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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: ... fight for the future of the press and it could be nearly over. It could be. Parliament will vote tomorrow on how to implement the Leveson proposals, or the bones of them anyway. A vote that David Cameron at this point, looks set to lose. Well, I’m joined now by actor, producer and now press reform campaigner. He is, of course, Hugh Grant. Very good morning to you, Hugh. Well, I know that you’ve been following and have been involved in some of these political discussions. Where do you think we are? Do you think we can get compromise or is this going to be a divisive vote within the House of Commons tomorrow?  

HUGH GRANT:   Well, I hope it is a divisive vote because the two things that are on offer: this beauty pageant between two Royal charters, one of them is sub-Leveson and Leveson itself is very mild and disappointing to many of the important victims of press abuse. One of these Royal charters, the one put forward by Labour and the Lib Dems is sub-Leveson but it’s not bad and those victims support it. 

DM: This is a Labour and Lib Dem Proposal. Royal charter with a dab of legislation, as it’s put.  

HG:   Yeah. Well, people have made too much of that dab of legislation. That is quite important for that one part of it but what’s really important is the recognition criteria for a new regulator, which are meaningful in the liberal Labour version. In the David Cameron version, they are meaningless. They have been written, as has been admitted to Hacked Off, by Oliver Letwin; they’ve been written effectively by the press and they’re full of weasel words and clauses that would effectively bring us straight back to the old discredited PCC. So it’s an incredibly important vote and those politicians of which all three party leaders are included and most MPs who told victims of press abuse like the Dowlers, or the McCanns, or the Watsons; the list is endless; that they would back them and make sure this never happened again. They will have to ask their consciences tomorrow in the vote whether they are going to back the big press barons and vote for David Cameron’s charter or if they’re actually going to back the victims and vote for the Liberal Democrat, Labour version.  

DM: Just let me veer off slightly here, because you’ve come in for quite a lot of flack, haven’t you, personally, and indeed the organisation, Hacked Off. They’ve got some more articles in the papers today about the backing and the fact that you were trying to appeal to members of the Conservative party to vote.  

HG:   I don’t see why that’s scandalous. That’s what campaign groups do. They appeal to politicians of all hues. They try and persuade them of the arguments. I don’t quite get why that’s so naughty.  

DM: But you have been speaking personally, haven’t you, to Labour members? I mean, have you spoken to Mr Miliband?  

HG:   Yes, absolutely I have. I’ve been in meetings with Ed Miliband, with Nick Clegg. What’s been unfortunate is that the victims by which I never include myself at all and I’ve always made that clear. I’m talking about the important victims: people like the McCanns, etc, that have repeatedly asked for meetings with the Prime Minister or with Maria Miller, the Culture Secretary and there have been none. And in that time, the Prime Minister and Maria Miller have had countless meetings with representatives of the press, particularly from the Conservative press. So from the Mail, from the Telegraph and from the Times.  

DM: So is that why; that’s why you’re leading it? Because you know what some of the press have been saying. They’re saying you’re doing it because you don’t want any more intrusion into your personal life. You’re saying, well you open doors and your shoulders are broad enough to deal with any of the abuse you get as a result.  

HG:   Yeah. I’m certainly not doing this for fun, because it’s no fun being trashed and I’m not doing it because I want a better deal for celebrities. I don’t give a damn what happens to celebrities. I think that’s part of what happens. You’re always going to get more press than you want. I’m doing it because I personally was scandalised by what was happening to innocent people. I didn’t like the fact that the police and the press seemed to have gone dodgy at one point. You’d call a policeman about a mugging in the street and a reporter would come around before a policeman, and I was sickened by the sight of our prime ministers, our executive government crawling to newspaper groups and really having policy dictated by them. It just didn’t seem right. I’m a very patriotic guy. I’m very proud of our strange Heath Robinson arrangement of democracy, our constitution. And I hated to see a mass aggregation of power and abuse of power, and I think it needs putting right and it can be put right tomorrow.  

