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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, it’s widely expected that next week’s Leveson Report will recommend that the Press Complaints Commission is replaced by a much tougher regulatory body for the press. Well Lord Hunt is Chairman of the PCC and he joins me now, a very good morning to you Lord Hunt, a very busy week ahead for you of course as we await to find out what Lord Justice Leveson is going to recommend but the PCC has been thinking ahead of that, hasn’t it, and has come up with what you think would be remedies to some if not all of the problems identified by the Leveson Committee.

LORD HUNT: Well looking back the PCC is what it says on the tin, it’s press, it deals with complaints, it’s a commission but I think some time ago it realised that it needed to be replaced by a tough independent regulator so I came along, I was given a blank piece of paper, I set out what I thought was the best way forward basing the whole structure on contract rather than statute and that’s what I put to Lord Justice Leveson.

DM: Contract, so first of all then you have to be part of the PCC if you are going to run a newspaper, is that the first part of the contract?

LH: I’ve been very careful not to name this new body but it will not be PCC 2, it won’t be son of PCC, it will be for the first time ever in this country a tough independent regulator with teeth.

DM: But you know the criticisms which are precisely the opposite to that – too close to the press, too many members of the press on it, not enough teeth, no ability to investigate off its own back and not really policing the redress that papers give victims. How do you answer those?

LORD HUNT: Well first of all I think the PCC has been unfairly criticised so perhaps the best defence was the Lord Chief Justice who said it wrong to criticise the PCC for failing to exercise powers which it never had in the first place. I have got some really good independent people of great stature on the Press Complaints Commission but it is set up in the wrong way, it’s not a regulator. I came along as a solicitor specialising in regulatory law and I said this is not a regulator and suddenly everyone started to agree with me and we need a regulator but an independent regulator and not based on some new law.

DM: Okay, that will be in terms of the Commission or the Board or whatever it is, what about the teeth? Teeth to fine, teeth to make people comply, what powers would it have?

LORD HUNT: It’s got to have enough power to deal with the sort of outrageous behaviour that we’ve seen uncovered in Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry. I think we owe Brian Leveson a huge debt because he sat there patiently and I must say he has been able to highlight a series of deficiencies and the new body must address those deficiencies and make sure they can never happen again.

DM: What do you have in your mind? Do you have the idea that for instance if you tell them, or whatever this body is, if it tells a newspaper that has wronged a party, that must go on the front page and if you don’t you will be fined, will it have those kind of powers because that’s the point that people have reached now as you well know?

LORD HUNT: I think first of all I’d just say this, I think the people at the top of the newspapers and magazines – and don’t forget we’re dealing with publishers, some of whom have hundreds of editors – I think they have taken insufficient responsibility so I want the buck to stop there and I want them to know what’s going on, to have an internal standards compliance arm as well as a complaints handling arm so I want to see much more internal regulation. Okay, you need an oversight, it has to be independent and I think it has to have teeth unlike the Irish model. Okay I did refer Lord Justice Leveson to the Irish Press Council but it has no power to fine and I think the new regulator must have that. It also must have power to investigate so if a whistle-blower rings this new oversight independent regulator, I want that regulator to send in a team to investigate, to interview people, to look at the documentation.

DM: Well all those powers may well be recommended by Lord Justice Leveson but does it not need some form of statutory underpinning which means that the newspaper or the media group which your team or whoever’s team it is wants to investigate, they have to open the doors, they have to open the emails, they have to open the files to them. Does it not need some kind of legislation, some enabling legislation?

LORD HUNT: No, it doesn’t but it could have, I agree but I go by the Royal Commission. Exactly fifty years ago Lord Shawcross said you don’t need new laws, you can do it by contract as long as everyone agrees to sign up to the new system. Everyone’s told me they are going to sign up to the new system, I’m now waiting for Lord Justice Leveson to put forward his view on what this new regulation should be like.

DM: And lastly, Lord Hunt, I think you’ve consulted widely with the newspaper industry, the media industry overall, is it something that they have all signed up in advance to what you are proposing?

LORD HUNT: Yes they are and I’ll just add this, we hear a lot about statutory underpinning, statutory recognition, at the end of the day there is already a mound of law encompassing journalists. In the Data Protection Act there is recognition that if you have a code, it is all back to having your own ethical professional standards and code, that’s what it’s all about and that’s why we need a regulator to enforce such a code.

DM: Okay, Lord Hunt, thank you very much indeed, as I said, a busy week ahead for you. That’s Lord Hunt from the Press Complaints Commission.