Robert
Jay : Sir, the next witness it is Mr Peter Hill.
Peter Hill (sworn)
RJ
: Mr Hill, please sit down and make yourself comfortable. Your full
name please
PH
: Peter Whitehead Hill.
RJ
: You've given us two witness statements. They straddle our lever arch
files.
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: If you could look at the first file, which I think is
that one there,
and go to tab 21, you'll find your first
statement dated 15 September
of last year. I hope.
PH
: Yes. Got it.
RJ
: That is signed by you and has a statement of truth on
it. If you go
to the second file under tab 23, you'll
find your second statement.
Keep that one open, please.
PH
: Okay.
RJ
: We're going to go back to it.
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: Your second statement is dated 13 December 2011 and
again is signed
and has a statement of truth?
A. Yes.
RJ
: Do you follow
me?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: So this is your true evidence, is it, Mr Hill?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: First of all, questions about you. You were editor of
the Daily
Express between December 2003 and February
20 2011; is that right?
PH
: Correct.
RJ
: But before then, you worked at a number of papers, the
Mirror then
the Star. You became editor of the Daily
Star in 1998.
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: And moved across to the Daily Express in December 2003; is that
right?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: What are...
PH
: I worked at many other newspapers than that, though, in my life. In
the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday People, many local newspapers.
RJ
: Thank you. Those other national newspapers you haven't mentioned, it
doesn't matter, but it's right that you tell us. And it's an entree
into my next question. What are the differences in culture, if any,
that you've perceived between the different papers for whom you've
worked?
PH
: They're all extremely different. They all have a different world
view, they all have a different interpretation of the news, and
they're all part of the marvellous variety that there is in the
British press and which contributes to I think probably the most
marvellous newspaper groups in the world, because we have a great
press, we have great newspapers.
RJ
: Apart from differences in world view, which I think we fully
understand, are there differences in what one might call
organisational ethos or culture which you're able to define or not,
between these different papers?
PH
: In organisation, I think all newspapers are very much the same,
because newspapers have existed for a very long time and they've
developed certain ways of doing things, and newspaper men have gone
from one organisation to another and they've taken their methods with
them and I think there is a consensus in the way that newspapers are
run, very much.
RJ
: Thank you. May I ask you just one question about the Daily Star?
PH
: Oh yes.
RJ
: You made it into a very successful paper, I believe. You were
editor of the year in 2002. Part of your success, is this right, was
built on reality TV and reporting that, is that fair?
PH
: Well, reality TV became the most important thing for red top
tabloid newspapers around that time, when Big Brother was launched,
and it was immensely popular and still is immensely popular all these
years later. We recognised this, I think, probably more than anybody
at the Daily Star at the time and we got a lot of new readers by
reporting on it.
RJ
: Did you persist with stories over a long period of time more than
your competitors?
PH
: Yes. People in the business were astonished that I splashed the
front page on it 28 days on a run, but it was the right thing to do
because that's what the readers wanted to read about.
RJ
: This is Big Brother, is it?
PH
: That was Big Brother, yes.
RJ
: Okay. Paragraph 7, Mr Hill. Withdrawal from the PCC. It wasn't a
decision you made, although you were editor
6 at the time. Was it a
decision with which you were comfortable?
PH : I was not comfortable with the idea that we were withdrawing from self-regulation, because I felt that self-regulation was very important. But I was comfortable with the decision to leave the PCC at that time.
PH : I was not comfortable with the idea that we were withdrawing from self-regulation, because I felt that self-regulation was very important. But I was comfortable with the decision to leave the PCC at that time.
RJ
: For the reasons you explain; is that right? Or what
were the
reasons?
PH
: The reasons were many. Among them were that I think
we
felt that the PCC was no longer doing the job that it
needed to
do. There were other factors, such as in the beginning of the PCC, it
was generally accepted that
people who made complaints to it did not
subsequently go to law, but -- that was the convention. However,
that
had been abandoned and people had in fact started to use PCC
judgments or rulings to support legal actions, so that kind of made
it also a bit pointless.
We also did not really like the way that the
PCC was
being run at that time by various individuals.
