1
1 MR MAX MOSLEY (recalled)
2 Questions by MR JAY
3 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Mr Mosley, you've previously been
4 sworn in in the Inquiry, some considerable time ago.
5 Rather a lot of water has passed under the bridge. You
6 took up my invitation to consider the criteria for
7 a regulatory solution. I'm very grateful to you for
8 doing so.
9 A. Thanks for the opportunity.
10 MR JAY: Thank you, Mr Mosley. We're looking now at your
11 proposal for a new system of press regulation, which you
12 submitted on 8 June of this year.
13 A. Yes.
14 Q. Are you content to attest to the truth of this
15 statement?
16 A. I do.
17 Q. You identify, first of all, four major problems. In
18 other words, could you explain to us about those?
19 A. Well, the first one I think is absolutely fundamental.
20 It's that at present if you wish to bring proceedings
21 for defamation or breach of privacy, it's extremely
22 expensive, so expensive that probably 1 per cent or
23 thereabouts of the population can afford it, and I think
24 that's completely wrong. It means that the majority of
25 people are deprived of any remedy in those areas.
2
1 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I'm not even sure it would reach
2 1 per cent.
3 A. Indeed. I think that's probably right. Because for an
4 injunction, something like £10,000 minimum. For trial,
5 you have to be prepared to put a million pounds at risk,
6 and I think yes, a very small percentage of people who
7 can do that.
8 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: It's one of the problems about
9 justice generally, but in this area it's particularly
10 expensive.
11 A. Yes.
12 MR JAY: Thank you. Your second, third and fourth major
13 problems may well be self-explanatory. The second one
14 depends, I suppose, on the view the Inquiry forms of the
15 evidence it's received as to the culture, practices and
16 ethics of the press. Then you make criticisms about the
17 PCC, which, again, are in issue before the Inquiry.
18 There's evidence about that. Then you refer to the
19 Internet.
20 Your basic proposal involves the creation of a new
21 body, the Press Tribunal, which you're going to tell us
22 about in a moment, but also renaming the PCC, or rather
23 creating perhaps a new regulatory body, which you would
24 want to call the Press Commission. So it's not, as it
25 were, son of PCC, but a fresh body; is that right?
3
1 A. That's right. I think the -- I think it very important
2 that the press play a major role in making the rules,
3 and indeed the current Editors' Code Committee -- it's
4 not perfect but it's perfectly usable. It's just that
5 it needs enforcing. I believe that there's a strong
6 argument for, on the one side, having the body that
7 makes the rules, and then, entirely separately, a body
8 that enforces them, which body would never come into
9 contact with most of the press because they'd observe
10 the rules. It's only if they broke the rules they'd
11 come into contact with the enforcement body.
12 I think keeping those separate then overcomes any
13 suggestion of state control of the press, because the
14 only thing you'd need a statute for would be the body to
15 enforce the rules. The body that makes the rules
16 could -- it needs, I think, more outside representation
17 than it has at the moment, particularly as it would, in
18 fact, be the successor to the Editors' Code Committee,
19 which is, of course, entirely editors. I think we need
20 the public to be involved in making the rules, but then
21 that can be a non-statutory body, provided there's
22 a statutory body to stop breaches of the rules.
23 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Do you have a view upon the extent to
24 which serving editors should remain responsible for
25 creating the rules?
4
1 A. I don't think they should create the rules but
2 I completely see that they should play a part in the
3 discussions that lead to the rules. I don't think they
4 should be excluded completely.
5 If I may, I have a great deal of sympathy, in a way,
6 for the press when they say, "We don't want outside
7 interference", because I spent 18 years running a body
8 that was responsible for all of international
9 motorsport, not just Formula 1, and what one dreaded was
10 well-meaning people from the outside coming and
11 interfering in something that they didn't fully
12 understand.