DM: Okay, but would you agree that there needs to be; if it is to be self regulation, well then, you have to get agreement from the media organisations. They have to go along with this because a scenario I’ve been examining with some of the politicians on here: you could get to a position where whatever is passed, the big media organisations say, “We really don’t like the look of this. We’ll just refuse to take part.”  

HG:   Self regulation has been tried over and over again, as I’m sure you know, for the last 60 years.  

DM: But Leveson is, of course, about self regulation. It’s tough self regulation.  

HG:   Well, it’s independent self regulation which sounds like juggling with words but it just means that Leveson had the opportunity to say, “State regulation.” No one wants that. No one wanted that. He had the opportunity to say, “Statutory regulation.” No one wanted that and Leveson didn’t want that. You still hear the word banded about as something that Hacked Off want. Incorrect. We don’t want statutory regulation; that’s OFCOM. That’s too much. What Leveson recommended is actually that the press have another chance to regulate themselves but this time, in the background there will be a little group of independent people having a look at that regulator, that self regulator every two or three years and just checking that it is in fact, independent and effective. Independent of the newspapers themselves and of government and actually effective to do its job and protect innocent people. That’s all it is. That middle dab of statute is to set up that little group of independent people that keep an eye on the press’s independent own regulator.  

DM: Okay, and is that; that’s the minimum then. You talk about the Dowlers, the Chris Jeffrey’s, the others that you talked about.  

HG:   Yeah.  

DM: Is that the minimum that they would accept?  

HG:   Yeah. Already when I was in the room with them, while they were reading Leveson’s report, there was a great sense of ‘It’s not bad but it’s a little disappointing. It’s very mild.’ But the upside of that is that no politician could possibly not do this. And then to their horror and astonishment, they watched the television as David Cameron got up and said, “I’m not doing it.” Because to him politically, it was more important to suck up to the newspapers than to actually fulfil the promise that he made under oath that what mattered as an outcome of all this was that those victims should never be subject to those kinds of abuses again.  

DM: So what happens to you at the end of this campaign, because end it must in one way or another? Have you got a taste for campaigning? Are there other issues burning in your breast?  

HG:   Well, I have a few but I actually have to go and do a film.  

DM: Well, you don’t have to.  

HG:   To Los Angeles right now.

DM: Poor you.  

HG:   I’m going to miss the vote of it. So I have to go back to my day job, but it’s important and it has been fascinating to do something totally different. It’s nice to be involved in real life as opposed to synthetic life and it is strange having conversations about films now where I’m having a discussion with the director about you know, “Should we make that actress wear a wig or not” Well, that’s not as important as my other life at the moment.  

DM: But has it taken its toll? We talked about some of the heaving banding?  

HG:   Yeah, you do get a pounding and you have to develop another skin.  

DM: Which I’m sure you’ve got.  

HG:   It’s so transparent. It’s so obvious. Every time this matter has come to a head politically, people like me and Hacked Off get smeared and trashed in the papers and it’s so transparent that I assume, I hope that people don’t really take it too seriously.  

DM: But I mean, you talk about Hacked Off and again, some of the stuff I’ve been reading about Hacked Off; it talks about your mystery backers and the amount of money in there; the slick PR operation you have. The hotline to politicians.  

HG:   Well, I will answer any question anyone wants to ask me about anything to do with Hacked Off. Slick, it definitely isn’t. You’re very welcome to come to our very shabby offices and meet these mad professors who are the core of the whole thing. They’re the professors of journalism; there’s a couple of eccentric lawyers; there’s a chess champion ex-Lib Dem MP who’s scuttling around.  

DM: Edmond Harris, yeah.  

HG:   Edmond Harris scuttling around outside. And most importantly, we’ve got unbelievable support from real victims of press abuse. When I heard Margaret Watson, and I don’t know if you know about Margaret and Jim Watson who lost a daughter, was murdered, and then her reputation was abused by the press. And as a result, their son committed suicide. When I heard her on the World at One on Thursday saying “Thank God for Hacked Off,” that’s the only encouragement we need to go on. The smear is irrelevant.  

DM: Hugh Grant, thank you very much indeed for coming.  

HG:   Thanks.