didn't know, she was very much the labor equivalent of margaret thatcher. she had very strong opinions about people. she kept a list in her head of journalists she liked and was willing to talk to and journalists she detested. i remember there was one called nora bellof on the observer. she used to spit about her quite literally. and the lobby, of course, in those days was very -- the press lobby with a capital l was very tight, 60 journalists, sort of free masonry. so they -- it was even more incestuo incestuous. i'm not saying how i would have operated in that system, except i think it's a wise politician that keeps a bit of distance. >> back on 34, mr. straw, you

look at the sun and the it's importance to the labor party. we ask you to elaborate on what you mean halfway down where you see pl muir day has played a power game with political leaders. >> yes. the political leanings of most newspapers in britain are predictable. so the daily telegraph is going to be supporting the conservative party at the daily mirror they're supporting the labor party. from back then, there were only two newspapers that are unpredictable. one is a guardian and the other is the three of the four at news international papers. the guardian normally supports the labor party, but selects elections where we need them. it supports the liberal

democrats, so it did in 1983 and did again in 2010. so sort of fair weather friend. it won't support the conservatives, but it certainly sun predictable about whether it will support the labor party. and for the muir dorsch paper, he purchased those papers. it's always supportive for the conservatives and perhaps it did in '97. what i perceive of mr. murdoch's approach with the sun and "news of the world" was that he rec n reckoned that his political influence would be greater if as it were his support was available in return for what he thought he could get out of it. i don't mean some daily, because i've seen no evidence of a deal.

he thought there was something in it. now, they might -- a benign view of this is that the people at news international took a ve very -- people at news international like other newspaper executives were very concerned about whether their readers and that they spotted between '92 and '97, their readers would support lake so she followed them. it's a more complicated set of relationships than that. i think that the per semgs i've had is mr. murdoch has enjoyed the fact he's been willing to play with political leaders in the way that the senior executives in the other papers that have not because their loyalty ultimately is predictable. i hope that explains what i meant there. >> there are three ways perhaps one can analyze the power game. one is just a piece of enjoyment

that doesn't lead anywhere. the third is it's the most extreme is the game which is deadly serious because underneath it there's an express deal. there was something in between. i understand this. you said in return for what he thought he would or could get out of it, can i ask you to explain that. >> look, i've never had this conversation with him in my life, and i've obviously met him. he's had more than a paragraph of conversation with them. this is just my sense. well, he's very interested in power. he for his own sake because you don't get to that position running huge international empires without being interested in power and i think to help him consolidate his non-newspaper interests in this country. i was struck when he was

explaining that the print media titles kribtd to 2% or some small percentage of the total revenues of the news corps. that there was a degree of din ingeneral knit about the point being made, because the -- the power that those print titles provide is much greater than 2% of the total certainly in the united kingdom, and it goes back to the point that he made, which is that the print media have the greatest influence of all over the news values and the headlines on all the other medium. and i assume that mr. murdoch reckoned that if his support for the winning party, which is basically what he sought available that would open more

doors in government when it came to things like media regulation, licenses, regulation of football and so on. >> is this what you're giving us here is an analysis of what you believe his motivations to be rather than perhaps direct evidence of anything he has told you or others may have? >> sorry, i've never had a bit more of paragraph of conversation with mr. murdoch in my life. i have no direct evidence. this is my surmise. new before -- mr. murdoch is a busy man. he's a very successful man. like anybody else in a senior position he thinks about what he's doing and why he's doing it. that's the conclusion i've drawn. >> okay. in paragraph 35, you refer to the power of mr. murdoch's papers. one might note that you prefer to use that word rather than mr. campbell's influence.