RJ
: Can you be a bit more specific? You told us earlier
they were no
longer doing the job it needed to do. You've told us a moment ago it
was no longer being run
in the right way -- I paraphrase -- by
certain individuals.
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: Can you be more explicit?
PH
: I don't want to go into the individuals.
RJ
: Okay. What about no longer doing the job it needed to
do?
PH
:
I've
explained to you that in the beginning it was meant
to be completely
self-regulatory, but it -- and that it
was instead of the law. It was
instead of people going to -- it was to try to stop people --
ridiculous ― having to go into ridiculously expensive
court
proceedings and to resolve things in a more amicable way. For a
long time that did work, but in the end we
got -- instead of
individuals complaining, you got lots of legal firms getting involved
and it all got much more
legal than it had ever been. It used to be
much more of a lay thing, but it became a legal thing. So whereas
at
one time I might well deal with complaints myself, or;the managing
editor might deal with it, in the end we
simply had to get the legal
department to do all the complaints, because it was all legal.
Lord
Justice Leveson : But could the PCC award compensation?
PH
: No. No, the PCC could not award --
Lord Justice Leveson : Therefore, how could it ever stand in
place of the
law, which could?
PH
: It was for people who were not primarily
concerned with
6 getting compensation, but wanted redress of a
different
sort, such as an acknowledgment that a mistake had been
made and a correction in the newspaper. Because not
everybody wants
to have a financial settlement.
RJ
: I don't at the moment quite
understand what the
11 problem is here. You have two different
but
complementary systems. You have the PCC, which can't
award
compensation but which can achieve a form of
recompense in terms of
an apology and an adjudication.
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: And you have the civil law, which obviously is
interested in
compensation. Many people might not want
compensation, they might
only want what the PCC can
offer; are we agreed?
PH : Yes.
PH : Yes.
RJ
: But if the PCC makes a decision which is to the effect that the
complaint is rejected, is not the advantage then that you're unlikely
to get a defamation claim or
24 a privacy claim subsequently?
PH
: Not
necessarily. There was nothing to stop anyone disagreeing with the
PCC and being dissatisfied with it.
RJ
: Logically that must be right, but if the PCC has considered the
complaint and rejected it, you would be less likely to get a legal
complaint, wouldn't you?
PH
: Yes, I would have thought so.
RJ
: And it works the other way, that if the PCC accepts, upholds the
complaint, although that can't be
determinative, it gives the parties
a pretty fair steer
as to what might happen in a civil litigation,
doesn't
it?
PH
: Except as I explained to you, there was a convention
that people who
went to the PCC -- and it was no more
than a convention, but people
who went to the PCC did not subsequently go to law.
RJ
: That may have
been your understanding, but --
PH
: Well, it was the practice.
RJ
: But do you agree with me that there's nothing to stop --
PH
: No.
RJ
: -- a complainant going off to law? And the advantage of
the system
was that if the PCC upheld the adjudication,
although that wouldn't
be conclusive or determinative, you at the newspaper and the
complainant would have
a reasonable idea what the outcome might be in
civil proceedings, are we agreed?
PH
: Correct.
RJ
: Isn't all that an advantage rather than a disadvantage?
PH
: No, because what's the point of the PCC if people are simply going to
go to law anyway? Might as well just go
straight there.
RJ
: Okay.
PH
: Stop wasting everyone's time.
RJ
: I'm not going to ask you general questions about the
editorship of
the Daily Express, because we've covered that ground and your
evidence is very similar to that of
the previous witness. I'm just
going to focus on a few
matters before turning to the McCann case.
Unless, that is, there's anything you want to say which you feel
Mr
Whittow has not covered in terms of the general position of the
editor of the Daily Express, or you
might want to contradict?
PH
: I
don't know what Mr Whittow said, because I was
travelling.
RJ
: Okay,
my apologies. Can I ask you about private
investigators, paragraph of
your first statement.
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: You say you were not aware of ever using a private investigator at
the Daily Express.
PH
: No.
RJ
: To be clear, you did not become editor, as you've told
us, until
December 2003, and Mr Whittamore was arrested
in February 2003.
PH
: Right.
