Drew McMullan...And the Eighth Grade Threat

It is admitted that if this stood alone it would, following the provisions of the Recreational Charities Act , to which I shall have to refer later, clearly be charitable. It is quite clear that this part of the deed does not match up with the first recital.

Leveson Inquiry: as it happened November 29 - Telegraph

At one point Mr. Newsom was in fact inviting me to read the recital together with the operative provisions of clause 3 a ; but inasmuch as the provisions of clause 3 a appear to me to be quite clear in their language and intent their legal result is quite a different matter , it does not appear to me correct to attempt to rely upon the recital to control such language. The only other part of the deed to which my attention has been directed is clause 9, which provides, putting it very shortly, that the chairman for the time being of the Football Association, if willing to act, is to be a trustee and chairman of the trustees, and that the power of appointing new trustees is to be vested in the Executive Committee of the Football Association.

Rattee, who appeared for the Plaintiffs, relies upon this provision as emphasising the close connection between the trustees and the Football Association and uses that to indicate that, in substance, the Football Association Youth Trust is clearly designed to promote the game of association football. The Plaintiffs submitted a memorandum of objection dated 11 June to the registration of the Football Association Youth Trust as a charity to the Charity Commissioners, and it is in these terms:.

The objects set out in sub-clause a of clause 3, being the promotion of Sport are not charitable at common law Re Nottage [] 2 Ch.

Re Mariette did not decide that the provision of facilities for the playing of games by persons who are pupils at schools is charitable, but that the provision of facilities for the playing by such pupils of games as part of the educational activities of a school is charitable. Moreover, it is not part of the educational function of universities, as defined in the draft Trust Deed to include all institutions of further education approved by the Trustees, to provide facilities for sport.

The principles applied by Eve J. The objects set out in Clause 3 a are not within Section 1 of the Recreational Charities Act because they do not fall within paragraph a or either limb of paragraph b of sub-section 2 of that Section. To this memorandum of objection the Charity Commissioners replied on 6 November , as follows:. Nor could the Commissioners accept the limited interpretation placed on re Mariette 1 in the Memorandum. No one of sense could be found to suggest that between those ages any boy can be properly educated unless at least as much attention is given to the development of his body as is given to the development of his mind.

Young persons would ordinarily be the objects of such education, but the Commissioners could see no reason to restrict these objects to schoolboys or schoolgirls: But in any event, in the opinion of the Commissioners such objects are charitable under the provisions of the Act even though no specific mention was made of the Act in clause 3 a of the trust deed.

I am uncertain on what date the actual registration was effected, but the matter has certainly taken an inordinately long time in coming before the Court. The originating summons appealing against the decision of the Charity Commissioners was issued on 30 January ; the affidavit in support was sworn on 10 June ; and the affidavits in opposition in May No explanation of this delay was vouchsafed.

In the originating summons, as required by RSC Ord , the Plaintiffs repeated their objections to registration, virtually in the same form as contained in the memorandum which I have already read. Although, of course, the Plaintiffs, as the Appellants, presented their case first, it will, I think, nevertheless be convenient to deal with the matter under the heads selected by Mr. Newsom, for the first three Defendants. He submitted that the Football Association Youth Trust was established for exclusively charitable purposes under one or all of three heads: Special Commissioners of Income Tax 2 ; secondly, as being for a purpose beneficial to the community, within the fourth of such categories; and, thirdly, as being such under the Recreational Charities Act Leaving the last aside for the moment, it is quite clear that the object of the Football Association Youth Trust is to promote the playing of games and sports, especially association football, by pupils of schools and universities as defined in the trust deed.

It is therefore on its face simply a trust to promote the playing of games, and it appears to me that, if that was all there was to it, a trust for this purpose could not possibly be charitable. But this testator had not these objects in view when he made this gift. He has told us that his object was to encourage the sport of yacht-racing. I cannot bring myself to hold that the sport of yacht-racing is beneficial to the community in the sense in which that phrase is used by Lord Macnaghten in the case in the House of Lords and by other learned judges.

I cannot see that the benefit of the community is the natural direct and necessary result of this gift; and though I am far from saying that the result of the gift is not beneficial, I must hold that it is not beneficial to the community so as to constitute this a charitable gift. The consequence is that the gift fails. There is great difficulty in drawing the line between gifts which are charitable, in the wide sense in which lawyers use the term, and gifts which are not charitable; but this gift is, in my opinion, decidedly beyond the line. It is a prize for a mere game.

The testator himself tells us what was in his mind: I do not attempt to draw the line. The authorities show that sometimes a case is a little on one side of it, sometimes a little on the other; but I deal with the present case on the broad ground that I am not aware of any authority pointing to the conclusion that a gift for the encouragement of a mere sport can be supported as charitable.

If we were to hold the gift before us to be charitable we should open a very wide door, for it would then be difficult to say that gifts for promoting bicycling, cricket, football, lawn-tennis, or any outdoor game, were not charitable, for they promote the health and bodily well-being of the community.

I think probably puts it a little more narrowly when he says It is however plain from the words of the testator himself that he was not contemplating any such purpose. There are many things which are laudable and useful to society which yet cannot be considered charitable, and this, in my opinion, is one of them. This approach was echoed by Lord Wright in what is admittedly a dictum delivered by him in Commissioners of Inland Revenue v. If one thinks that that is perhaps going back a little too far, the charitable nature of recreation grounds in general was expressly affirmed by a number of their Lordships who decided the well-known case of Baddeley v.

Commissioners of Inland Revenue 3 [] AC But I do not think that in fact there are any divided counsels of the law in this matter at all. I think the distinction is between taking recreation—playing any game, merely taking exercise or merely walking about, as one may fancy as a method of relaxation, the provisions of facilities for which may very well be charitable—and the direct promotion of a particular game or games.

