It is probably fair to say that 2003 was one of the more eventful years in the Commission’s history. A combination of external and internal issues ensured an unprecedented level of scrutiny of the Commission’s work and fresh challenges to its continuing success. Externally, there was the penetrating Select Committee inquiry into privacy and the PCC; the threatened amendments to the Communications Bill suggesting that the PCC come under the umbrella of Ofcom; the dangerous plans of Irish legislators to introduce a statutory press council there; and the continuing negotiations with European officials to protect the special position of self-regulation in the UK.

Internally, there was the conception and implementation of an ambitious programme of reform; a raft of complicated and high-profile adjudications relating to privacy and to payments to witnesses and criminals; and the departure of key personnel throughout the self-regulatory structure. For not only was there, in me, a new Chairman of the PCC, it was also announced that there was to be a new Chairman and a new secretary of Pressbof, and a new secretary of the Code Committee. And in November Guy Black announced that he would be leaving the Commission after seven and a half years as director.

It is right here to record our debt to Guy for his years of outstanding service. The organisation that he left at the end of 2003 looked very different to the one that he joined in August 1996. It is thanks largely to him that the PCC is an institution with authority and renewed credibility, and one which boasts high standards of customer service – which are outlined in detail elsewhere in this report. Since 1996 he has helped protect self-regulation from the threats posed by numerous pieces of legislation including the Human Rights, Data Protection and Youth Justice Acts. And by making the PCC the efficient and effective body that it is today, Guy can rightly claim credit for the generally benevolent political attitude towards self-regulation that we currently enjoy. It is no coincidence that the Select Committee report, published in the summer of 2003, was the first of its type to endorse the principles of self-regulation and to accept that the PCC has been responsible for overseeing an improvement in journalistic standards over the last ten years. We all wish Guy well for the future.

It is also important warmly to thank Bob Pinker, who as Acting Chairman kept a firm hand on the tiller for the 15 months before I joined the Commission. He took over from John Wakeham at short notice and in turbulent circumstances, but thanks to his wisdom and experience he steered the PCC through some choppy waters with admirable composure.

On arrival in Salisbury Square in March, I was struck by how completely at odds the Commission’s work is with how it is perceived in some quarters. Let it not be said, for instance, that the Commission is not a ‘proactive’ body: PCC staff are engaged in countless initiatives, detailed on pages 13 and 14 of this report, aimed at educating people before things go wrong about how the Code of Practice can help them. And it is a myth that the Commission has to wait for a complaint before acting in all cases where there may be a breach of the Code. There are three areas of the Code – the so-called ‘victimless’ clauses relating to financial journalism and payments to witnesses and criminals – where it has long been Commission policy to investigate a matter of concern without the benefit of a complaint. This was made clear in the 2002 annual report in relation to payments to witnesses in the trial of Amy Gehring.

Another fallacy holds that the Commission’s work is chiefly concerned with national newspapers – and tabloid ones at that. I quickly learnt that the truth is rather different. Of those complaints that fell for investigation under the Code of Practice last year, less than half related to national newspapers, broadsheet or tabloid. And when there was a possible breach of the Code, much less than half - 42% - related to these papers. The story of self-regulation is far more complicated than many imagine, which is why we have set out in some length – on pages 3, 4 and 5 of this report – statistics and analysis that explain it in greater detail.

But I believe that it is essential for the long term health of the PCC that it evolves constantly – not for the sake of it, but in its own interests and in those of the ordinary members of the public who complain to us in their thousands. It would be both complacent and wrong to assert that all the criticisms levelled at the Commission in the past have been baseless. Yet the PCC need not be afraid of embracing change in order to take account of legitimate and constructive criticism. That is why I outlined, in my first speech as Chairman, an eight-point plan of reform with a clear purpose: to make the Commission as transparent, well-known and user-friendly as possible. We are well on the way to achieving that – and details of how are outlined on page 11.

There is one final point to make about the nature of self-regulation that is sometimes overlooked, but is absolutely crucial to its success. It is this: that the PCC is designed to help ordinary members of the public from across the whole of the United Kingdom. We are as much the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish PCC as anything else, interested in dealing with complaints about all publications whatever their size and wherever they are published. That is a message that has sometimes been lost in the fog of debate about high- profile incidents involving national newspapers, but it is something that I wish to reinforce constantly while I am Chairman of the Commission.