RJ
: When did you become aware of the Information
Commissioner's
reports?
PH
: I'm not aware of them.
RJ
: Even now? These are the reports "What price privacy?" and
"What price privacy now?".
PH
: No, I can't remember reading it.
RJ
: Did they ever enter your radar, Mr --
PH
: No, because it was never relevant to me. We never, to
my knowledge,
used anything of that kind.
RJ
: Because although it wasn't during your
superintendence
of the paper because it was beforehand, he
identified
a number of transactions which he thought were illegal
transactions of the Daily Express, and a number of
journalists. I
think it was seven journalists and 20-something transactions.
Wouldn't that information at
least have been of interest to you?
PH
: No, because it was nothing -- I didn't follow any of
those practices.
The regime completely changed when
I became the editor.
RJ
: What changes did you bring in?
PH
: Well, they were really changes in the way and the tone in which the
newspaper was run.
RJ
: But how did those changes, and you haven't yet been specific about
them, bear, if at all, on whether or not
private investigators would
have been used?
PH
: I would have expected the news desk to tell me if
anything of that
kind was going on.
RJ
: If it was going on before, it might have
continued,
mightn't it, and why would they tell you?
PH
: It was a
completely different group of people who were involved. All those
people, as far as I know, had left
the organisation.
RJ
: Who are the people you are referring to?
PH
: I don't know. I can't remember their names, I'm sorry,
it's a long
time ago.
RJ
: Is it your evidence that a number of people left,
and
therefore, because they left, you could be sure that
private
investigators were no longer being used? Or is it your evidence that
you have no idea at all as to whether private investigators were ever
used?
PH
: I have no idea.
RJ
: Okay. Can I ask you about public interest issues,
paragraph 27. You
were asked to identify the factors
you took into account in balancing
the private interest
of individuals against the public interest
when
publishing stories, and your answer is:
"When making
editorial decisions, I always used my long experience in the
newspaper industry to weigh up the question and come up with a
decision on whether to
run the story."
You haven't identified,
though, any factors; you've
merely referred to the fact, which is
undoubtedly the case, that you've got a lot of experience. Are you
able
to assist at all as to the factors which you took into account
and put into the balance?
PH
: Every story's different from every other story, and you
can't make
rules on these matters because the line
between the public interest
and the interest of the
public is sometimes quite vague, and you have
to make
a judgment on each story. And you do that on the basis
of
your experience and your knowledge. And discussion
with your
colleagues and your legal department.
RJ
: You haven't referred here to
any of the principles laid
down in the PCC code, have you?
PH : Well, I take those as read.
PH : Well, I take those as read.
RJ
: Okay. Can I ask you some general questions about
politics? We've
heard from another witness that the
Daily Express moved its
allegiance from the Labour Party
to the Conservative Party, you
think, I believe, it was
some time before 2005 but can't recall the
exact date and the exact date is not going to matter.
PH
: No.
RJ
: But it was before Mr Cameron became the leader of the opposition; is
that right?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: Who made that decision to switch allegiance?
PH
: I made the decision.
RJ
: And in your own words, why did you make that decision?
PH
: Because the entire history of the Daily Express had been
that of a
right-of-centre newspaper. It had an enormous constituency of readers
who supported that view, and
I felt that it had been a huge mistake
to move the
newspaper to support the Labour Party, which had been
done by previous editors and administrations, and it
had, in fact,
cost the newspaper an enormous number of readers who had abandoned it
in despair. So I decided
14 that it was absolutely vital to return to
its traditional constituency.
RJ
: Was that decision taken with board
approval?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: Did it have the support of the board or not?
PH
: It had qualified support, because the chairman,
Mr Desmond, was a
strong supporter of Mr Blair, who was
then the Prime Minister, and he
was not really a – he was not a supporter of the Conservative
Party, but he
accepted that this was the appropriate thing to do.
RJ
: I think you're making --
PH
: And the board accepted that.
RJ
: Yes. I think it's clear from what you're saying that
2 the initiative
came from you --
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: -- and not from the board; is that right?
PH
: From me.
RJ
: As for your dealings with politicians, and we're talking
of those in
very high office, or in opposition in like
category, how often did
you meet with Mr Blair, Mr Browne and Mr Cameron, for example?