The first recreation is a charitable purpose, but the law has no particular regard for the second. The second, therefore, can be charitable only if, as Lord Wright says, it is not an end in itself but is part of some larger purpose. In other words, he treated a reasonable amount of physical education as being incidental to the overall charitable purpose of the school. London Hospital Medical College v. Commissioners of Inland Revenue 4 [] 1 WLR , seems to me to follow that case exactly, but of course there in the case of a student union which, whilst by itself it would not have been a charitable object, because it was nevertheless in substance an integral part of the teaching establishment itself, was held to be charitable.

They are concerned with the provision of sporting facilities for the army or for the police, and the cases establish that those can be charitable objects if, but only if, the real object is to increase the efficiency of the public service concerned. Where that is not the case—where, for example, the sport is provided as a mere recreation, even for members of a police force or similar—it is well established that there is no charity.

Rattee, for the Commissioners, uses these cases in this way. He says that the trust deed here in question does not, in any manner, provide for the intermeshing of the education being provided for the pupils concerned and the sports for which provision is intended to be made. This is not a case where the sports and games are made part of, and hence subservient to, the concept of education as a whole, as is the case where the facilities are under the control of the educational establishment itself. There is in this trust deed no requirement for the trustees to carry out the duties thereby laid upon them in conjunction with any particular institution; their activities will be entirely extra-curriculum.

Newsom, on the other hand, maintained that the facilities were being provided in the context of organised education, facilities of which the pupils would or might otherwise go short. Rattee also says that there will be many pupils in the institutions covered by the scope of the Football Association Youth Trust who will not be young, and for whom the kind of physical education which is adumbrated would not be in the slightest apposite. Newsom countered by submitting that obviously the vast bulk of the pupils concerned would be young persons in need of such education as part of their general or more specific education.

Mummery, for the Attorney-General, flung his weight behind Mr. Although I have a great deal of sympathy for those arguments, I do not think that I can let that sympathy blind me as to the law applicable. It appears to me that the purpose of this trust is not the provision of general physical education for the pupils: Quite consistently with the purposes of the trust—and I have a suspicion that it might in fact be even more consistent with its overall intention than not—the trust might be so operated as to be directed towards, putting it in its simplest terms, the early discovery of outstanding athletes, and not towards providing opportunities of rational recreation for those whose skills may be somewhat less than the general average or, indeed, completely absent.

In coming to this conclusion I have not overlooked the second part of clause 3 a , but I think that Mr. Rattee was correct when he submitted that the words. So, for this basically simple reason—that the law does not regard the encouragement of the playing of any or all sports as in itself charitable, but only where such playing is subservient to some wider charitable purpose; and that, although loosely connected with such charitable purpose, the trusts of the Football Association Youth Trust are not in the present case so subservient—I come to the conclusion that this cannot be classed as an educational charity.

I am willing to take to heart Mr.

I therefore think that this submission fails a fortiori to the failure of the Class 2 submission. There is also a further ground which appears to me to be fatal to a claim under both heads, and it is this. While most schools are charities, many are not; some are undoubtedly run for private profit. The situation as to universities may be less clear, but it must be borne in mind, for example, that some American universities have campuses in this country.

However, I rely upon the example of a school conducted for profit. It would be open to the trustees of the Football Association Youth Trust to apply their funds in the provision of sports equipment and in laying out and equipping both playing fields and indoor facilities and accommodation at such schools. The effect would be, in substance, to enhance the value of private assets in the hands of persons who were turning those private assets to account to their own profit. I cannot conceive of a purpose which is more clearly not charitable. Newsom met this point head on by boldly submitting that it would be a charitable purpose to supply a library to such a school, but I regret that I cannot possibly accept such a submission.

Once it is apparent that, consistently with the terms of the trust, trust funds can be directly used to enhance the value of private property in the kind of manner which is here possible, I think it cannot possibly be said that the funds are applicable for charitable purposes only. There is yet a final point which has given me some difficulty, and that is, in substance, although not entirely, Mr. I have no doubt at all but that the highly distinguished original trustees, and indeed all trustees of the fund hereafter appointed by the Football Association, will scrupulously observe the terms and conditions of the trust deed.

But I find it difficult to ignore the fact that the trust fund has been set up by means of a donation from the Football Association itself, which is a body obviously formed and, I take it, with its leading object directed to that point, to promote the game of association football. It must presumably, therefore, in establishing the trust because otherwise it would seem to be likely to be ultra vires , have been considering that it was in substance and effect promoting the playing of association football.

Certainly, the whole of the funds of the trustees could, consistently with the terms of the trust deed, be applied towards that and none other game. I must confess that this possibility causes me some disquiet, and that disquiet is hardly assuaged by a consideration of paras 6 and 7 of the affidavit of Sir Harold Thompson. A trust whose real purpose is the early discovery and encouragement of budding soccer stars, however necessary from the point of view of national prestige in view of our present disastrous international showing, would not appear to me to be charitable on any footing.

However, having indicated my disquiet, I do not think it would be right to pursue the matter in this particular case. I understand that there are several other broadly similar cases on the stocks in which the terms of the trust deeds vary somewhat, and in another case the point which is troubling me might well have even more relevance. I now turn to Mr. That section provides as follows:. Provided that nothing in this section shall be taken to derogate from the principle that a trust or institution to be charitable must be for the public benefit.

Newsom says that the trust in clause 3 a falls within the ambit of this section. Of course, there is no doubt but that the trust in clause 3 b does, and it would be somewhat surprising to find that clause 3 a did as well, but such surprise is of course not a legitimate means of, or aid to, construction.

Newsom submitted that these are very wide words indeed and fully comprehended the kind of social interchange which the playing of sports of all kind engenders. In my view, however, these words in themselves indicate that there is some kind of deprivation—not, of course, by any means necessarily of money—which falls to be alleviated; and I think that this is made even clearer by the terms of subs 2 a. The facilities must be provided with the object of improving the conditions of life for persons for whom the facilities are primarily intended. In other words, they must be to some extent and in some way deprived persons.

