Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre made a rare public appearance yesterday, giving evidence at the Leveson inquiry into press ethics.

As well as defending the Mail to an inquiry which, he believes, presents “a very bleak and one-sided view” of the press in general and the Mail in particular, Dacre also moved to suggest a new system of press accreditation which only certifies the best journalists.

As the Mail itself reported on Dacre’s testimony:

Paul Dacre proposed a fresh system of accrediting journalists which could be the ‘essential kite mark’ to safeguard press standards.

He told the Leveson Inquiry that the present system of press cards was ‘haphazard’.

Those guilty of the most serious misconduct could have their press cards removed, in the same way as doctors are struck off. But all newspapers and accredited freelance agencies would have to sign up for the scheme.

This suggestion is similar to the proposal by then-shadow culture, media and sport secretary Ivan Lewis at last year’s Labour party conference that journalists “guilty of gross malpractice should be struck off”. At the time, the NUJ responded by saying:

It’s depressing to hear a Labour Party shadow minister call for the blacklisting of journalists.

As Dan Sabbagh of the Guardian wrote on the ideas:

If anybody else had proposed them, they would have been … well, dismissed almost immediately. But this is Paul Dacre, and if the Mail editor-in-chief has an idea, we all ought, at least, to take him seriously. Who knows, we might agree after all.

On other topics, Dacre found himself on the back foot.

He admitted that:

“The problem of paparazzi, that worries me – I think we need to try to look at that.”

However, Paul Dacre’s worries about the paparazzi culture seem to be at odds with Martin Clarke, the publisher of Mail Online, notorious for it’s ‘sidebar of shame’, reproduced to the right.

He also defended his use of the private investigator Steve Whittamore, convicted in 2005 of illegally accessing confidential records, saying that he only became aware of his use “some time about 2004, 2005-ish”, and that he “didn’t realise what they were doing was illegal.”

Lisa O’Carroll of the Guardian adds:

Asked whether he thought it was acceptable to get hold of a person’s “friends and family” telephone numbers, he said the information could have been obtained legally but Whittamore “was a quick and easy way to get that information”.

He said he would now accept there was a “prima facie case that Mr Whittamore could have been acting illegally” but he did not accept this as “evidence our journalists were actively behaving illegally”.

Dacre was also forceful in his defence of the Mail against Hugh Grant – too forceful, it turns out.

As O’Carroll reported:

He launched a robust defence of his decision to describe Grant’s evidence as “mendacious smears”, declaring that the actor’s claim that a story about him may have been sourced from phone hacking was damaging to his newspaper.

“If I had allowed it to stand it would have been devastating for our reputation and it needed rebutting instantly.”

Dacre repeatedly claimed that Grant had brought much of the attention he complained about upon himself. He said Grant “invaded his privacy with great proficiency” by frequently talking in public about private matters, including his desire to have a child.

In the last couple of hours, the news has broken that Dacre is to be recalled to the inquiry to discuss in greater detail the editor’s accusation, on oath, that Grant’s evidence was “mendacious”, and the Mail’s coverage of the birth of Grant’s child.

As the counsel for the victims, David Sherborne, pointed out, Dacre essentially accused Grant of perjury, and cannot be expected to leave without clarifying his comments.

We shall find out more when the extra session takes place this Thursday.

See also:

• Express owner: ‘Mail is Britain’s worst enemy’ – Alex Hern, January 12th 2012

• Ignore the Mail’s distortions, here’s what Goldsmith actually said – Shamik Das, December 6th 2011

• A three step guide to writing a Simon Heffer column – Alex Hern, November 8th 2011

• The Mail’s rent-a-rev called for gays to be tattooed with health warnings – Alex Hern, October 27th 2011

• Coogan: “If the Daily Mail went to the wall tomorrow I’d be delighted” – Shamik Das, October 13th 2011

• The Daily Mail’s poisonous lies must be fought by all trade unionists – Rick Coyle, September 23rd 2011

• How to write a Richard Littlejohn column – Dominic Browne, March 22nd 2011

• How to fake up a Daily Mail benefits story in five easy steps – Declan Gaffney, February 25th 2011

• The hateful Jan Moir: wrong on every level – Will Straw, October 16th 2009

Richard Desmond, the owner of the Daily Star and Daily Express, came out fighting at the Leveson inquiry today, and as ever, it was popcorn viewing.