PH
: A couple of times a year.
RJ
: Were these one-to-one meetings?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: And from your perspective, what was the purpose of the meeting, if
any?
PH
: To exchange ideas and opinions.
RJ
: Insofar as you could tell, what was the purpose from their
perspective?
PH
: To find out what my readers thought.
RJ
: With what objective?
PH
: To producing the right policies for themselves.
RJ
: Was it in any sense in one case to keep you onside, or
in the other
cases to try and get you to change your
allegiance?
PH
: They never tried to get me to change my allegiance, but
clearly
politicians would rather you were a friend than an enemy.
RJ
: Yes. Thank you. Your second statement, Mr Hill, deals
with the
McCanns.
PH
:Oh yes.
RJ
: Of course, you've given evidence to the ParliamentarySelectCommittee about this, haven't you?
PH
: Yes, extensively.
RJ
: Can I take you to that statement and refer to a number of points.
At paragraph 2 --
PH
: What --
RJ
: This is in the second file under tab 23.
PH
: Oh, 23. Okay. Yes, paragraph 2.
RJ
: The question which was asked of you was in effect what
fact checking
your paper indulged in. Your answer was:
"That is a very, very
good question. In this particular case, as I explained to you, the
Portuguese
police were unable, because of the legal restrictions
in
Portugal, to make any official comment on the case."
Then I
paraphrase: they leaked things to the press
and therefore checking
the stories was not very easy. And then you went on to say newspapers
operate at high speed, et cetera.
I think the question I have is that
those very
circumstances, that you were dealing with leaks to the
Portuguese press, together with the fact that you knew
at the time
that it was going to be next to impossible to verify the truth of the
leaks, meant that you were
running a very high risk by running these
stories at all, weren't you?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: May I ask you, given that answer, why did you run that
risk?
PH
: Because this was an unprecedented story that in my 50
years of
experience I can't remember the like. There
was an enormous clamour
for information and there was enormous -- there was an enormous push
for information.
It was an international story, on an enormous scale,
and there had not been a story involving individuals, as
opposed to
huge events, like that in my experience and it was not a story that
you could ignore and you simply had to try to cover it as best you
could.
RJ
: You often published the same sort of story on the front pages,
though, didn't you, sometimes on consecutive
days?
PH
: Of course.
RJ
: Did you at any time, given your assessment of the level
of risk,
which was a high risk, put into account the
position of the
McCanns?
PH
: Of course. We published many, many, many, many stories of
all kinds about the McCanns, many stories that were
deeply
sympathetic to them, some stories that were not.
RJ
: Yes, but the
stories that were not were a little bit
more than unsympathetic. Some
of them went so far as accuse them of killing their child, didn't
they?
PH
: This is what the Portuguese police were telling us.
Cela ne peut être vrai. Personne n'a jamais cru que les MCs avaient tué leur fille, mais qu'ils pouvaient tout au plus avoir indirectement causé sa mort.
Cela ne peut être vrai. Personne n'a jamais cru que les MCs avaient tué leur fille, mais qu'ils pouvaient tout au plus avoir indirectement causé sa mort.
RJ
: Yes, but regardless of that, we've already covered that
issue, do you
accept that some of --
PH
: You haven't covered it with me.
RJ
: Just wait, Mr Hill. Do you accept that some of your
stories went so
far as to accuse them of killing their
child?
PH
: I did not accuse them of killing their child. The
stories that I ran
were from those who did accuse them,
and they were the Portuguese
police.
RJ
: These stories weren't going to find their way into your newspaper
unless you took the editorial decision to
publish them; that's
correct, isn't it?
PH
: Correct.
RJ
: You had a choice. You could either say, "No, the risk
is too
high and/or the stories are too damaging to the
interests of the
McCanns, I'm not going to publish
them", or you might say, "I
am going to publish them
because there is such a clamour for
information."
That's correct, isn't it?
PH
: I felt that the stories should be published because there was reason
to believe that they might possibly be true.
RJ
: So that was a sufficient basis : reason to believe that they might
possibly be true, so we'll whack it in the paper. That's true, isn't
it?