The pupils represent an ordinary cross-section of the community, neither in aggregate more nor less deprived than any other section of the community. If anything is special about the conditions of pupils at our schools and universities taken as a whole, it is probably that they are rather better cared for than those who have not yet commenced their schooling, or those who have just left.

Here, however, I am perhaps assuming judicial knowledge of something which may be debatable. What is perfectly clear, however, is that there is no evidence as distinct from some assertion before me whatsoever on this point, and therefore I cannot regard the fact that the facilities have been provided in the interests of social welfare as having been established. I therefore think that the Football Association Youth Trust fails the test propounded in subs 2 a.

If this hurdle had been surmounted, I think I should have been in Mr. I think one would have to look at the matter broadly, and, notwithstanding the presence of many mature students in the band of possible beneficiaries of the trust, I think it would be right to regard the trust as intended primarily to benefit the young. I do not think, however, that on a proper reading of the subsection this is what emerges. All that it is saying is that the facilities with which the section as a whole is dealing may be provided at these places; that is to say, on these particular premises belonging to or associated with the examples given.

It is, I think, therefore, directed to quite a different point. Made on 13 July whereby he allowed an appeal by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue against a decision of the Charity Commissioners to register a trust known as the Football Association Youth Trust as a charity pursuant to s 4 of the Charities Act The case in the Court below is fully reported in [] 1 WLR 1 and I need not set out the facts. The relevant parts of the trust deed—for I do not think in the end that anything turns on the construction of the recitals—are contained in clause 3 of the deed which is in the following terms:.

Morritt on behalf of the trustees of the deed, arguing that the trust fell to be regarded as an educational trust, was indeed, I think, disposed to accept this latter view. He submitted that the trustees in deciding what facilities to provide were bound to consider whether a contemplated facility would or would not assist in ensuring that due attention was given to the physical education and development of the pupils and that the trust had a single object consisting of the physical education and development of the pupils. A game of association football is a game of association football, as well or as ill calculated to assist in ensuring that due attention is given to the physical education and development of the 22 pupil players whether it is played at Wembley before an audience numbering many thousands, at a school as a house match, or on one of many pitches in one of the parks.

So far as regards the effect on the players, one game of association football is so like another that it is quite impossible for the trustees to say in relation to association football that some facilities do and some do not assist in ensuring that due attention is given to the physical education and development of the pupils. And whatever that something may mean it has in my judgment nothing whatever to do with education in the sense in which that word is used in relation to the law of charities.

Each of the facilities described in those sub-paragraphs appears to be calculated to promote skill in the playing of association football and other games or sports, thus, so it is assumed, furthering the physical education and development of those who play them. Davies says he used two reports on Operation Motorman, a number of Freedom of Information requests and direct contact with "two members of the Whittamore [private investigator Steve Whittamore] network".

Entitled News of the World phone hacking: Nick Davies' email to MPs , the six-page document details phone hacking allegations and the police investigations into the practice. Paperwork held by the CPS shows that police began their investigation in January by analysing data held by phone companies; that this revealed "a vast number" of victims and indicated "a vast array of offending behaviour"; but that prosecutors and police agreed not to investigate all of the available leads.

In addition, the CPS paperwork shows that prosecutors were persuaded by the police to adopt a policy of 'ring-fencing' evidence so that, even within the scope of the limited investigation, there would be a further limit on the public use of evidence in order to ensure that 'sensitive victims' would not be named in court. In his email to MPs he also details a Freedom of Information request about the police investigation into hacking in On August 8 , police arrested Clive Goodman, Glenn Mulcaire and one other man who was not finally charged.

They seized computer records, paperwork, audio tapes and other material from all three men. As a result of an application by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act in January , we now know that this material included 4, names or partial names of people in whom the men had an interest; 2, mobile phone numbers; 30 audio tapes which appear to contain recordings of voicemail messages; and 91 PIN codes of a kind which are needed to access mobile phone messages in the minority of cases where the owner has changed the factory settings on their mobile phone.

Davies says he has made "a maximum of three" Freedom of Information requests about phone hacking. He says the history of the PCC's performance "undermines the whole concept of self-regulation", adding that he began to lose faith in it in April I do not trust this industry to regulate itself.. You've got a huge intellectual puzzle here in front of you - how do you regulate a free press? It obviously doesn't work; we're kidding ourselves if we think that it does, because it doesn't.

He explains he "facilitated one or more News of the World journalists" in doing so. Mulcaire, he explains, is a blagger but doesn't listen to the voicemail messages himself. He explains how he has refused stories or published only limited amounts of information in a bid to protect individuals' privacy. One of the examples is Davies' story, written with colleague Amelia Hill, about the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone.

He says his concerns were over "digging up the grief of the family":. What we were disclosing was so important that we needed to find some way of getting it into the public domain. On the other hand, the family had been through hell.. Via Surrey Police we sent a detailed message saying 'this is what we're preparing in terms of the story, this is what we're planning to publish within the next 48 hours'. I think we were absolutely right to get it into the public domain.

We did what we could to soften the impact by sending that detailed warning. The key thing we have to do is motivate people to talk to us.. And the way to do that with success is to find a motivation and build a relationship, it's the most exciting thing in reporting. If you pay, a you're giving people a motive to fabricate, a motive to earn their money, and b you get very limited information for your money. Journalism doesn't begin with checking facts. There's a prior stage of selection: What angle should we take.

Overwhelming those decisions are made on financial grounds.. You want a story that will sell papers so you pick the sexiest way possible of telling it. Davies says the Guardian has erroneously printed false stories, including one about a former children's home in Jersey , in which the evidence was "screaming falsehood".