>> well, from the point of view of the -- on the receiving end it felt like power. it may be helpful to provide a bit of explanation as to why people who were on the front bench in the labor party in the 1990s -- in particular you've been through the experience of the '92 election believe that we have to get the papers on side. if i may, i'll dug out of my files one example of this which was the main story in the sun newspaper on the first of april just eight days -- eight days before the 1992 election. and the main story was this i'll put this in as evidence, i'm all right jack.

i was saying education minister lectures us on the scandal of private education for the luxury of his 200,000 pound cottage, his town house and 400,000 pound flat. and i was branded a hypocrite for preaching from the luxury of three homes. it's true. my wife and i between us own three houses, and that was perfectly public. what the sun was doing in the '92 election was working over each senior member of the labor front bench and this had an effect. if you want on the receiving end of it it felt like power. it had an effect on my constituency. i remember doing an open air meeting that wednesday. you could feel support pulling away pulling away. my majority scarcely moved,

although it did not reflect on the national swing. this was minor. it had one consequence talking about power every burglar in west oxfordshire knew that the one day of the year we were not going to be in the house was the election night. we got burgled. a lot of property was stolen. i raised that subsequently with the sun, and got the glazed eye look. that's one of the things. tough. but the more important point was that he was mercilessly treated by the sun over quite a period it did contribute to our defeat. i took that as power. and we were there for once mr. blair came into office in '94. we all shared the same view that if humanely possible, without completely compromising ourselves, we should do our best to get the papers on side. it was better than the alternative. i've been through 18 years of opposition. >> i'm sure there was no question mr. straw of completely compromising yourselves. some might ask well what about

partially compromising yourself? >> i thought you were going to ask that as the word came out of my mouth. there wasn't -- it's more complicated than that. i mean mr. blair was very much in favor of the new labor agenda. let me say so was i in the terms of terms of the crucial decision on that, which was to change clause 4. i mean i published a pamphlet about that in '93 and nothing to do whatever to do with "the sun" or anything else. in fact i think they all regarded the pamphlet as rather boring. i don't think there was -- there was any compromise of our integrity. i mean some -- if you take the area that mr. blair had been involved with between '92 and '94, and i took over between '94 to '9, which was law and order

and crime, there were people who were saying, our critics sort of on the liberal left, they were saying we were only doing this because we wanted papers like "the sun" and the news of the world on the site. that wasn't true. i was doing it because we believed in it and we hadn't been satisfied with the very soft approach which the labor party had taken on crime before that, which had lost support of an awful lot of our working class supporters. >> per the social contacts, paragraph 38, mr. straw, you say during my period as justice secretary i would often travel to london on a monday morning from the west oxfordshire station. this is the record books used to use the same train. after a while we made arrangements to meet up and sit together for the journey. but then you say i paraphrase. this stopped some time in 2009 when she became chief executive. i think it was formally in

september 2009. in general terms, were the discussions which you had with her on the train other than social or private? >> no, they were -- not much of them was social. they were private in the sense of neither of us were writing it on a blog. they weren't social, they were political. they were sort of -- we'd talk about what was in the papers, what was -- we'd gossip about personalities, that sort of thing. and a lot of the time we can't get on with our work. she had work to do, i had work to do. so we weren't nattering the whole journey. i never put a figure to it. but in any case, these are crowded trains, so there are all sorts of people around earwigging so there was a limit to what one was going to say either way, otherwise it would have appeared in somebody else's newspaper. >> fair enough.

and then you say you attended her wedding in june, 2009. >> yes, i did. yeah. >> a number of specific points which might arise out of relationships with news international. what was, as mr. lance price has said was the case, the labor party's policy on cross media ownership quietly dropped within six months of the cayman island trip, which was in june or july of 1995? >> i don't know the answer to that because i didn't have any direct involvement in media policy. so -- i wish i had, but i hadn't. i have no information on why it was dropped at all. >> now, mr. dakos claimed labor could not have committed british

troops to war in iraq without the implacable support of these international newspapers. do you agree with that view? >> no, i don't. let me say that since i was completely inserted and involved in the decision to commit troops in iraq, i can't ever remember a conversation along the lines of mr. dakers where we were discussing whether we went to war or not and said we can or we will because the sun newspaper or the press is going to be on the side. it would have been disgusting if that had been part of the conversation. this is about putting british troops in harm's way. and bluntly, it was much, much more serious than that. so, no is the answer. >> of course you were foreign secretary at this time. we've heard evidence, somewhat

unclear evidence, about free telephone calls mr. blair and mr. murdoch in march of 2003. are you able to shed any light on those? >> i'm not. i think i was vaguely aware that they had taken place. it's quite i think harder to get across to those that weren't involved the pace of events at this time. i mean i -- at the beginning of march, on the 5th or 6th of march i went off to new york for what turned out to be the last of the series of security council meetings. and then after that, i must have got back on a saturday, i guess, between then, which would have been the 8th of march and the 17th when the cabinet made its decision to go to war, my whole time was spent trying to get support of the security council for a second resolution.

