papers were not simply willing to think about that, but anyway, i stuck to my guns on this. >> well, you make a sequence relating to the future in paragraphs 124 to 128 about the vices of what we call pre-grieving speeches. of course, what it did include but not necessarily limited to leaks. >> no, i mean the prebriefing is as though there are leaks of speeches, but we have to absurd -- let me start this again. we have to separate statements to parliament from nonparliamentary occasions, and

statements of parliament and the rules are clear, and in which parliament is clear to be the first group to hear what a ministry is saying, and so you must not prebrief or publish in advance. and that is often observed in the breech and sometimes the draft of a statement, although it is less frequently, is leaked, but more often there is briefing by a said special adviser or a minister concerned about what they are going to do. and then there are nonparliamentary speeches where you have to make a speech, and it is quite an important one, and that the journalists in the press office say, what are you going brief this out, i used to be told. i used to go along with it, but i used to also say, that i thought that it was kind of absurd, because you ended up having the speech briefed out.

so, the people who turned up bothered to turn up to listen to you already knew what you were going to say. and i just think it is better if everybody said, look, that if you are going to make a speech, and you want to hear it, come along or after the webcam ras and the rest of it people don't have to necessarily there be there, but it is a trick on the public on all of this stuff. so you get the today program desperate for the early side of the speech so that their man at 6:32 who sets up the political agenda every morning can say breathlessly and confidentially what he had learned will happen later in the day, and all of this stuff is going on, and i wish that we as politicians could agree that this is not good for anybody except for those who sell drugs for blood pressure, and we need to calm down. >> but ultimately that is not to do with me? >> certainly that bit about the drugs and the blood pressure. >> but it does not really bite on the relationship?

>> it makes the relationship more incestuous, and the issue of how about parliament learning first have nothing to do with you, of course. it is a symptom of how this relationship has become too incestuous, and it does that to extent. >> now, move on to the police. there are two points based on what you have been saying a moment ago when you were discussing with mr. jay, editors believing they are reflecting the views of their readers. i i'm very much like your view on the subargument or maybe it is the overarching argument that

also lies behind that, that editors get their legitimacy because nobody needs to buy one of their papers on any day, therefore, they face an election every single day, and if nobody likes the views, they won't buy the paper. >> well, they certainly get the legitimacy from the aggregate of the readership, because for sure if you are selling 3 million newspapers, you have more influence and authority and clearly legitimacy, i think it is a slightly -- i would not use that word to get their authority and influence. >> okay. >> from the aggregate and the weight of the readers. so you will have more influence if you are selling 3 million as opposed to fewer. and everybody knows there is an issue with the total number, because the "financial times" only sells 300,000, but they sell to the right 300,000. i think that is how they put it. as i say talking to the newspaper editors, it is almost

struck by the neurosis of the readers and the product that yes, they are tested everyday and this is a case that the market in newspapers in britain is more competitive than anywhere else in the world and they have more national titles, and some titles are doing better than others and thinking of the "daily mirror" it is outselling all of the other papers, 30, 40 years ago and now it is not so they are right to be neurotic about this, and right that the authority and the influence is coming from this and therefore, as it results to the lowest common denominator of the prejudice of the readers and i don't believe that the readers believe that really. >> thank you. the second point is that you have provided graphic illustrations of inconsistent approaches, and you said that

newspapers should hold up a mirror the themselves, and that actually raises another question which is the fact that with very, very rare exceptions, nobody holds the press to account at all. and i'd be interested in your view at some stage about whether that's just a fact of life and everybody has to live with it or whether there is force in the view that organizations such as full fact should be given a greater prominence in order to just try to improve standards. >> i think that it is a cultural issue as much as an issue of regulation. >> if a more effective system of regulation which i set out in

the gareth williams' lecture has to have a platform of statute would help, but it would more effectively put the mirror up to the press where they have breached certain standards, but there is a bigger issue here about the culture of the newspapers as compared to what happens in newsrooms, where i certainly think that the press need to be most examining of what they are doing. much more examining. and if i talked early in this evidence about how they report politics and parliament, i am consistently amazed that newspapers complaining about low turnout, and at elections. i think that 20 years ago, it was much higher, and not understanding they have contributed to a significant

degree to a culture in which politics is seen as boring, seen as completely self-serving and it is not for smart people to get involved in, and even to the point of voting. so of course, there is going to be a -- that has an effect, and they don't really think about that. they are highly quixotic and the same newspaper can be praising a politician one day, and then i can be using the cuttings, and then the next month i am the greatest thing since sliced bread and then the next month, paternity is being questioned even by the same people who have written this, and they have no memory at all and it does not matter what you have said before. because previous statements can not never be adduced from a newspaper, and where as quite

properly they can against politicians. and one thing that many newspapers are lacking in is an understanding of what it feels like to have to make decisions. yes, you need it in society, but there is a wire schism in what takes responsibility of decision making, and i don't use that as an excuse for decisions which i may have got wrong, but they, i mean, they sometimes think that you have all of the time in the world to make a decision, but you don't when you have a box of papers to get through and one is conscious of what i have said as minister that if i missed a detail that i could go down the track maybe ten years, i will be rolled over missing that detail