He says tabloid papers rely on selling newspapers to make their money, while broadsheets make their money from advertising. Within that less intense end of the market, a newspaper like the Guardian which is owned by a trust is less intense again in its commercial pressure. Lord Justice Leveson intervenes, saying he hopes this will not be dragged up by other papers after it is mentioned in court. Davies goes on to discuss the dilemmas faced over stories about Prince Harry's tour in Afghanistan three years ago after Buckingham Palace asked for a media blackout.

He says the paper was right to suppress certain parts of the information for the protection of his squadron. The problem is that different journalists have different perceptions. People from the News of the World will tell you in all sincerity that exposing Max Mosley's sex life was absolutely in the public interest.. If the courts aren't clear, then how am I supposed to be clear. It's not about not knowing the truth of the story, it's about not knowing there the boundary line is. He uses the Guardian's Wikileaks coverage as an example of not knowing where the public interest line lies.

He says he Guardian has its own code, alongside the PCC. In operational, day-to-day terms, it's terribly difficult to know exactly where the boundary lines are. If I'm working in a particular story in particular circumstances, do I have the public interest on my side? Very often I don't have the faintest idea. There are some cases where it's clear, they are so far over the boundary line.. But very often it's isn't clear. Personally, I would like it if someone set up by statute a public interest advisory body that I or a member of the public or a private investigator could go to and get public interest advice.

He says his research for this was the same as for phone hacking, with each title in the book coming from "about a dozen" different sources. Lord Justice Leveson says that much of what is in Davies' book is "hearsay", but says this "may be inevitable". There is a culture of bullying in some Fleet Street newspapers. It's not just a case of 'I'll lose my job; it's nastier than that'. The fear is real. Davies says there is a "loose assembly" of between 15 and 20 News of the World journalists who have talked, on condition of anonymity, to him or a researcher about phone hacking.

The full text of Davies' witness statement to the inquiry has now been uploaded to the website. I'm looking for evidence to discover the truth. The first is the public domain, which I would define as everything I am entitled to know because I ask for it.. The second primary route is the most important stuff we can do, which is human sources. I've never known an interesting story where everything you needed to know is available on the first route. He says he "stumbled into it accidentally", culminating in the publication of the Gordon Taylor hacking story in Here's Davies' first phone hacking story: He says he is currently writing a book about the phone hacking scandal, which he jokes "is driving me mad".

We are hearing about Davies' journalistic training on the Mirror's local paper scheme in Plymouth. He says he came to London and to work for the Sunday People, where he was "bullied out of the paper" by a particular executive. I do not remember talking about ethics at all. This was a tabloid training scheme. Witness Statement of Richard Peppiatt.

Guardian journalist Nick Davies is being sworn in. Standard Life announce they oppose James Murdoch's election. There are ongoing civil proceedings on this topic, but Peppiatt replies:. I know the person who did it. They are not, directly, on the payroll of Northern and Shell. Other than they got this information from someone, and it seemed very likely that they got this from Northern and Shell. I don't know this person, he has no personal gripe with me.. There's been generally for the past nine months an attempt to blacken me in some way or another, often behind the scenes.

Rumours about myself that have been fed into the rumour mill of Fleet Street.. I think it's an attempt to discourage others from speaking out. The reporter says those who spoke out were characterised as "lunatics with an agenda". He apologises for his behaviour, saying: I lost perspective of what I'd gone into journalism for in the first place.. He says the practice of using PR stories and press releases is "a capillary of a cancerous heart of the industry":.

The twisting, the truth-bending nature of it bears more similarity to propaganda than journalism. Peppiatt says the tabloid frequently targeted glamour model Katie Price , often with "made up" stories. He explains this is why journalists are never fired for writing such stories, "because it goes all the way up the chain".

Robert Jay QC is now asking Peppiatt a series of questions on behalf of other core participants, which refer to the nature of his employment at the Daily Star and his awareness of the newspaper's code of conduct. I was part of an organisation that tended to kick downwards at easy targets. He is telling the inquiry that there was "no avenue for complaint" at the Daily Star, as "you would be complaining to the very people you are complaining about".

I'm not complaining because I didn't go into it thinking it would be a nursery. We are cannon fodder on the front line. It is a problem because you have news editors and editors who aren't the ones who are having to go and hammer on people's doors.. That's not to absolve anyone of responsibility. He says he received death threats - such as "you're a marked man until the day you die" - and feared someone was accessing his work emails, which contained details of his CV and a doctor's appointment.

Peppiatt says he asked his girlfriend to move out of his flat for a while, and the police were involved at the time. He says a friend once left him a voicemail telling him he couldn't make it to a football match, which he never received. He later received an email from an unnamed person detailing the contents of the voicemail. It's circumstantial but to this day I do now know how the person knew that I was going to see the football with my friend and he couldn't make it.

Earlier this year, he tried to break the world record for removing girls' garters with his teeth. Here's the video evidence. The story claimed Muslims were intending to disguise themselves as Sikhs and use their headdresses to hide bombs and other weapons. He said he could not verify the story but was forced to "pad it out" and present it as fact, with a "veneer of authentiticy". Peppiatt admits he made up quotes from a "security source":. That is not a truth-seeking exercise; it's an impact-seeking exercise.

The spectre of having a story that lashed out at both Muslims and Sikhs at once was far too good to pass over. The reporter says for the Star to claim it isn't anti-Muslim is "like being presented with an apple and swearing blind it's a banana". But he says one female reporter who did complain about writing stories about Islam was given every racist, anti-Muslim story for two weeks until she'd had enough and quit the tabloid.