13 If I could give you one quick example: when Ayrton
14 Senna was killed in 1994, the entire resources of the
15 Italian judicial system focused on the question of why
16 did the car crash. Now, on the roads, that's exactly
17 what you want to know. You want to avoid accidents, so
18 why the car crashed is relevant. But in racing, they're
19 always going to be crash. They're operating at the
20 limit of human ability. So the interesting question was
21 not why did he crash, but why did he get killed and what
22 can we do to make sure that when they crash -- because
23 it's inevitable -- they won't get killed? And there was
24 us focusing on the question that mattered, and ten years
25 of proceedings through the Italian judicial system
5
1 focusing on the question that didn't matter.
2 That is an illustration of something which I think
3 everyone understands, that if you've been in an area for
4 30-odd years and you have expertise, you really do know
5 what matters and what doesn't matter, but the quid pro
6 quo of being allowed to get on with it is you must
7 succeed in what you're doing. In other words, you have
8 to stop killing people. In our case, you mustn't kill
9 the spectators, you mustn't kill the drivers, or you
10 must do every reasonable precaution to avoid it.
11 I think it's the same with the press. I think they
12 should be allowed to get on with making the rules, but
13 with outside help.
14 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: The parallel may not be perfect,
15 Mr Mosley, because it may be that in your motor racing
16 example, both systems wanted to achieve the same
17 ultimate goal -- namely safer motor racing, or with less
18 risk -- whereas it may be that the public and the press
19 have slightly different objectives in connection with
20 the publication of material.
21 A. Sir, up to a point, but the thing is that I think the
22 objective of the press is to inform the public about
23 things which they need to know, which are of
24 significance, plus entertain the public, and those are
25 perfectly legitimate aspirations, and equally the public
6
1 want that.
2 I think they only come into conflict, the public and
3 the press, when the press wants to do something that
4 impinges on the rights of the members of the public.
5 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: But they do impinge then, and there
6 isn't that degree of disconnect in your motor racing
7 example.
8 A. This is true, sir, but I think that's why one needs then
9 a sort of long stop, a safety net, whatever one likes to
10 call it, of a regulatory -- a statutory body that can
11 actually stop the press going too far.
12 MR JAY: Mr Mosley, in terms of the tribunal that you wish
13 to see set up, you recognise that it will need
14 a statutory underpinning for all sorts of reasons, not
15 least Article 6 of the Convention, because people are
16 going to be forced to use it; is that correct?
17 A. Yes.
18 Q. Can I try to understand one or two characteristics of
19 it, page 00476. This is a tribunal which will also deal
20 with issues of accuracy, where there may or may not be
21 a cause of action at law; is that right?
22 A. Yes. I think there are a lot of complaints,
23 particularly from groups of people, that they or their
24 activities are misrepresented by the press, and there
25 should be some mechanism for questioning the press when
7
1 they do that, if they do it.
2 Q. So the remedy if there weren't a cause of action would
3 be correcting the inaccuracy but would not be to award
4 damages, but there may be the possibility of a fine
5 because you refer to fines --
6 A. Indeed. In that particular case, I would envisage that
7 the journalist and the representative of the group would
8 come in front of an adjudicator and it would almost
9 certainly get settled there and then, because a decent
10 journalist will recognise if he's got it wrong.
11 Q. Do you visualise, as part of your PC system, the Press
12 Commission, that there would be an anterior requirement
13 for complaints first to be dealt with within the
14 newspaper organisation before going to the tribunal?
15 A. That's ideal, and of course, sometimes in an emergency,
16 if the story's about to be published and you want to
17 stop it, that might not be possible, but generally the
18 first port of call would be the newspaper.
19 Q. In other aspects of your system, there would be a prior
20 notification requirement but it wouldn't be an absolute
21 requirement, in my understanding of the third bullet
22 point on this page. One would have to demonstrate
23 a strong public interest reason for not notifying; is
24 that right?