and least not by the press, because you have to be quick and very careful and move on. you have to be understanding of that and it goes back to the willful refusal of the press collectively to develop an understanding in the minds of their readers about how governments in this country and democracy actually works and they reduce it so much to personalities and to conflict which some of it is personality and some of it is conflict, but not as much as they claim. >> does that carry into the criticism that mr. bolton was making yesterday or actually i think he was referring to somebody else that errors are not simply errors, but there is something going on behind them? >> sir, errors by the media? >> no, errors by the politicians. in other words, there is some not merely, i think that i have used the word yesterday not merely a cocker, but something much more underlying a failing. >> i am sorry, i did read mr.

bolton's written statement carefully and not the oral evidence. >> well, he came from a book that he had written or a piece he had written. >> well, i am not sure of the point he is making, because occasionally, there is a conspiracy behind a decision, but i'd never taken part in a conspiracy and i never saw any of my colleagues doing that, but i have taken part in plenty of because that is life. as john major said so famously the only people who have never made a mistake are those people who have never made a decision which i call journalists. so you do make mistakes of

course, and when you do, you seek to apologize for them and move on. but that's life. >> all right. all right. >> the detail of what you say in paragraphs 51 and following, i'm not going to ask you about. i'm going to ask you about the issue of culture. >> yes. >> particularly your take on what the culture was as between senior members of the metropolitan police service and journalists. >> i have got no direct knowledge of this. and as i said in my hands of my written statement, i have been through all of the records that the home office could find of this period as home secretary, and the issue of media

relations, itself, is very rarely mentioned. i mean, my view from being briefly practiced in the bar of the 1970s when the evidence was emerging of endemic corruption of the police service including london and having taken a close interest in the whole issue of police a accountability from the very first year of the house of commons, because i had a private members in on that, was that the relationship was not altogether satisfactory one and i certainly didn't take the view. i worked on the basis that i have worked in every police station, every police station, the local and the national papers would have a stringer who

is a police officer or member of the staff who they were paying, and that was also just regarded as a fact of life by senior officers and very difficult to pin down, and yes, that was my very clear view. the other point, mr. jay, which is very important which i did not properly bring out in my written statement, and to take account of is this, the whole of my relationship with the police, particularly the metropolitan police when i was home secretary was framed above all by the "lawrence inquiry." i had become home secretary very early in may. i had made no commitment about

an investigation into lawrence before the election or at the election, because i did not think it was appropriate, but one thing i did was to call for the papers and look at what had happened or had not happened. and then at the end of july, 1997, three months after taking the job announced this inquiry. and as both lord blair and lord brings out, that was deeply traumatic the metropolitan police, and particularly with lord condon who was my commissioner from 1997 until he retired which was early 2000, and it was absolutely dominant, so i just needed to be a bit what we were dealing with there was much wider failings of the met which came out more dramatically than they did in the course of the inquiry. >> the "lawrence" support --

"lawrence" source was of course, leaked and are you able to comment about the report surrounding that. >> the inquiry report was to be published on a wednesday which is the 22nd of february and i received it the previous week, and we were very concerned at the home office about the possibility of it leaking. it was kept very closely under wraps and in the home office and i'm absolutely had total confidence in everybody who handled it within the home office and even the few who did. downing street people wanted to see it and see something for the prime minister's box, and i was very concerned about this, because i was concerned about the general culture that had built up in downy street of

leaking. so i was very reluctant about them seeing anything before the monday. in the event as i recall as we agreed to produce the summary, and it was a part of a paraphrase, and quite deliberately so, and this only went to them. and then on the saturday evening, and i was coming back because i was coming back, i got a call from my private secretary claire sumner, who was on duty, to say that it had leaked, because i was so concerned about the effect of this leak on the metropolitan police particularly and on the lawrence family and also on parliament because we had been under great criticism for prebriefing which i did not

go in for myself, but with the government, and i obtained an injunction to stop the "sunday telegraph" and then subsequently lifted because they had printed copies and it was huge rumpus that i was trying to stop the presses, and it was absurd. if i had been telling them not to publish the report, then of course, public interest to publish it, but it was about whether one newspaper was entitled to public extracts, and for all sorts of reasons, not least, the fact of the summary which was written from number 10 didn't go anywhere else, and for other reasons that leak came from number 10 and not from alastair campbell, because i don't believe he knew anything about it, but it came from 10, and i knew the person who was the leak in the inquiry and it

took some time, but we weren't able to take some discipline reaction against them, but we knew who they were and they subsequently left working for downing street, but i was angry about it and furious >> can i ask you about the general topic of spin and labor. some would say that you were tangential to outside of the spin circle and therefore sort of looking in. >> i take that as a compliment if they do, and i hope i was. >> your statement suggests that you generally speaking were and you say that you are not perfect. >> well, none of us is perfect. but i disliked that. i understood what happened but i thought it was bound the blow up in our face, which it did, and i thought it was unnecessary