You toe the line or you get punished. It's not an open dialogue. He also denies approaching the paper about the Kelly Brook story, which he says was "completely plucked out of the air". The reporter says he was "probably warned over making up quotes, but only not very good ones". He says he wrote 15 or 16 stories about Islam, contrary to the paper's claims. Richard Peppiatt worked purely as a casual reporter at the Daily Star for almost two years. Recently he became unhappy after he was passed over for several staff positions.

He refers to a Kelly Brook story: Since he wrote his email we have discovered that he was privately warned very recently by senior reporters on the paper after suggesting he would make up quotes. Regarding the allegations over the paper's coverage of Islam, he was only ever involved in a very minor way with such articles, and never voiced either privately or officially any disquiet over the tone of the coverage. For the record, the Daily Star editorial policy does not hold any negativity towards Islam and the paper has never, and does not endorse, the EDL.

Being asked to stay away from her as she struggled to cope with fame was, he claims, "like a red rag to a bull at the Daily Star". He apologises, saying he "overstepped the mark with harassment". He says a later story, claiming that model Kelly Brook was seeing a hypnotherapist, was "made up":. It was a Sunday at around 6 o'clock. We at the Daily Star didn't have a page three story.. And the newsdesk had had no luck at all finding a story of this ilk.

And I wrote it. They aren't knocking stories, they're just completely fictitious.. Tabloid newspapers have no interest in the moral sense.

1. Introduction

They want to see 'how far can we push the boundaries and get away with it'. We move on to discuss Peppiatt's resignation letter, which was printed in the Guardian on March 4, Daily Star favourite Kelly Brook recently said in an interview: Not that often, though, and the stories are always rubbish. Where do they get it from? Maybe I should answer that one. I made it up. Not that it was my choice; I was told to. At 6pm and staring at a blank page I simply plucked it from my arse. Not that it was all bad. You may have read some of my other earth-shattering exclusives.

He said he received a telephone call from someone purporting to be a member of the public who made a number of allegations about Lucas' partner but gave him no evidence. Peppiatt said he was asked to write up the story, which appeared on the front page of the next day's paper:. I think there was also the consideration that the man's dead; you can't really libel him. That was the sort of slightly callous perspective that was taken.

And I'd like to apologise to Luke sic: Kevin McGee's family because I accept that no-one held a gun to my head and made me write another hurtful story. And I feel very ashamed. He says he wrote the follow-up story to the latter, which he said had been pre-determined by the paper's editors. A complaint was made to the PCC about the story by a concerned member of the public. Channel 4's Andy Davies tweets:. Robert Jay QC and his inquiry team appear obsessed with 'googly' and 'straight ball' references Leveson.

Curious about what we do?

He says as soon as payment was mentioned, those who phoned in stories were encouraged to "ham it up":. Don't think that just because a reporter's name is at the top of the story they had anything like the last word on how it turns out. Less than half the time that my name was on a story, it would have been changed to some degree or another.

And sometimes to quite a large extent. And sometimes that final line.. So sometimes you would cringe, you'd go 'That was a bad line to take out'. But it's too late. He says journalism is a desk-bound job, with many stories based on "assumptions" and "a stab in the dark". He was asked to do eight or nine stories a day, Peppiatt says, so there was little time for fact-checking or investigation.

Before you know it the story which the agency's filed bears little similarly to what you started with. Everyone adds their little impression to it. He tells the inquiry about the dominance of PR companies in the world of journalism, and how he won four free holidays from PRs as an incentive to write their stories:. PR is a huge influence. There are more PRs than there are journalists. You get into your inbox every day dozens and dozens of press releases from companies all trying to get their brand in the paper, get mentioned. It's expensive to get private investigators - I just don't think there was the money for it.

In his statement he claims that most of the Star's stories when he worked there were "plagiarised" or taken from press releases:. A lot of the stuff tends to be from the Daily Mail the day before and put on their website. This has consequences, because the Daily Mail don't always get it right. If the Daily Mail say it, then it's pretty much good for us, was the line taken.

This is not a truth-seeking enterprise. Much of tabloid journalism is not truth-seeking generally; it's ideologically driven and it's impact-driven.. A story is simply not a story unless it's knocking someone, or knocking an organisation, or knocking an ethnic group. This is an issue Peppiatt first raised in his presentation to the Leveson Inquiry seminars on October 6. He was paid weekly by the tabloid, he says, and anything over 12 hours was rewarded with double pay.

He remembers seeing a code of conduct at the paper handed out on the day Richard Desmond, editor of the Express Newspapers group, left the Press Complaints Commission. It was not something that's brought up in reference to stories. There are certain implicit considerations - you don't go barging into hospitals, etc. But certainly there was never a discussion that I remember of 'Can we run this story? Peppiatt says the PCC wasn't held in high esteem at the paper, which viewed its adjucations as "a slap on the wrist".

He tells the inquiry about how he became involved in journalism, saying he worked at the Daily Star for two years on a "full time freelance" basis as a casual reporter from February Here's a clip of his bust-up with Steve Coogan on BBC's Newsnight, in which the comedian branded him "risible" and "morally bankrupt". He uses the example of the press hounding the actress Sienna Miller to blame capitalism for bringing the public world of commerce, finance and trade under the sway of private interests.

In the end, it is because the media are driven by the power and wealth of private individuals that they turn private lives into public spectacles. If every private life is now potentially public property, it is because private property has undermined public responsibility. It is our respect for human privacy which makes phone hacking so repugnant, and our respect for private profit which allows it to flourish. This is a contradiction it will take more than a parliamentary committee to resolve.

The order, made under section 19 of the Inquiries Act , bans the publication or disclosure of any evidence provided to the inquiry - in whole or in part - outside the "confidentiality circle" of the inquiry. Restriction on Publication of Witness Statements. The ruling also includes a statement from Jonathan Caplan QC , lawyer for Associated Newspapers, providing that no employee who gives evidence to the inquiry anonymously will have this fact used against them in disciplinary proceedings.