25 A. That's right. I think there's been the difficulty which
8
1 was alluded to when I first gave evidence, about there
2 is a public interest in not notifying but there tends to
3 be a confusion between the public interest in the
4 subject matter and the public interest in the question
5 of notification itself, and I'm concentrating there
6 entirely on notification itself. But there are -- there
7 could be circumstances where it would not be in the
8 public interest to give notice, but they're very rare,
9 and when that arose, or when a newspaper thought it
10 arose, under what I'm suggesting, the newspaper would
11 approach the tribunal ex parte and say, "We're thinking
12 of publishing this story. We think it's not in the
13 public interest to give notice; do you agree?" And
14 I think that would be a safeguard for the newspaper on
15 the one side but also for the member of the public who
16 is the subject of the story on the other side, and would
17 avoid the situation where the entire decision is taken
18 by the editor, and of course somebody's life can be
19 ruined instantly.
20 Q. Wouldn't it be better, though, for the advice to be
21 obtained by and received from the PC rather than
22 the tribunal, since there might be a perception of
23 conflict of interest if the tribunal were then
24 subsequently to adjudicate on the reasonableness of the
25 advice it gave?
9
1 A. I think if the tribunal gave the advice that it was in
2 the public interest to withhold, then the newspaper
3 would be in the clear, because it can't do more than
4 that. I think if it approached the PC about that, the
5 Press Commission, then there could be a conflict of
6 interest because they, after all, are the people making
7 the rules and you cross that border between rule-making
8 and rule enforcement.
9 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: They couldn't be entirely in the
10 clear, because the person affected must be able to
11 challenge the invasion of privacy in some way, and
12 I think Mr Jay's point is that if you've gone to the
13 tribunal and got an order, then it's quite difficult to
14 see how the person affected could challenge an order
15 which had already been made.
16 A. I think they wouldn't necessarily be challenging the
17 order; they would be challenging the breach of privacy.
18 So I would have throughout the breach of privacy is what
19 they're going to complain about.
20 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I see.
21 A. And then they could say, "Well, the tribunal made
22 a mistake. It should never have said this could be
23 published without notice. I think an adjudicator or
24 even a judge would have given me an injunction." But
25 that would not in any way prejudice a claim for breach
10
1 of privacy arising out of the story that was published.
2 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Do I gather that you're saying that
3 this would be definitive; in other words, the publisher
4 couldn't go ahead then and publish, even if he was
5 damned?
6 A. I would say no, he has the right to publish, but very
7 much at his own risk, because if then the plaintiff
8 comes along and says, "But you were told by the tribunal
9 not to publish and you did", I think that would be
10 a case where the tribunal would impose, if the case be
11 proven, a substantial fine.
12 MR JAY: Thank you. You're proposing a network of
13 adjudicators who would be provided in the same way as
14 perhaps immigration adjudicators or employment judges in
15 the statutory jurisdiction which apply in those cases.
16 Can I ask you, please, how the Internet would be brought
17 within the scope of this tribunal?
18 A. I think that's a very, very important part, because
19 there are a lot of cases now where things happen at
20 local level on the Internet, for which there's, for all
21 practical purposes, no remedy.
22 For example, if a group of school children are
23 bullying another schoolchild on Facebook, or if on
24 Facebook or Twitter they are abusing one of the
25 teachers, nobody can do anything. Unless the parents of
11
1 the child happen to be extremely rich or the teacher
2 happens to have a large private fortune, there's nothing
3 they can do. It's very local and it just needs dealing
4 with. With a system of adjudicators, which can operate
5 right down to local level, that could be dealt with.
6 That's an immediate problem that could be dealt with
7 immediately. More broadly on the Internet, when
8 somebody's in America and they're blogging offensively
9 about somebody in England, that is something that must
10 wait for the evolution of, I would say, international
11 conventions, which are bound to come, but that doesn't
12 stop us putting in place a mechanism to deal with what
13 is actually the main problem at the moment from a pure
14 fairness and justice point of view, which is these local
15 abuses, where there have, I believe, been suicides.
16 Q. Thank you. In terms of the procedures, you're
17 contemplating an informal system, that lawyers will
18 rarely be there. It will be free of charge to both
19 parties, but the adjudicator would have power to -- you
20 call it wasted costs. That presumably is designed to
21 cover frivolous or vexatious cases; is that right?