because of we just got on with being ministers and telling parliament what we were doing it would mean to use a share price analogy, of course, the price would not be parsed as much, but not down as badly as it did. instead of winning 404 seats in 1997 and 401 in 1990 in 2001 if those were the numbers, we won 30 or 40 fewer, but that probably without -- that might have been a good thing for the labor party and the democracy. >> with the causes though, how would you analyze those? >> well, the spin, it goes -- it partly, mr. jay, goes back to our concern to develop a close relationship with the papers which arose particularly during

the 1980s and the 1992 election, and to the highly competitive nature of the british press so what i saw was that gradually, some newspapers or some journalists in some newspapers were being favored by downing street or some particular ministers. and it was a conspiracy is too strong of a word, but they had these little groups, and it was very, very incestuous and very, very unhealthy. now it is suited the ministers of the number 10 concerned at the time and also suited those journalists because they had privileged access to information, and they were getting exclusives over their colleagues in the same newsroom, and over other newspapers, but i think it is a bad idea. i didn't like it. and i tried to get on as far as i could doing things in a different way. interesting enough, mr. darling

did, too, and there was some problem with the approach we adopted and the fact that we survived in that government and whilst others didn't. >> arguably, there is polar positions like the ones that mr. airborn adopts and we will see in his piece that it is all of the political classes, and then in the position of mr. campbell, it is more of the fault of fourth estate. culture of negativity, everything else, do you have a different pope ssition, a mid position. >> yes, i have indicated that the truth lies in between, and there are high responsibilities on both journalists in the media and journalists in the newspapers, and i am not trying

to be polly anna-ish, and that is the wrong metaphor, but the balanced approach lies in the middle. we fed each other. mr. airborn is completely all of the wall in what he writes, but mr. campbell is not completely correct either. >> one can debate the diagnosis, but what if anything can be done about it in the free democracy? >> well, i think that the process of this inquiry is quite doing something about it, just as the process of the "lawrence inquiry" and the process of it and leaves a side the specific recommendations. change the nature of policing. because you saw over the period

of that inquiry that aspects of policing which the public did not generally know about, and it was a mirror for the police. now, this inquiry, and this poll process is a mirror for journalists and many journalists are very serious people and intelligent and bright and thoughtful and concerned about the future of journalism in the democracy. and, you know, they want this -- they want to think about it. i think that there are changes in the system of the regulation will also help, and i'm fairly certain they will, because they will end this with luck, and i'm anticipating your recommendations, but my view is

that you have to have some external regulation of the press, and that is not as mr. dakert would say protect freedom of the press, far from it. but the press cannot go on as they have been claiming what every other institution in the land requires external regulation which includes the legal profession, and they were right up front claiming that the legal profession could not continue to regulate itself, and it includes the city and in the front of saying that the city could not go on regulating itself, and then they say hang on a second, the press ought to be able to protect itself, and the press has failed and it has to be taken into account that the only reason that any change s in the regulation have ever been made, ever been made in terms of self-regulation have been a late response by the press to the possibility that they will at long last be subjected to the statue of

regulation, and you go through all of the post war inquiries and the other ones saying they have shifted when they saw a tank coming down the road, and i think that frankly that the last 50 years of experience have shown that you have nothing external and it would be good for the press as well, because most journalists want much higher standards. >> the expression to some of the views in the gareth williams' memorial lecture, and one sense of course was extremely curiously timed july 12th in the eye of the storm under tab two.

>> yes, i have got that. >> we are not going to read it out, mr. straw, because we can preread it, but can we pick up a number of key themes and to the extent which at all you wish to modify those in light of the events that have occurred since july of last year or indeed what happened in the inquiry, and not just external events, but to such an extent that you picked things up from the inquiry. this is the concept and the reality of self-regulation that you have begun to touch on page 3 of the internal numbering and you describe it as a weak substitute at the margin for legal obstruction. i think that you probably would like to explain in the wording the context of the historical -- >> well, one point i make in the

preceding paragraph, and the subsequent one is that some people in the press have presented the sufferings first, and two legs good and two legs bad dichotomy and implied that at the moment, there is no external regulation anyway, and there is quite a lot in terms of the defamation, and the law of privacy and what you have is principally about the sanction of the failure of the substantive law at the top of it which is that this system of self-regulation, and so there is a break there, but you may want to go on. >> on page four you describe the issue of privacy which you describe as much more legally

and privacy able to handle, and here it is not inaccuracy, but truth. and it should remain private. is it your position now that consideration should be given now to a separate privacy talk? >> yes, i say that in the course of the lecture later on that there ought to be and that we ought to pick up what calcott proposed for a separate -- later on. >> page 8, isn't it? >> page 8. yep, yep. and there isn't -- and for the reasons of which i am set out there the public should expect the same breach of copyright and tort, and as we get to it by the