Anonymous Evidence 28 November Nick Davies is the Guardian journalist responsible for uncovering the News of the World phone hacking affair. If there were an arbitration system, within four weeks they would have had arbitration and justice. All those papers would have to publish corrections of the same prominence, on the front page. They get justice, fairness, truth much much quicker. They don't get damages. I don't think wanted damages.

Davies is now talking about the law regulating the press and describes is as a "horrible concoction of common law and statutory regulation, and it's a mess". He said if you were drawing up new legislation to cover falsehoods, distortion and unethical behaviour, "you wouldn't come up with anything like the system we have".

He says you wouldn't come up with a system that pays out damages if something false or distorted is printed in a paper. Davies is now talking about "Benji the binman". Good reporters like Martha Gellhorn have a sort of "artful dodger" air about them to help them get stories. He could see the exciting potential about this extraordinary man … but he could see that the Guardian weren't going to pay for it … so he passed it on to a friend. He got himself very close to the line and stayed just on the right side of it.

The inquiry is now talking about the "cod fax" and the Guardian's story on Jonathan Aitken. This refers to an incident in when the Guardian sent a fax on Commons headed paper to the Ritz to secure Jonathan Aitken's hotel bill. The Commons privileges committee said it accepted the paper's apology that sending the fax was "a stupid and discourteous thing to have done" and its assurance that it would not do it again. Davies objects to an assertion by Jay that the contents of his book cannot be tested because of the confidentiality of sources.

Davies accepts that the Mail would have difficulties establishing whether people paid for stories or not because cash might be drawn from its coffers, but there would be no documentation linking it to any payment for a story. However, he says the Mail could dig a bit further. Robert Jay QC has now told the inquiry that the Daily Mail wants to rebut claims made earlier by Davies regarding its journalists paying police for stories, that "bribing policing men and civil servants" is not its policy. Davies says if you go to the subject of the story and that person has PR adviser, if you give them room to manoeuvre, they will put the story out with their own spin and scoop you.

More often than not you go to the other side in case there is some killer fact and for the Reynolds defence, but you do it story by story. Davies is now discussing the News of the World's decision not to alert Max Mosley to a story about his sexual activities prior to publication. Last week Mosley said he didn't know about it until 10am on the day of publication. Davies says the Sunday Mirror bought up a kiss-and-tell story. By alerting the other side involved in the story, the person was able to injunct the paper. Davies says he has his own issues with those kinds of stories, but he says what he is trying to illustrate to the inquiry is the "danger" involved in going to the other side.

But he there are instances where a journalist doesn't go the other side, if he might be putting himself in jeopardy or there are ethical reasons not to seek comment. Davies says the classic case might be of a paedophile accused of murder and kidnap; if a reporter is preparing a background story they don't go and ask about the kidnapping and murder.

Davies is asked if he agrees that he didn't put any of his criticisms to any of the individuals concerned or to the papers concerned before his book Flat Earth News was published. He says he now lectures young reporters and tells them to ask themselves if it will help to go to the other side or not, and says "more often than not" it is. The Leveson inquiry has resumed. Davies is now talking about "binology" — a reference to a practice used by a man who sold stories to Fleet Street based on documents he found in people's bins.

Davies refers to a book writen by Mark Watts about Pell, a man known in the newspaper industry as "Benji the binman". Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, has been tweeting through Nick Davies' testimony. You can follow him here arusbridger. His understanding is it was NotW journalists who deleted Milly messages leveson.

We now have a full story about James Murdoch's re-election as chairman at the BSkyB annual general meeting. Here is a lunchtime summary:. The inquiry is now breaking for lunch and Davies will be in the chair again after lunch. His evidence is expected to continue until 2. He also refers to someone on the Sunday Telegraph in relation to Dr David Kelly who killed himself after being outed as Andrew Gilligan's source for the "sexed-up" Iraq dossier. Davies claims Lord Ashcroft and Lord Levy both had their tax records blagged by someone who appeared to be working for the Sunday Times.

One expert blagger told him that he was working for the Sunday Times, but this goes back to the late s, says Davies. Davies says it was "absolutely clearly" known where the cash was going; there was a clear indication of who it was "Z" was passing the money to. He says it is fair to say the Daily Mail whose former reporters were referred to earlier in relation to "Z" was not alone in paying for stories. The Mail are not alone in their relationship with 'Z', as I said I think it was casual and widespread.

Davies is talking about the prosecution of "Z" and says Fleet Street may have celebrated when he was acquitted. When Scotland Yard attempted to stop him they mounted a prosecution … the trial aquitted him … there was coverage that crime reporters across Fleet Street would be celebrating. It's fair to say he was involved over a number of years in casual activity, carrying cash from newspapers to police officers. The new material led Davies forward with his story. Davies says he picked up "hints of blagging; hints of voicemail intercepts; hints of email intercepts; hints of phone hacking; hints of burglary; and hints of corruption of police".

He also knew that journalists would carry around cash for stories and that the police were frustrated because active inquiries into crimes were impeded by the the sale of information. Davies is being asked about paragraph in his evidence in which he claims that by the mids Fleet Street was hiring several dozen individuals and organisations including an individual in Ruislip to obtain ex-directory numbers, itemised phone bills and other material from confidential databases. Davies said the individual from Ruislip was brought to trial and the public information relating to the case, combined with the first Motorman investigation, was another source of information.

Davies is now talking about an individual "Z" whose activities Scotland Yard was attempting to stop. He then got a briefing from the Yard. Davies says that "Z" was working on behalf of Fleet Street from the early s until the very recent past; he was still active at the time Flat Earth News was being written. He says this Yard briefing, along with material in the public domain and human sources, were the basis of his stories on phone hacking.