and frankly, who mr. blair was talking to on the telephone was neither here nor there, unless it was about getting support for the second resolution. >> but how important was it politically to get a newspaper on side, because the people public would have to be convinced? >> well, it was certainly important, sir, to have the newspapers on side, and it was my recollection that the national newspapers were not the only papers that were on the side. and it is -- yes, of course it's far better to have them on side than not have them on side, so i'm not trivializing it, but it wasn't ever part of the discussions that i was ever involved in. it's worth bearing in mind that there was widespread support for military action. i know there was also widespread opposition for military

action, and the opinion was polarized. but what people are -- many people are now doing is looking at those events with the benefit of hindsight, including the failure to find any weapons of mass destruction. and the awful aftermath, the chaos of the aftermath, after the fall of saddam. but if you're looking forward, it was actually very different circumstances and bear in mind that the whole international community had said in resolution 1441 that saddam posed a threat to international peace and security. 1441 as far as i was concerned and the british government was concerned, that had authorized military action if there were a further material breach by saddam, which we believed and still believe there was. so there was a huge weight of international opinion as well as opinion here in favor of it. in europe, half the member

states of the european union were in favor in military action. a number of those put troops in. so this wasn't what is now presented as sort of an evil minority activity at all. there was a very large consensus behind it. and it's also just -- sir, if i can just mention this. bearing in mind that the conservative party, not all of them, but the conservative party was strongly in support of military action as well, and that was bound to affect the character of support from the newspapers in practice. >> mr. straw, move on to the topic of media influence on public policy. first of all, section 12 of the human rights act. now, we have the text of section 12, which is really the end point in the process under tab 6.

>> do you want me to look at it? >> please. you'll know this actually. >> i do actually know it by heart. but i'll try not to -- >> maybe someone following this will understand the significance of section 12. it is a procedural provision dealing only with the stepping stones as where the high court is considering whether to grant any relief which might bear on the article 10 rights of freedom of expression. >> yeah. yep. >> and there are two key points. the first key point is the high court weren't granting relief unless satisfied more likely than not that publication should not be allowed, which to be clear, that sets a higher bar than the general law in relation to getting these injunctions. >> yes. >> and then the second point is

under subsection 4, the court must have particular regard to the importance of the conventioned right to freedom of expression, particularly in journalistic cases, and also will have regard to matters such as public interest to the extent that it may become available to the public, and of course any relevant privacy code. the privacy code would be capable of accommodating the pcc. >> yeah. >> so that's what section 12 is about. you deal with this in your witness statement, paragraphs 100 to 111, mr. straw. >> yep. >> see if we can summarize it in this way. there were two concerns which came from the press, but who was leading the press cause, as it

were, was the then chair of the pcc. >> yes. >> first of all, though, was a concern about a burgeoning or clandestine privacy law which the human rights act in general might hold or usher in. and secondly, there were concerns about preaction with strength. which is what section 12 is about. can you tell us about how those concerns evolved and how you addressed them? >> yes. lord wakeham himself has written evidence and gives a lot of factual detail about this. but once the white paper called bringing rights home or rights brought home, the white paper was published and the bill obviously various interest groups weighed in to say they

thought the bill as drafted might adversely affect them. one group is the churches, the roman catholic church and anglican church were very concerned that it might affect them. so the result of those negotiations was what became section 13. and the other was the press. and they raised these concerns through representations originally to lord irvin who was handling the bill in the house of lords. it started in the house of lords, not the house of commons. and then lord wakeham raised them on the floor of the house. and he said in his written statement i think that he did that not as a representative of the press, but to reflect his own opinions. but he happened to be chairman of the pcc. and i was very anxious to achieve a consensus on this legislation. because i have a principle, which is that major

constitutional change should only go through if there is some kind of greater legitimacy, either through consensus in parliament or through a referendum. the conservatives were opposing the bill, that second reading, and i was anxious to see whether we could reach an accommodation so we could get their endorsement to it. and also i thought part of what lord wakeham and the pcc was saying was reasonable. if i may refer you to paragraph 103 where i refer to the letter lord wakeham wrote to chris smith on the 12th of january, 1998. he said there are two central problems. one was issue of prior restraint. i thought they had a point there. but lord wakeham went on to say there was a second issue which you described as far more serious, which is whether the pcc should be a public authority within the terms of the bill.