When asked whether he considered his papers to be ethical, Desmond responded:

Ethical. I don’t know know what the word means. Perhaps you could explain what the word means, ethical?

When pressed, he explained that:

We don’t talk about ethics or morals because it’s a very fine line, and everyone’s ethics are different.

For the first half of his testimony, Desmond was mostly talking about his papers from a business point of view. When the discussion turned to his purchase of the papers, however, things got personal.

He says that when he bought Express Newspapers:

We were vilified, we were pilloried, we were attacked – the only thing I wasn’t accused of is murder…

The Mail were the worst, because they were upset that they hadn’t bought the Daily Express…

Without a trace of self-awareness, he concluded his train of thought by saying:

I think it’s Britain’s worst enemy, the Daily Mail. Their tone on everything is so negative.

Asked about Express Newspapers withdrawal from the PCC, Desmond explained his antipathy to the organisation:

To see the chairman of the PCC on BBC TV and vilify Peter Hill and Express Newspapers, that was the final straw. I felt it was a useless organisation run by people who wanted tea and buscuits, and phone hackers; it was run by people who wanted to destroy us.

Strangely, Desmond did not corroborate his editors claim that they left the PCC because it had failed to stop them lying.

Desmond’s witness statement (pdf) elaborates on some of his claims. On ethics:

22. I think that we are in a business to give readers/viewers what they want to read and watch and as long as it is legal that is what we aim to do. We do not talk about ethics or morals because it is a very fine line and everybody’s ethics are different. However, we do of course care about the title’s reputation and so we would not run a story if we thought it would damage that or seriously affect someone’s life.

On the editors’ code of practice:

I am aware that there is an Editors’ Code of Practice but I cannot say that I have read it or know the ins and outs of it. I do not consider that this is something which I need to know.

On checking sources:

20. The responsibility for checking the sources of information lies with the Editors in consultation, if necessary, with the legal team. The Editors no doubt ensure that their reporters satisfy them of the sources. This is not something that I am involved in. I will only get involved where I can add value.

Finally, back in the room, Desmond when he does believe he can add value to the editorial process:

Sometimes I tell them to change the colour of the top. I say, ‘it could be brighter.’

See also:

• Express editor: We left PCC because it failed to stop us lying -  Shamik Das, January 12th 2012

• Express and Mail fail the migration stats test - Sunder Katwala, August 26th 2011

• Express’s £1billion claim on immigrant housing is absurd - John Perry, August 18th 2011

• Daily Express indulges its EU madness. Again - Ben Fox, April 14th 2011

• Today’s Express, Mail, Sun and Telegraph all wrong on Incapacity Benefit - Declan Gaffney, February 11th 2011

Controversy rages about Labour’s developing position on social security reform as indicated in articles in the Daily Mail and The Guardian, writes Declan Gaffney

In the Mail, a source “close to Liam Byrne” says:

“Decent Labour voters see their neighbours lie about all day and get benefits while they are working their socks off, and say, “Why should I vote Labour when they let this  happen?”.”

While in the Guardian, Byrne writes that William Beveridge:

“…never foresaw unearned support as desirable.”

For Sue Marsh, this is a betrayal of disabled claimants who are faced with massive cuts to sickness and disability benefits under the coalition’s welfare reforms.

She writes:

“You talk of “unearned support” Liam… We know about the hundreds of thousands terrified about what happens to those who CANNOT earn support.

“Until recently, we believed you gave it freely.”

Sunny Hundal, however, writes:

“Labour ministers have deliberately avoided mentioning disabled people in their rhetoric, and Liam Byrne explicitly attacks cuts to disability benefits in his article.

“They are not talking about disability benefits here.”

So who is right? Unfortunately, both are. Labour is trying to run with the hare (defending disabled claimants) while hunting with the hounds (attacking those who ‘spend a lifetime on benefits’). The problem is that these two groups are very hard to distinguish, because long-term benefit receipt is dominated by disability.

The evidence comes from the benefit system itself.

As Chart 1 shows, 57 per cent of all long-term working age benefit claims (running for five years or more) are among people entitled to Disability Living Allowance – the benefit which compensates people for additional care and mobility costs they face due to severe impairment.

A further 9% are for people receiving Carer’s Allowance because they are caring for someone receiving a disability benefit (DLA or Attendance Allowance). So two thirds of long-term benefit receipt is accounted for by identifiable disability.

But not all disabilities trigger entitlement to DLA, so the true figure for disability as a driver of long-term benefit receipt will be higher again.

