CHAIRMAN'S REPORT by The Rt Hon Lord Wakeham

More progress for PCC

I am delighted to introduce the ninth Annual Report of the Press Complaints Commission and to report on another year of solid and substantial progress.

The PCC has two central aims. The first is to deal quickly and effectively with complaints from members of the public. The second is continually to raise standards of reporting under the terms of the editors' Code of Practice. This Report demonstrates our continuing success in both these aims.

First, the record of achievement chronicled on pages 3 and 7 shows that we resolved record numbers of complaints - and in record time. Swift, free justice is a hallmark of the PCC - and our trumpcard over any form of statutory or legal system. It is one into which we put a great deal of effort - and will continue to do so.

Second, the cases reported on page 4, as well as in the Review of the Year, demonstrate the way in which we sought to ratchet up standards of reporting. In a number of key areas - including privacy and private places, the reporting of children, payments to witnesses and criminals, and discrimination relating to asylum seekers - our adjudications in 1999 set out new standards, based firmly on the industry's Code, to guide editors.

These successes - and others set out in this Report - depend totally on the commitment of national, regional and periodical publishers to effective self regulation. The PCC could huff and puff, and have absolutely no impact at all, if the Code of Practice was not part of the life blood of every editor in the country. Instead, editors' commitment to the Code and to the jurisdiction of the PCC means both that we are able to resolve complaints quickly and effectively and that there is substantial protection from intrusion, harassment and inaccuracy available to all members of the public. That is why it is absolutely right to record here a tribute to the entire industry - and to its commitment to independent and effective self regulation.

Inevitably, there is no greater crime in public life than resting on laurels. In issues relating to self regulation and press freedom, I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as final victory. As was revealed by the debates over the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act, as well as by the pressure from some people to turn the PCC into a proactive body seeking to control the press (rather than to respond to complaints), threats to press freedom - of which self regulation is a key manifestation - are unremitting. We must constantly be on our guard against them - at home and abroad.

I am particularly pleased that this Report includes for the first time a record of our international work. Although out detractors may not care to know this, the system of effective self regulation we have built up in this country is a great British export success: the structures of the PCC and the Code Committee are being taken up and adapted the world over - from Bosnia to Sri Lanka - because people can see that they work even in the most competitive newspaper environment in the entire world.

The demands on us to support initiatives across the globe are substantial - but have been made much easier by the establishment of the Alliance of Independent Press Councils of Europe, a project of which we were in the vanguard. The AIPCE will not just help Press Councils across Europe to exchange information - but will also act as an early warning system for us all against any threats to press freedom and independent self regulation at a European level. It has already proved extremely effective in helping to see off the dangerous plans of the World Association of Press Councils for some form of global Code of Practice: that achievement - and others - are success stories which will be covered in my Report next year.