ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now as you’ve been hearing this morning some of the newspapers are nervous about Leveson, perhaps an understatement in some cases. They’re most worried about Parliament becoming involved in controlling the press, that’s why four leading papers have written to Lord Justice Leveson proposing a tough system of self-regulation. Well Evgeny Lebedev owns two of those papers, the Independent and the Evening Standard and he joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Lebedev. Why have you written to Lord Justice Leveson and what are you recommending?

EVGENY LEBEDEV: Well instinctively, coming from Russia, I am against the involvement of the government in regulating the press because I’ve seen in the past where I’ve lived in the Soviet Union and what I see now to a lesser degree in Russia, what happens when you don’t have a free press. I see the free press as one of the pinnacles of democracy and it is there to hold those in power to account and I think the reason, one of the reasons why this country has got one of the most sophisticated and most well established democracies is because of its press. I also think it is worth remembering that it is actually the press itself that’s unregulated by the state that exposed the phone hacking scandal, first the Guardian and latterly the Independent so it is just worth remembering.

DM: So I mean it is a multi-faceted press but what about the proposal then for future regulation? No one denies that terrible abuses have taken place and that they must not happen again and the best thing I suppose is that newspaper owners like yourself and others just make it be known that this must never happen on our watch.

EVGENY LEBEDEV: Yes, absolutely and that’s why we’ve written to Lord Justice Leveson recommending that there should be a beefed up, a much stricter form of self-regulation. I have great sympathy with the victims of phone hacking, with the families of the McCann’s, the Dowlers and I think it is important that going forward there has to be some form of regulation that is independent both of the press and of the government that this kind of scandal never happens again, this abuse in journalism never happens again.

DM: But if you passed that out amongst your own papers, I mentioned the Evening Standard because before your family took ownership of it, of course it was mentioned as using a private detective in Operation Motorman, you’ll be familiar with that, the Information Commissioner looked into the use of blagging and the Evening Standard then used a private detective to obtain information about people from their bank accounts to their DVLA records, all kinds of things like that. If you passed the word down to the Evening Standard and all your group, we are not going to use private detectives for things like that, that doesn’t happen.

EVGENY LEBEDEV: Absolutely, it’s certainly not happened under my watch, it’s not happened since I bought these newspapers and in fact we’ve set up an inquiry, an internal inquiry which was headed by Andreas Whittam-Smith who was the founder and the first editor of the Independent newspaper in both the Independent and the Independent on Sunday and even the Standard and he gave a clean bill of health to both newspapers.

DM: Would you every justify the use right now of private detectives to gain information with a public interest defence?

EVGENY LEBEDEV: Well there is the public interest defence, I think that’s the important key and I think the other very important point on this, on the phone hacking scandal is that it’s also the enforcement of legislation which didn’t take place because actually there is legislation which makes all those tactics that the journalists were using illegal but of course the law enforcement agency, being the police, which is a government organisation was not enforcing this legislation and that is even a bigger scandal I think than the actual scandal of phone hacking itself.

DM: I just wanted to ask you about the Evening Standard because this has been an interesting model given the state of the newspaper industry, we talk about the decline and the Evening Standard here in London, you turned it from a paid for paper to a free paper to see if you could make a profit out of it. A lot of people raised an eyebrow at the very least when you said that but it seems to be thriving.

EVGENY LEBEDEV: I think a lot of people raised an eyebrow when we bought the paper and even more people raised an eyebrow when we said we’d make it free because the immediate reaction was that it was going to be ruined and then it will become like one of the other free newspapers, the quality of which is relatively low but I think we first proved that we kept the quality up which is really important, the circulation has gone up from under 200,000 to over 700,000 and it is read by more than 1.5 million people on a daily basis and we have finally turned a profit for the first time in over 20 years.

DM: A lot of that is down though to some of the health that there is in the London economy isn’t it? I noticed you put the long list for the Evening Standard Awards that you sponsor and you see that, if you are lucky enough to go to the London theatre and lucky enough to get a ticket, that areas like that even within this difficult economy, are thriving.

EVGENY LEBEDEV: Yes, absolutely, London theatre, a lot of people hailed the death of London theatre as much as of the Evening Standard in 2008 when the recession started but actually theatres in London are thriving. More than 14 million people went to theatres in London only last year and box offices are booming and I think it’s a great testament to London and being a Muscovite, coming from Moscow, as much as it pains me to say that because Russia has a great theatre tradition but here I think we do boast some of the greatest plays and some of the greatest stage talent in the world and the Evening Standard are very proud to run a newspaper that’s consistently supported London theatre and we are celebrating London theatre tonight at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards.

DM: Can I just ask you about your father facing some serious charges within Russia, you started talking about the lessons you’ve learnt about press freedom from Russia, is he in danger of serving a serious prison sentence?

EVGENY LEBEDEV: I think as time goes on it seems that it is more and more likely that he very well may be serving a serious prison sentence which I think is absolutely outrageous because what he did was wrong and he regrets doing it but it doesn’t justify a charge that carries a potential seven year prison sentence which is hooliganism based on political grounds and there’s no proof at all whatsoever that anything has anything to do with political hatred in this case. It is basically to do with his campaigning against corruption, against powerful individuals who are very corrupt in my country and I have supported Novaya Gazeta which is a campaigning pro-democracy newspaper which has been exposing those who are in power for the corruption that they have committed.

DM: Sorry we’re out of time, fascinating to meet you. Evgeny Lebedev there.