Breaking news from the BSkyB annual general meeting. Mark Sweney, our media business reporter, has just tweeted this:. Davies asks whether Leveson has access to the raw material the information commissioner had in relation to Whittamore. Davies says he merely asked because he has had access and is surprised there were no prosecutions. Davies says he used two reports on Operation Motorman, Freedom of Information requests and direct contact with "two members of the [private investigator Steve] Whittamore network".

Davies' written statement expands on the reasons why he felt it would be a breach of privacy to publish a story about a former minister's phone being hacked. The raw material for that story included details of messages which had been exchanged between him and a woman friend. I argued that we should not publish those messages - they were intrusive, and it was perfectly possible to expose the important point, that this minister had been a victim, without breaching his privacy. The same kind of balance was raised by the story of the hacking of Milly Dowler's voicemail which I brought in in July I was sure that it was a matter of public interest that should be revealed, but I had some concern that publication would breach the Dowler family's privacy by exposing them to yet more publicity.

Davies explains how he used the Freedom of Information Act three times to extract information about the investigation. Davies is now being asked about the police investigation into phone hacking back in He says the Crown Prosecution Service began its investigation in January by analysing phone company records. This produced a vast amount of information but the prosecutor and police decided not to go ahead. Davies is asked how he knows this; he replies that "a good human source showed me the paperwork".

Davies tells the hearing of a PCC report of November exonerating newspapers of phone hacking. The report was terrible, just an awful piece of work. My editor resigned from the PCC editors' code committee over it; he went on the radio and said 'This is worse than useless. I do not trust this industry to regulate itself. I love reporting, I want it to be free. We're kidding ourselves if we think it would work, because it won't.

Davies says he no longer supports the concept of self-regulation of the newspaper industry. He says the press isn't capable of keeping its own house in order. The history of the PCC's performance undermines the whole concept of self-regulation, and re-reading this evidence I realise I was sticking up for self-regulation but I wouldn't any more. Davies is asked if he knew who hacked into Milly Dowler's phone. He says the "facilitator" was private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Mulcaire was "a brilliant blagger" and could get the information from the phone company. He says Mulcaire didn't actually listen to the messages himself — most of that was done by the journalists themselves. If you asked who hacked Milly's voicemail, the answer is it was one or more News of the World journalists who then deleted the voicemail messages. The facilitator was Glenn Mulcaire. There is a misunderstanding, I think, around the way that he operates.

He does not actually, on the whole, do the listening to the messages himself. Most of that is done by the journalists themselves. Mulcaire's job was to enable them to do that where there's some problem because he's a brilliant blagger, so he could gather information, data from the mobile phone company. Occasionally, I think, he did special projects - I think perhaps the royal household would be an example. Davies is now talking about the July revelations in the Guardian that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked. He said he hestitated about the story, particularly the impact it would have on the Dowler family.

However, he sent a warning through Surrey police to the family. What we were disclosing was so important we needed to find some way of getting it in to the public domain. On the other hand, the family had been through hell. We sent a detailed report through Surrey police to say what we were reporting. Davies says the Guardian was offered a story about a former cabinet minister whose voicemail was hacked.

He felt it went too far in terms of a breach of privacy. The reporter asked Davies what he thought and he said he felt the paper shouldn't rebreach the privacy that was breached in the first place. Davies says that he has competed before with tabloid journalists and they "bring out the chequebook". He says they get the first two pages of the story, but he gets the chapter. Davies says he has never paid a source for information and has never experienced the Guardian paying a police officer for a story. I think it's a practical question. The key thing we have to do is to motivate people to talk to us.

The way to do that with success is to build a relationship and motivate them … it's the most exciting thing in reporting. What I am arguing for is journalism doesn't begin with checking facts, there is a stage of selective judgment prior to that; what story should we cover … this is highly subjective. Davies says he is "not exempting the Guardian" from the problems that Peppiatt was talking about in terms of a groupthink surrouding the veracity of a story.

Davies refers to a story the Guardian ran in which claimed charred remains from at least five children were discovered in the cellars of a former children's home in Jersey. Davies said the quotes from those supposedly confirming the story did not stand up to close scrutiny. These are the problems that occur in all newspapers - it's too good a story to knock down. The reporter who rings up and says 'This is crap, there is no evidence for this at all,' they will not be thanked.

Davies says the Guardian's ownership structure, which involves a trust, distinguishes it from the Daily Star and the type of culture created by a single proprietor, as described earlier by Richard Peppiatt. The broadsheets rely far more on advertising space to get their income. It's the popular papers where that competitiveness passes down the ranks…. Broadsheets have less commercial imperative; they still have to sell copies, but not as many copies. Davies now turns to another example three years ago when there was a media blackout on Prince Harry's tour of Aghanistan.

Newspapers agreed not to publish it, on the basis that if we did it would bring down extra fire on him and his squadron and we didn't want to be responsible for that. The counsel for the inquiry, Robert Jay QC, asks Davies for a concrete example of public interest difficulties. Davies says the Guardian had "a huge problem with the WikiLeaks stuff". Davies had persuaded Julian Assange to work with the Guardian, New York Times and Der Spiegel on the leaks but "it rapidly became apparent that it contained information that could get people on the ground in Afghanistan seriously hurt".

In relation to the public interest, Davies says:. I profoundly disagree that the News of the World had a public interest in publishing the story about Max Mosley's sex life. Davies's written statement to the inquiry has now been published. Davies says in paragraph six of his statement that the concept of public interest can be particularly "slippery". Expanding on this, he says in operational terms it's difficult because it's hard to tell where the lines are supposed to lie. The answer is it would be all right if it's in the public interest but we are stymied … very often it isn't clear and personally I would like it if somebody said up a public interest advisory body that I, or a member of the public, could go to and could get high quality advice.