Chart 1:

So Sue is right to argue Labour’s ‘scrounger’ rhetoric is implicitly, albeit unintentionally, directed against disabled people. This is unavoidable as long as the issue is framed in terms of ‘a lifetime on benefits’. Attacking coalition cuts to disability benefits does little to counteract the framing of long-term benefit claimants as ‘scroungers’ when most are in fact disabled or caring for people with disabilities.

At the same time Sunny is right that Labour is making efforts to avoid disabled people being tarred with the ‘scrounger’ brush. But trying to balance the message in this way puts the opposition in a contradictory position.

Bear in mind that many severely disabling conditions are invisible to casual observers (and read Sue’s blog if you need to be convinced on this). So public perceptions are a poor guide to what is happening to benefit receipt.

The saloon-bar wisdom of statements like ‘decent Labour voters see their neighbours lie about all day and get benefits while they are working their socks off” needs to be confronted with the evidence the UK public grossly overestimates abuse of the benefit system and grossly underestimates the scale of disability in benefit caseloads.

One statistic serves to illustrate the point: there are a quarter of a million phone calls to DWP’s benefit fraud hotline annually. One per cent of these calls result in a sanction for benefit fraud. Put another way, 99% don’t. That means an awful lot of legitimate claimants are getting hauled over the coals every year because of snap judgments by ill-informed neighbours and acquaintances.

Now ask yourself: do we want opposition policy to be based on the perceptions of voters or on the evidence?

Would-be political tacticians will have no hesitation in opting for the former, but Labour will have to live with its chosen policy for the long-term. Policy based on ill-informed grievances will do nothing to address the real issues about social security, and, as evidence (pdf) from the United States suggests, may be doomed to political failure as well.

The main reason disability dominates long-term benefit receipt is that over the last 15 years, prior to the recession, other types of benefit claim reduced significantly – notably for lone parents and people on sickness benefits . Labour’s rhetoric in opposition seems strangely oblivious to its record in office- described by David Freud no less as “remarkable”.

There is serious thinking going on in Labour circles on what the next phase of social security reform might look like, and there are hints of this in Byrne’s Guardian article. But seconding grievances against benefit claimants and then seeking to evade the consequences by saying you aren’t talking about disability benefits is a untenable position.

The opposition should be trying to change the terms of debate, not passively reproducing them.

That wouldn’t generate friendly coverage in the Daily Mail – but as the blogger Mason Dixon, Autistic put it:

“Short-term headlines are not worth the lasting brilliance of a solid paradigm change in a national debate.”

See also:

• Miliband quizzed on disability reforms, apologises for omission from speech – Shamik Das, September 30th 2011

• Miliband must stop spreading myths about benefit claimants – Tim Nichols, September 28th 2011

• How disability reforms were whitewashed from Labour’s conference – Daniel Elton, September 27th 2011

• Shameful incapacity benefit consensus between main parties must stop – Steve Griffiths, January 5th 2011

• The paradoxical stability of welfare expenditure (and why we should be spending more) – Declan Gaffney, July 10th 2010

Join Left Foot Forward as we look over the year that was, and count down our ten favourite videos of 2011…

Steve Coogan was one of the unlikely heroes of the phone hacking saga, fighting vigorously against the web of tabloid sleaze which is still being uncovered today.

For all of the focus on News International, the target of Coogan’s wrath was the Daily Mail, and of all of the great videos to come from the scandal, his short but sweet tirade against that paper on Newsnight wins for saying everything there is to say in just over a minute – with the added advantage of making Louise Mensch look a right, well, see for yourself:

See also:

• Ignore the Mail’s distortions, here’s what Goldsmith actually said – Shamik Das, December 6th 2011

• Tabloid hypocrisy shocker: “Aren’t those other papers nasty, with all that hacking?” – Alex Hern, November 22nd 2011

• A three step guide to writing a Simon Heffer column – Alex Hern, November 8th 2011

• Coogan: “If the Daily Mail went to the wall tomorrow I’d be delighted” – Shamik Das, October 13th 2011

• The Daily Mail’s poisonous lies must be fought by all trade unionists – Rick Coyle, September 23rd 2011

The latest offender in a string of badly behaved Conservatives has apologised for the fact that people were offended by his behaviour at a Nazi-themed stag party.

