer to periods when pressures from the press can be intense, and then you mention sara's law, which i think was a "news of the world" campaign. >> yes, you're right about that. so both were perceived by rebecca -- when she was editor of "news of the world." yeah. >> in terms of the intensity of the pressure, can you expand on that, please? >> well, the -- i mean it was greater over sara's law than it

was over prison shivs. but newspapers decided to run a campaign. that's how they sell papers. and in the light of the death of sarah payne in, i think, 2000, mrs. brooks developed a relationship with her mother. and they put together this demand for the equivalent of what was in the united states, known as megan's law. here it became sarah's law which in broad terms would have meant that people in any one area would have been able to access the names of those who were on the sex offenders register. now, i can understand why they wanted to do that. we all want to protect our children. on the other hand, i was pretty

certain this would lead to more trouble and more criminality than it was going to resolve and there were better ways of controlling the predatory instincts of sex offenders than having them subject to people outdoor their doors. so i was resistant to this and i was strengthening my resistance when in ports mouth, as everybody now knows, someone who was a pediatrician was misunderstood to be a pedophile and. and i've seen the effects of sort of -- understandable but concern on the behavior of crowds of all sorts. so that was my -- that was my view. i thought we should do plenty of

other things to strengthen the law against sex offenders but not that. and i haven't got all the detail, but we had a disagreement with mrs. brooks. as i said right at the beginning of my evidence, i'm very much of the view that people like secretaries and justice ministers need to understand and reflect the concerns of the mass of the population by what it feels like to be a victim of crime, and i've tried to live by that all my political life. and i don't subscribe to the view of some of the metropolitan interest groups that -- there is too much bias toward the interest of the perpetrator than the victim but you have to have a balance here and you have to be able to maintain public order and to resort to a mob is not appropriate. and we are not the united states, as everybody knows. united states is one jurisdiction, it's 51. what happens in massachusetts or

maine is completely different from what happens in texas. >> how persistent was her lobbying of you over this period? >> i'm afraid i'm slightly vague on this, but it was fairly persistent. but this was in the period after the murder of sarah payne in 2000. when i left as secretary in june, 2001. and it's worth bearing in mind that at that time there was a lot of briefing going on. that i was too soft, and so on. and, others maneuvering because for my position. but anyway, we got through all

of that. >> how about the specific point or the general point, mrs. brooks was made representing the views of her readers and in the end? >> it is striking in my talks to the editors and the senior executives of the popular newspapers that they believe this. i think that is, it has a truth behind it, but the sons of the daily readers are my constituent, and you can't have a position in public life which editors do as much as politicians and plead as your excuse for and other wise abject position that you have asked the readers or the constituents what you should do with your

conscience and taken their view, because first of all, they don't have a single view. and not only do, and i mean i have spent a lot of my politics coming from talking to my constituents and organized ways through open-air meetings and resonance meetings and so on and the same person may have a different view in the space of ten minutes, so what you have to do is to try to make judgments about what they are saying to you. i mean, most of the people got their lives to lead. they are not people who use argument as day-by-day as you and i do, mr. jay, or as journalists do. so at one level i understand entirely what mrs. brooks is saying, but on the other hand it is trying to evade responsibilities that have to be the judgments of editors'. >> and now going back to the

immigration in paragraph 120 and is there anything that you can help us on paragraph 123 and that is the thomas venable case. >> well, if i can make this point on immigration, because it is something that i have been looking at recently. everybody wants to control immigration, and i understand that, and interestingly, that's the view of my asian heritage constituents in my constituents as much as my white constituents, but literally the same newspapers which are calling for restrictions in general, when they are faced with a particular case will then say, oh, no, we should make an exception there, and so that is exactly happened to me when i was secretary when i had a man with no case to stay in the country except he had been here

evading the law for 12 years, and turned into a hero by the "daily mail" as it happened. and if you are the person who has to make a decision, it is really, really tricky, and it also means that the public opinion becomes quixotic or you are invited to take a firm position over the law and the people who should be observing the center just lay down, and then when you get a man who is sentenced to 30 years in jail escapes from jail for 19 months and spent 36 years on the run, mr. ronnie bix, he is regarded as some kind of hero, and you are accused of being unfair to him, when you decide that he should stay in jail a bit longer, so it is a -- these things are -- you have to cope with them, but the -- i wish sometimes that the newspapers would hold up a mirror themselves and compare and contrast the positions in general with the issues in particular. and what happened with mr. venerable, it is happened in the end of my period as justice

secretary, one rather, and i am afraid i can't remember which one, mr. jay, but i had committed an offense -- he had been committed of an offense of internet porn, and there were demands from the papers for the injunctions which weren't lifetime ones to prevent their new identity being released. face to be withdrawn and for further details to be given, and the press were desperate to find these people. again, i understand that, but if the identities of these people had been disclosed, they would have been at very serious risk of physical danger. injury certainly, and worse possibly. and yet the papers, some of the