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. In terms of the powers of the tribunal, most of what you
24 say is self-explanatory, but there may be two
25 significant issues. The first is: how would cases be
12
1 sent to the High Court, or rather on what basis? Would
2 it be the tribunal taking the view that it's simply too
3 big a case, too important a case, to be dealt with at
4 tribunal level?
5 A. Exactly. I think that if it was simply too big to be
6 dealt with in this way, and too difficult, then it might
7 have to go to the High Court, but I believe those cases
8 would be rare. I think that -- I probably shouldn't say
9 this in this forum, but I think there is a tendency,
10 particularly in defamation, to overcomplicate things, to
11 make things very sophisticated, very intellectual, very
12 complicated, where actually the essential issues are
13 relatively simple. I believe if you have the two
14 people, the journalist and the subject, sitting there,
15 in the overwhelming majority of cases it will get sorted
16 out.
17 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Did you see or have you read the
18 evidence of Sir Charles Gray?
19 A. Yes.
20 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Because that's the impact of the
21 Early Resolution scheme to which he referred.
22 A. I think there's a great deal to be said -- I think if
23 you get people together early on and they meet as human
24 beings with somebody there mediating -- the adjudicator
25 in this case -- there is a great tendency to reach
13
1 agreement.
2 I can think of a little case I had with one
3 newspaper where the journalist wrote something -- he
4 shouldn't have written it. It took weeks. It cost the
5 newspaper a five-figure sum, and it is a journalist
6 I know, a sports journalist. It could have been sorted
7 out in ten minutes. I could have explained to him why
8 it was wrong, he would have seen the point immediately
9 and that would have been that. I think there are a lot
10 of cases like that, but once it gets, dare I say it,
11 into the hands of the lawyers, it tends to get very
12 complicated.
13 MR JAY: Thank you. The other possibly significant point is
14 that there's power in the tribunal to prevent
15 publication of a story.
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. In other words, to issue an injunction. A very few
18 other people have argued for that sort of power, on the
19 basis that injunctive relief, almost as a matter of
20 principle, really, should only be ordered by the High
21 Court. Why do you feel that a tribunal of this sort
22 should have that range of power?
23 A. Because if it doesn't, we would be back to a situation
24 where the only people with a proper remedy for breach of
25 privacy will be the rich, because only the rich could
14
1 afford to go to the High Court, and I think we
2 absolutely have to have a procedure where if somebody
3 who has no money knows that a story's coming out that is
4 a clear breach of privacy, that they should be able to
5 go somewhere and get someone to tell the newspaper not
6 to print it. The obvious place is our tribunal, and if
7 you weigh the sort of principle that these injunctions
8 should only be issued by the High Court, which I can
9 understand, against the fact that if you insist on that
10 principle, nobody's going to be able to afford to do it,
11 or hardly anybody, it seems to me justice requires that
12 the tribunal have that power.
13 Q. There may be an issue as to whether it's a contempt
14 of -- well, it would be a contempt of the tribunal to
15 disobey an order of the tribunal, but whether statute
16 could confer express powers on the tribunal to treat it
17 akin to a contempt of court. Maybe we'd have to think
18 through that.
19 A. I would have thought that with something like
20 the tribunal, all it could do is impose a fine, but as
21 we're talking about fines which are potentially quite
22 big -- because I think the fines should be expressed in
23 a percentage of group turnover rather than actual
24 figures -- then I think the disincentive to breach the
25 order would be significant.
15
1 Q. Yes, so the power to award a substantial fine if you
2 disobeyed the order of the tribunal, that would cater
3 for -- or might cater for my concern, since only
4 a brazen newspaper would wish to run the risk of such
5 a significant fine.
6 A. (Nods head)
7 Q. Would there be power in your tribunal, if it detected
8 prima facie evidence of generic or systemic breach of
9 the rules, to refer the matter to the PC for
10 consideration?
