• Introduction
• Chairman's perspective
• Public representatives
• Complainants
• Professional representatives
• Newspapers and magazines
• The Press Complaints Commission
• Constructive critics
• Vivien Hepworth - Chairman of the independent Governance Review
• Jonathan Heawood - Director of the writers' charity English PEN
• Tim Luckhurst - Professor of Journalism at the University of Kent and a former editor of The Scotsman
• International perspective
• Historical perspective
• Putting it into perspective

Constructive critics

Vivien Hepworth - Chairman of the independent Governance Review

My main concern when I took on the role of chairing the first independent review of the governance of the PCC in 2009 was how some much-needed changes could be made without undermining all that had been achieved over the previous 18 years. I had served long enough on the Commission to have views about what needed to change; I was also respectful of an organisation that had survived its tumultuous early days and pioneered a Code of Practice that has been emulated in many other countries.

Core to the task were the three members of the panel who worked with me, Stephen Haddrill, Dr Elizabeth Vallance and Eddie Young, and Catherine Speller from the PCC office. We decided to test the organisation against fi ve key principles: clarity of purpose; effectiveness; independence; transparency; and accountability. This helped us to organise our thinking and our questions as we set off to review the Articles of Association, taking written then oralevidence and considering our responses.

Put like that, it all sounds very well-mannered - but we certainly did have those difficult conversations that I have encountered during all my time working with the PCC. "What is it?" said a member of the Panel as we kicked off our discussions. "Until we know what it is, how on earth can we test the rules under which it works?"

I can't pretend we found this discussion easy. The telephone hacking affair was not a direct part of our inquiry but the row about it provided a backdrop to our work. As a panel, we were in favour of self-regulation - but we wanted the rules and structures to support more rigorous discussion of difficult general issues such as this at Commission meetings as well as specific, challenging cases. We concluded that using committees to tackle difficult issues and report to the Board would be a useful way for the Commission to work. We understood the risk of the Commission pontificating on everything and trying to run the industry as opposed to regulating it under the Code but we also thought that the Commission members were well able to get that balance right.

We learned a lot from both the evidence and the people who came to see us. We were sometimes astonished at what people didn't know - one witness with a keen interest in the PCC had not realised that editors always withdraw from cases where their newspapers are involved. It was an eye-opener in terms of the need for more communication and we were glad to see the Commission dealing with this kind of issue without waiting for our fi nal report. Witnesses provided sometimes stringent criticism - but there was a passionate desire to want the Commission to move forward and a lot of good ideas.

In the end, we made 75 discrete recommendations to the Commission and to their great credit they have accepted very nearly all of them.

Disappointments? We found some representatives of the industry nervous about change - too much so in my view. This reflects no doubt the difficulties in the early years, when everything was very fragile, but after all this time there really is no evidence that the lay-dominated Commission will go mad and try to run the industry. I was also surprised that the lay Commissioners weren't keen on our view that they need to stop reading every case given the year-on-year increase in complaints and concentrate on the more difficult cases. I think they will need to revisit this.

The Commission is now working on implementation. The changes are too detailed to reference in full here, but they include defi ning for the public what the Commission is and what it does, setting out its rules more clearly, appointing a deputy chairman, setting in place a new Audit Committee and a new Nominations Committee and establishing new reporting standards.

I firmly believe that these new rules and structures will help the Commission achieve a more self-confi dent position as an effective self-regulatory body in a highly sensitive industry.