now, in fact the pcc was not public authority under the terms of the bill. but what the pcc were trying to secure was a situation where the media were out with impact of the bill, so you just throw a ring around them somehow and they'd be excluded from any adjudication on the conflict in the articles 8 and 10 or anything else. now, that was just impossible to meet. and i had to explain that to them and we didn't meet it. it's also simply incorrect for anybody now to say that nobody knew that human rights would lead to a law of privacy. of course they did, they said so. but as i brought out in my gareth williams lecture, we all knew it was going to do that. that was discussed endlessly in parliament. but to be truthful, the politicians thought they'd like will the end of law of privacy,

have the means to the strand and the law lords, because it's tricky if you're a politician with the law of privacy and we thought their lordships on the bench would do a better job. so it's really a question of passing the parcel to them. everybody knew what was happening. >> so the pcc wasn't listed as a public authority for the purposes of section 6, but as a matter of ordinary principles of jurisprudence, it would have been so deemed and there was an opinion to that effect. >> there was a great debate about whether in drafting the bill that you had a list of public authorities or whether, as happened with the freedom of information act, for example, they are scheduled. as a matter of certainty whether an authority is public or not. whereas in the human rights act, it's structured in a different

way. i haven't got section 6 in front of me directly, but there is reference to what the definition of a public authority, but it's much broader than that. but what the -- but of course the cause of public authorities and what the pcc had worked out was since the courts of public authorities as public authorities have to follow the obligations of the human rights act and the convention articles, they would, therefore, reflect those in their judgments and, therefore, indirectly the pcc or its members or anybody else would be subject to the convention. and that was what they were worried about. >> the second point, the law of privacy would develop on a case-by-case basis once articles 8 and 10, as it were being incorporated. that was a point which lord

bingham made at the time in 1998. >> and aside from the fact that it frankly suited the convenience of politicians on both sides to have the courts do this job, i also thought the courts would make a better job of it, because this balance is to be able to achieve in respect to privacy is so tricky, because where as i said in my gareth williams lecture, defamation is easy enough in one sense because you're dealing with what is and what isn't true. with privacy, what you're dealing with is whether something which is true should nonetheless be kept private, and that is very complicated. and i think the courts have done a good job in developing -- >> of course one of the consequences of that, possibly it's not relevant for this inquiry, but it's important worth making. that the flak has been directed to the judiciary rather than to

anybody else. >> i accept that, sir. and i also think and i said in my gareth williams lecture that that there is a need now for parliament to amend the law so there is a tort of breach of privacy which applies -- doesn't just apply to public authorities, it applies to everybody. so i think it is time for parliament to accept the responsibility we passed to the judiciary. >> the media genesis to section 12, would you kindly look, mr. straw, under tab 9 to the debate. >> i wonder if i could -- to reduce the bundle, i left some of these -- if i could ask somebody to pass me the other tabs, would that be all right? >> of course, of course. >> my researcher there can pass them to me. i made a very poor judgment that i'd never be asked about them.

>> this is the second reading of the bill obviously in the commons on the 2nd of july, 1998. it's an internet printout and runs 21 pages. >> anyway, if you don't mind, if you go on, i'll find it in due course. >> no, no, no, no. i'd rather you -- >> i think i've still not got number 9. >> well, let me give you mine. >> i'm very sorry about this. >> no, no, don't worry. >> i've got ten. i've got three. >> normally in order numerically. >> sir, what i did -- >> it doesn't matter. >> to reduce the bundle on the train, i thought i don't need those. that was a really stupid thing to do, and i'm very sorry.