11 A. I don't think so, because I think once the PC's made the
12 rules, then the tribunal would enforce them, and one of
13 the rules obviously would be that where you had
14 harassment or systemic breaches, the tribunal would take
15 action, and if you take -- let's take an extreme case.
16 The pursuit of the McCanns in the Daily Express. That
17 would be -- at a certain point, the tribunal, had it
18 existed then, would have said to the Express: "This is
19 not acceptable", and imposed a significant fine. If it
20 had continued, the fine would have been very significant
21 indeed, and undoubtedly Mr Desmond would have given
22 orders to stop.
23 Q. So the function of the PC then is only as a rule-making
24 body. It's not there generally to set standards, to
25 enforce standards outside the sort of activity which
16
1 the tribunal would be undertaking? Have I correctly
2 understood your position?
3 A. The position -- my suggestion is that it would make the
4 rules and it would set the standards, but the
5 enforcement of the standards and the rules would be
6 a matter for the tribunal. So clearly there would be
7 some -- there's always an element of judgment in these
8 things: have the rules been broken? Have the standards
9 been observed? But those judgments, in my submission,
10 would be taken by the tribunal.
11 Q. Yes, I see.
12 A. I think, if I may say, the essence of it is the
13 separation of powers, and I think if you're going to
14 have a proper system of functions, you have to separate
15 the legislature from the judiciary.
16 Q. Might it not be appropriate to have a lesser form of
17 sanction? I think the only sanction is fine, but in
18 less serious breaches of the rules, why not have a power
19 to admonish or publish an adverse adjudication, which,
20 although if that were the sole sanction would not be
21 sufficient -- I think we can agree about that -- might
22 be appropriate for first-time offenders, if I can put it
23 in that way, and the less serious cases. What do you
24 think about that?
25 A. I think that's entirely reasonable, and obviously there
17
1 would be a power under this system to order a correction
2 and order something to be printed that needed to be
3 printed, and there could be no fine, a nominal fine or,
4 in appropriate cases, a large fine. It's just
5 important, in my opinion, that the power exists, because
6 unless the tribunal has these powers, it won't be able
7 to enforce the rules.
8 Q. What interaction, if any, will there be between the PC
9 and the tribunal? Are you envisaging a strict
10 separation of powers between the two?
11 A. Strictly speaking, yes, but inevitably there would be,
12 if only informally, discussions, because the tribunal
13 might well say to the Press Commission at some point:
14 "The way you framed that rule would be difficult to
15 enforce, this is difficult, that's a problem," rather
16 like on a national level there is a certain sort of
17 intercourse between the judiciary and the legislature
18 and the government here, and I think that would be
19 entirely reasonable. But generally speaking, the two
20 would be separate.
21 Q. In terms of financing the tribunal, you're proposing
22 a small levy on publications with circulations above
23 a certain level. Is this just financing the tribunal?
24 What about the PC? How is that going to be financed?
25 A. I don't think the PC would really require, other than
18
1 very modestly, for a secretariat, any substantial sum,
2 so I didn't give that really any thought at all, but
3 yes, the tribunal would be funded by -- partly by
4 a levy, partly by the fines, but of course, because
5 the -- almost all the adjudicators would be part-time,
6 if the number of offences decreased, the costs would
7 decrease. If they increased, the fines would cover some
8 of it. So I think it would be partly self-financing.
9 The actual Press Commission I think would require very,
10 very modest financing --
11 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: But it still has to perform the
12 complaints-handling function, doesn't it?
13 A. I wouldn't have thought so, sir, no.
14 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Who would do that?
15 A. Well, the complaints handling would all be done by
16 the tribunal. So, for example, if there's a mass of
17 photographers outside the house, you would call up
18 the tribunal and say, "Can you please get this stopped?"
19 It would take care of all that that was outside.
20 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I see.
21 A. Sorry, outside rule-making, I should say.
22 MR JAY: It sounds as if the tribunal might be quite an
23 expensive body to maintain year in and year out, because
24 you would need -- I wouldn't say an army of
25 adjudicators, but you'd need a fair number of those.