PH
: I don't use expressions like "whack it in the paper". I
find that to be a very judgmental expression.
RJ
: Yes, well, I don't actually apologise for it. I'm going to carry on.
At the same time, Mr Hill, you knew --
PH
: The fact of the matter is that this is a public Inquiry and I do not
believe that I am on trial.
RJ
: I'm sorry, Mr Hill, I'm just going to carry on.
PH
: But I think you are putting me on trial.
LJL : You're not on trial, Mr Hill. What we're looking at
is the culture, practices and ethics of the press.
PH
: Yes.
LJL : That includes the newspaper which you had the
responsibility and doubtless the honour to edit for many years.
PH
: Indeed.
LJL : And therefore, looking at the way in which you are
conducting that responsibility is important, and in relation to the
McCanns, the question does arise, given that you knew that officially
the
Portuguese police were not allowed to talk to the press, to what
you should be doing to check up or to work on the
validity of stories
that were being leaked.
PH
: Indeed.
RJ
: And the answer is what? What did you do to check on the validity
of those stories?
PH
: We did the best that we could do, which was not very much.
RJ
: Which was nothing, wasn't it?
PH
: I'm not saying it was nothing, but we tried our best.
RJ
: Okay. But against that, of course, you had another eye on the
circulation figures, didn't you?
PH
: One always has an eye on the circulation figures.
RJ
: You told the committee, I think it's also your evidence
to us,
paragraph 8 of this statement, in answer to
question 620:
"It
certainly increased the circulation of the Daily Express by many
thousands on those days, without a doubt. As would any item which was
of such great interest."
PH
: Yes. Would you like to carry on?
RJ
: Yes, of course:
"It also massively increased the audiences on
the BBC as their Head of News has acknowledged. It did this for all
newspapers."
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: That merely goes to support the point: it was the view of everybody
that publishing the story would increase circulation or would
increase viewing figures, wouldn't it?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: Was that something that you felt you could establish and
did
establish empirically in relation to the
Daily Express's circulation
figures?
PH
: On many days, yes.
RJ
: Because you looked at them at the time and your
assessment was, on a
day-to-day basis: this story must be contributing to an improvement
in circulation. Was that your assessment?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: But did you get the circulation figures on a daily basis
or on a
weekly basis?
PH
: A daily basis. That is to say, estimates on a
daily
basis. Because it takes some time for the actual
figures to be
validated.
RJ
: Yes. How long does it take for the actual figures to be
validated?
PH
: Perhaps a week.
RJ
: And when you looked at the actual figures, did that change the
picture or not?
PH
: Sometimes.
RJ
: We do have the data under tab 25.
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: For what it's worth, and this is absolutely nothing,
I am not able to
correlate, because I don't know when
the stories were published, or
discern whether there is
a trend in relation to circulation. All that
one can
see is that on Saturdays circulation tends to be much
higher;
is that right?
PH
: Yes, but that's all the time.
RJ
: Yes, yes.
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: Because what one would need is to be there on the ground at the time
and with expert knowledge of all that's
happening in the paper at the
time, is that so?
PH
: And all that's happening everywhere else.
RJ
: But your clear evidence is, is it, that circulation did go up with
the McCann stories?
PH
: I think so.
RJ
: That must have been, therefore, a factor in your
persisting with the
story, was it not?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: Together, you say, with the clamour for information and
the pressure
for information. Is that so?
PH
: Yes.
RJ
: Mr Fagge gave evidence, and I just put it to you in
these terms,
although we have a transcript of it under
tab 40, that you were
obsessed with this story. Would
you agree with that or not?
PH
: No.
RJ
: And why not?
PH
: Well, I can see, perhaps, why Mr Fagge would use that
word, but Mr
Fagge was not privy to my inner thoughts,
he wasn't part of my inner
team, and he would misunder -- I can see that he misunderstood the
reasons
that I used the story as many times as I did, but I've
already explained to you the basis for that decision,
which had gone
all the way back to my time on the DailyStar when I had realised that
it was -- that the readers
were more -- the readers continued to be
interested in the stories far longer than the journalists, and it
was
my policy to continue the stories and I followed it with many
different stories. It started with Big Brother, it
went on to
Princess Diana, various other things, and that had always been my
policy. It was nothing to do
with an obsession, it was more to do
with a method of working.