In the advent of a dispute I would be able to provide the advice and say 'this is what I was told'. I would have something that was weighty in the event of a dispute. In paragraph five of Davies's witness statement he says the Guardian has a clear code of practice in relation to ethics. The Guardian has its own code and the PCC code is part of it, as an appendix. The NUJ code is less often referred to, but in terms it's more or less the same. Davies says he accepts that it is frustrating for the inquiry that he cannot talk about his sources in any further detail, which means there will be a gap between what he knows and what he can discuss openly.

Robert Jay, counsel for the inquiry, also goes down this line — how many people did Davies talk to before you validating the claims outlined in his book. He says a dozen, in relation to each newspaper title. Leveson asks Davies "How many people do you need to validate the conclusions you've reached as opposed to an individual person who comes and says 'X' and someone says 'no, that's not true'?

I would say a loose assembly of between 15 and 20 News of the World journalists who have talked on condition of anonymity to me or a researcher. They have been a tremenduously important engine in driving the story forward. In addition, he says there are about a half a dozen others in the industry who have been very important. There is a third pool of sources - the victims. There are also private investigators and people "close to the police". He says one of the first things sources seek is complete anonymity. They may be worried they will lose their job, or be beaten up.

Davies says two of the key routes to finding a story are the public domain and talking to people. An old newspaper maxim, he tells Leveson, is "News is what someone somewhere doesn't want you to know". He says the former Sunday Times editor Harry Evans got his journalists to persuade people to sue. If there were legal actions ongoing the judge might order disclosures which would help the journalist uncover the truth.

Davies was not taught about journalistic ethics during his training. He was very interested in distortion in the media and the research meant he had to go to reporters on other newspapers. Those reporters started talking to him about illegal methods of obtaining information and this was reported in the the chapter of his book Flat Earth News titled "The Dark Arts". He was then on radio with Stuart Kuttner, the former managing director of the News of the World, who insisted he didn't know what he was talking about. This confrontation provoked someone he had never heard of to contact him with information and, over the next 18 months, he worked part time on the story, culminating in the revelations in July about Gordon Taylor's payout from the publisher of the News of the World, Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers.

Davies talks about his training. The Mirror Group had newspapers in Devon and Cornwall where he was taught reporting, typing and law. If you passed a proficiency test, you were sent to London on an attachment. He was keen to work on the Sunday People, which was very different from now and did some "heroic" reporting on the police. The Guardian's Nick Davies is now talking. He is freelance, working part time since He was a staff reporter before that.

Peppiatt's witness statement is now available online. The inquiry is now having a five-minute break. I look at the motive and where is the motive to try and get me to shut up? I know exactly where the motive is. Rumours about myself have been fed into the rumour mill of Fleet Street, much of it untrue. It's attempting to discourage others not to speak out … 'we will make it as hard as possible to criticise others'. The story that appeared referred to her "marriage being on the rocks". He said that one fact was all he needed, but when you have to stretch the story to words "you have to draw a lot of inferences, speculate".

He did not raise his concerns with Dawn Neesom, the then editor of the Daily Star. There is no avenue to make complaints. The structure is you are complaining to the very person you are complaining about. You either take it on the chin or you leave. I do question my own moral judgment and the fact I stayed as long as I did, but there are so few jobs for reporters in the current climate … that once you've got full-time work you have to think very carefully about packing it in.

Peppiatt is asked what rights he had not to show up at the Daily Star, given that it was such an awful workplace.

• The Last Honest Woman (OHurleys Book 1).
• The Big Tax Index.
• El club del té (Spanish Edition)?
• ;
• ?
• Design for Love (The Women of Landrys landing and The Fabrizio Men Book 4).

Turning to the inquiry's QC, Robert Jay, he says: Peppiatt says he found Daily Express editor Hugh Whittow's evidence to a parliamentary committee yesterday "callous". Whittow was asked about libellous headlines about Bristol landlord Chris Jefferies and told the committee that the press had put its hands up after getting it wrong and moved on. Peppiatt says he went into the industry with his eyes open. It's not a nursery school, I'm not complaining. However I think it's useful to the inquiry to know that we are cannon fodder on the front line ….

Peppiatt suspects his phone was hacked following a strange incident when a friend phoned to tell him he could not make a football match they had arranged to watch. He couldn't make it and left me a voicemail message. I then received an email an hour later … I never got the message. I never got the voicemail.

Leveson Inquiry: as it happened November 29

This is circumstantial, but to this day I don't know how I never got those messages. Peppiatt says that police traced the source of this harassment back to someone "linked to the tabloid world, long established" but he can't name them for legal reasons. Peppiatt says other strange incidents occurred. In the days after I resigned one of the news editors emailed me asking how the doctors went … references about my CV … and to a sitcom I was working on … and to the Guardian reporter Paul Lewis who I'd been working with on this story. He is now talking about the day he resigned.

He leaked his letter of resignation to the Guardian but quickly started to get threatening and menacing text messages from unknown quarters. He initially thought that they had leaked his number to the English Defence League, but these people knew where he lived and knew his phone number. The messages included "You're a marked man until the day you die", "RD will get you" and "We're doing a kiss and tell on you". It worried me enough to get my girlfriend move out for a couple of days, because I didn't know where it was coming from and the frequency, all through the night, I thought it was best we wait until this cooled off.

Here are two of Peppiatt's made up stories, one about Kelly Brook hiring a hypnotist, the other about "Muslim-only loos". Peppiatt now details how he completely made up a story on a bomb plot. He says the inspiration for the newsdesk was "a line" in the Sunday Telegraph that "Muslims may be wanting to disguise themselves as Sikhs and hide bombs in their headdress". Instead what you do is 'a security source said' and you make up a quote for a pre-ordained line and then you ring Inderjit Singh [a Sikh representative] and add a veneer of legitimacy by telling them something you know is not true and get a quote.

Peppiatt says there was another casual reporter who expressed disquiet.