19
1 Indeed, the range of functions we're referring to here
2 is significant, and the volume of business, in the early
3 stages certainly, may be quite high. Have you costed
4 it, Mr Mosley?
5 A. Well, crudely, very crudely. I have said that I believe
6 the maximum levy would be one penny per copy sold or
7 distributed. That, on the basis of the published
8 figures, would produce about £47 million a year, and
9 I think that's greatly in excess of what this would
10 cost.
11 If you go for a tenth of a penny per copy, that's
12 4.7 million, between 4 and 5 million. That ought to
13 cover it, because if there is a lot of activity, then
14 there are going to be some fines, and if you have
15 serious cases with big newspapers, you might get serious
16 fines, and it's difficult to predict what the level of
17 activity would be because what one hopes is that you
18 would have all these part-time adjudicators, which would
19 cost a certain amount to train and to instruct, but they
20 would actually have a day job. They would only be doing
21 this occasionally, and if there was not too much
22 activity, then the cost would come right down.
23 Q. Two issues, really, about the adjudicators. If you look
24 at analogous tribunals, whether it be employment
25 tribunals or immigration tribunals, they're appointed as
20
1 if they were -- indeed, they are -- judges. So the
2 state appoints them, the state pays for them, the state
3 pays their pensions and everything else, and insofar as
4 there are disciplinary issues, which of course happen
5 very rarely, the state administers that.
6 Your regime sounds more like a private regime where
7 the newspapers are solely responsible for funding, but
8 are we looking at adjudicators who will only be working
9 for the newspapers or are we looking at adjudicators who
10 might, for part of their time, be doing immigration
11 cases but occasionally be doing press cases? How do you
12 see it working?
13 A. I saw that slightly differently. I thought that the
14 adjudicators would normally be, for example,
15 a solicitor, and he would have his normal practice, and
16 he would be a little bit like senior members of the bar
17 who are part-time judges, or -- there are deputy High
18 Court judges and there are Crown Court judges.
19 Q. Recorders.
20 A. They do it on a part-time basis. So they would be paid
21 when they were active but only when they were active.
22 Q. Yes, but paid by the state. A recorder or deputy High
23 Court judge is paid by the state.
24 A. Paid by the tribunal. The tribunal's funds would come
25 from the levy. So they're indirectly paid by the
21
1 newspapers, but of course the levy and the fact that it
2 went into an independent body which then paid these
3 people would make it quite independent of the
4 newspapers.
5 Q. So the state could still, as it were, appoint and
6 directly pay for these adjudicators, but the state will
7 then receive the levy from the newspapers, which will,
8 in effect, cover the costs? Is that the system?
9 A. That would work perfectly well.
10 Q. The other issue is the expertise of the adjudicators.
11 Are we looking for people with no media expertise? Are
12 we looking for people who will sit on panels, in which
13 you would include someone with media expertise? How do
14 you see that panning out?
15 A. I was thinking of -- there are different approaches to
16 this, but I was thinking of senior solicitors who had
17 been on a special course about the sort of issues
18 they're going to have to deal with, and would have that
19 level of expertise, but they wouldn't be like
20 a full-time -- some of our leading solicitors who do
21 nothing else. They would have a good knowledge -- well,
22 they would have a knowledge of the law anyway, and they
23 would have a good knowledge of the sort of issues that
24 would come up, and then they would be kept up to date
25 with regular retraining and of course probably a monthly
22
1 newsletter, just to keep them on top of the thing.
2 Q. There may be problems there. I mean, one sort of
3 problem -- if your adjudicators are appointed from those
4 who are media lawyers, someone might say, "Well, he or
5 she acts for claimants, will come to the job with
6 a certain perspective; he or she who acts for
7 defendants..."