RJ : Yes. Can I just probe a little bit into that last answer. Would you accept that there's rather a difference between, on the one hand, persisting in the publication of stories relating to Big Brother, which frankly, whether they're true or not, who cares, and the --
RJ : Yes. Can I just probe a little bit into that last answer. Would you accept that there's rather a difference between, on the one hand, persisting in the publication of stories relating to Big Brother, which frankly, whether they're true or not, who cares, and the --
PH
: Some people cared a lot.
RJ
: Well, the persistence of publication of the stories in relation to
the McCanns, where some people might care
extremely deeply, because
whether or not they're true and whether or not they're capable of
damaging people is
a predominant consideration? Do you begin to see
that difference?
PH
: I perfectly see the difference. On the McCanns
story,
the entire country had an opinion about that story,
and
wherever you went, whether you went to a social gathering or, as
somebody said, to the supermarket, people were talking about it and
they all had an opinion about it, and these were opinions, these were
stronger opinions, and these opinions were informed by the
information that was coming from Portugal. Now, we were not to know
at the time that the Portuguese police were not behaving in a proper
manner.
Portugal is a civilised country, part of the European
Union.
We had no reason to believe that its police force was not a proper
body. So, as I explained to you,
there was an enormous body of
opinion on both sides of this story and you couldn't stop that. There
was no
stopping it.
RJ
: Apart from to stop publishing it, particularly
--
PH
: That wouldn't have stopped it, because you couldn't --
well, as
someone's explained, we now have the Internet,
we have Facebook, we
have Twitter, we have all these different things. Information is --
it's a free-for --
it's an information free-for-all that we live in.
So whether the newspapers stopped publishing would have
made no
difference. In fact, it might well have made it worse.
LJL : Was Mr Pilditch one of your reporters?
LJL : Was Mr Pilditch one of your reporters?
PH
: Yes.
LJL : Highly regarded?
PH
: Very much.
LJL : He told me that there was a problem
accessing the
police because of the secrecy laws.
PH
: Yes.
LJL : And he got the impression that a lot of the way that
this information leaked out was thinking
out loud, as a result of
which he had misgivings.
PH
: What do you mean by "thinking out
loud"?
LJL : I'm sorry?
PH
: I don't know what you mean by "thinking out loud".
LJL : The police thinking out loud.
PH
: Oh, the police thinking out loud.
LJL : Not you. And to which he said:
"I discussed my
misgivings with the news desk."
Did you get involved in a
discussion about the misgivings that your man on the ground had about
this story?
PH
: I'm sure I would have done.
RJ
: I think it did go a bit further than that as well,
that every
story went up with the moniker "legal please"
on it, didn't
it?
PH
: I can't remember.
RJ
: Mr Fagge told us in answer to one of my questions:
"In the
evenings, over a beer in Portugal with your colleagues, seeing this
obsession played out [that was his term, not mine] on the front pages
of the Express, weren't you troubled by the direction in which this
was going?
"Answer: Yes."
Were you troubled?
PH
: No.
RJ
: And why not?
PH
: Because I thought it was the right thing to do.
RJ
: Because?
PH
: Of what I've explained, that there was an enormous clamour for
information and I felt that this story was something that should
keep running.
RJ
: When all this went wrong, and it went very wrong, with a price tag
of £550,000, what, if anything, happened between you and the board?
PH
: Nothing.
RJ
: Was there no gentle criticism of you?
PH
: There's been -- there have been hundreds of libel cases in newspapers
and newspaper administrations have got to live with them.
RJ
: Mm. Were your board aware that circulation was improving as a result
of these stories?
PH
: I'm sure they were aware of the business points of the organisation,
yes.
RJ
: And may that have been the reason for the absence of any criticism of
you, do you think?
PH
: I think editors are normally left to run their newspapers.
RJ : Thank you, Mr Hill.
LJL : Mr Hill, thank you very much indeed.
PH
: Okay.