8 So there's that sort of problem, but if you go the
9 other way and say, "We're going to choose solicitors or
10 barrister of a certain level of seniority who are not
11 media lawyers", then they'll come to this perhaps from
12 a position of a level of ignorance, frankly. You can
13 give them some training, but they won't be well familiar
14 with the quite complicated issues they'll be asked to
15 adjudicate on. Do you see that difficulty?
16 A. I completely see that difficulty. The thing is that the
17 system -- and one has to say that right at the
18 beginning -- would not be perfect. Even what we have at
19 the moment that's beyond the reach of all but a tiny
20 minority of the population is not perfect.
21 So the first thing to say is it has to be free of
22 charge. You then have to reduce the level of
23 expenditure to the point where the state, society,
24 whatever one likes to call it, can afford it. It's then
25 a question of finding the most efficient way of
23
1 deploying the very limited resources which are
2 available, but it seems to me one must not allow oneself
3 to be diverted from the starting point, which is that it
4 must be free, and it must be free both to the claimant
5 and to the press.
6 You would certainly get -- some solicitors and
7 barrister who were not experts would probably make
8 mistakes, but that is inevitable if you reduce the
9 costs, and I would argue that there are even mistakes
10 when you have the enormous expensive procedures. But
11 the mistakes would be very few and far between.
12 Fundamentally, a lot of these issues are not that
13 complicated. It would be quite rare that it was
14 complicated. I mean, the really difficult cases, you
15 could send it to the High Court, to an expert judge.
16 Q. I'm not sure you don't underestimate the difficulties
17 here, particularly if there aren't going to be lawyers
18 representing the parties. You'll have adjudicators who
19 may be excellent lawyers generally, who may know very
20 little or nothing about media law, trained up to
21 a certain point, which will not be, frankly, a very high
22 point at the start, and then they're thrust in to
23 potentially difficult cases without a lawyer acting for
24 the parties to help them out. That could lead to
25 a fairly rough level of justice, some might argue.
24
1 A. It would sometimes -- sometimes inevitably lead to
2 a rough level of justice, but of course, you would have
3 the safety net of the High Court and things like that.
4 But in the end, the fundamental question is: should it
5 be free or not? If it has to be free, then I'm not
6 saying for one moment that the system I put forward is
7 the ultimate or the best. All I'm saying is it
8 absolutely has to be free, if you're going to have
9 justice and the rule of law applying to the entire
10 population, and then do the best you can.
11 I set out my suggestion for six requirements. The
12 first is that it's free, the second is that it should
13 not involve the courts or lawyers, and then also that
14 there should be the powers similar to the court, that it
15 should be quick, efficient and so on. I think those
16 requirements are absolutely right, and I would say
17 that -- what I was tempted to do was to say: well, in my
18 submission, we need to satisfy these six conditions.
19 Then I thought: if I do that, somebody will say, "Well,
20 that's fine. Your condition is it has to be free, it
21 has to replace the courts and so on; how are you going
22 to do that?"
23 So I thought: I'll try and set out, to the best of
24 my ability, a scheme -- a regulatory scheme which works
25 but without claiming that it's the ultimate. I'm sure
25
1 it can be improved. All I do claim is that whatever we
2 do should be available to the entire population.
3 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: What's important about what you've
4 done, Mr Mosley, is not the detail; it's the fundamental
5 principles which you believe ought to underpin whatever
6 it is we're doing.
7 A. Exactly that, sir, and it would be very presumptuous of
8 me to say I can sit down and produce the blueprint. The
9 only reason I've done that is so that I couldn't be
10 accused of putting forward something that couldn't be
11 done.
12 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: No, it's not at all presumptuous.
13 You're doing exactly what I invited you and a large
14 number of other people to do, to help me try to find
15 a way through that works for everybody.
16 A. Yes.
17 MR JAY: Thank you, Mr Mosley. Those were all the questions
18 I had.
19 A. Thank you very much.
20 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Mr Mosley, thank you very much
21 indeed.
22 A. Thank you.
23 MR JAY: May we move on directly to the next witness, who is
24 Dr Tambini, please.
25