Aidan Burley, MP for Cannock Chase in Staffordshire, was in hot water after photos of his friend Mark Fourier’s Nazi-themed stag party were uncovered by the Mail on Sunday.

Reporting on the night, the paper wrote:

The MP, who was elected in 2010, sipped wine as one of the party goaded a French waiter, asking: ‘You are from Germany? No, you must be from Austria, then?’ and ‘Are you insulting his Reich?’

Adding:

The man wearing the SS uniform was accountant Mark Fournier, 34,  a graduate of The Queen’s College, Oxford University, whose stag party it was. Wearing such a uniform in public is a criminal offence under French law.

His brother, businessman John Fournier, 37, gave the toast. Later, in the pub, he said of Mr Burley: ‘This man is a Tory MP. He went to Oxford as well. A Tory boy. He was the candidate for Berlin East.’

Mr Burley, who was standing a few feet away, was not seen to object to this or any other behaviour that evening.

The MP has since apologised – twice – albeit choosing his words carefully.

His first apology came in the original article:

“There was clearly inappropriate behaviour by some of the other guests and I deeply regret that this happened.

“I am extremely sorry for any offence that will undoubtedly have been caused”

He made a similar statement on Twitter the day after. It may simply be that he doesn’t know that “I’m sorry” and “I’m sorry other people were bad and that you were offended” are different, but as apologies go, it leaves much to be desired..

Burley won his seat in the largest single swing from Labour to the Tories in any seat in the 2010 election. Standing in what was thought to be an unwinnable seat may have meant he avoided the sort of vetting – both of history and personality – which is common amongst prospective parliament candidates.

It is probably for this reason that his previous brush with the press didn’t raise alarm bells.

While at Oxford, Burley moved the annual dinner of his elitist drinking club, the (now defunct) King Charles Club, to Stringfellows, after they were banned from having it on college property.

Not only that, but he then paid to advertise that fact in the Times and Telegraph:

“The King Charles Club of the St John’s College, Oxford, held their annual dinner last night at Stringfellows … after attending divine service at the Banqueting Hall, Whitehall, and laying a wreath at the statue of the Martyr King in Trafalgar Square.”

It looks like the rot of Conservative Future, the youth wing of the Tory party, is spreading upwards quicker than ever.

As we reported in November, various CF organisations have got in trouble for:

Mocking the northern diet of “chips and gravy”; torching likenesses of Mandela and Obama; toasting apartheid; singing songs about “killing lots of kike”; disrupting student union meetings with Nazi-style salutes and cries of ‘Viva Pinochet’; complaining that gypsies “aren’t human”; arguing that you can be racist against jews but not black people; and describing themselves as “a better dressed version of the BNP.”

Our conclusion at the time was :

It may well be that what has changed isn’t that Conservative Future has got more racist and offensive over the years, but merely that whereas they used to do all of this in private, it now often spills out into public.

With the days of the sixth-youngest Tory MP now looking increasingly numbered, the past may be catching up with the Conservative Future.

See also:

• What will Cameron do to end the racism of the young Conservatives? – Alex Hern, November 23rd 2011

• Worst Student Tories Ever Faceoff: Oxford Tories 2011 v Bullingdon 1988 – You decide – Alex Hern, November 7th 2011

• Griffin’s friends the KKK come to Britain – Alex Hern, October 19th 2011

• Helmer’s exit takes us out of the frying pan and into the fire – Alex Hern, October 13th 2011

• The dehumanising rhetoric undermining the student movement – David Barclay, April 17th 2011

The Daily Mail was in full ‘outraged’ mode today over Zac Goldsmith’s comments to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions yesterday, in which he described as a “non-argument” the claim papers should be allowed to do as they please because it’s the only way their “business can stay afloat”, adding “no one said that Auschwitz should have been kept open because it created jobs”.

That’s right, the paper that once published an article headlined “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” kicking up a fuss over a Tory MP’s “slur on the press” for “likening newspapers to Nazi death camps”. As their favourite far right columnist might say, you couldn’t make it up.

But back to Goldsmith’s comments, and, well, watch them in context and make your own mind up:

And in case you didn’t catch it, here is a transcript of the key exchanges:

Lord Black: “Do you think that when a court, when anyone who’s taking a judgement about the public interest, whether it be the court, the Information Commissioner, the Press Complaints Commission, that they needed to take account of the commmercial viability of newspapers?”

Steve Coogan: “Absolutely not.”

Max Mosley: “Not when it involves the breach of somebody’s privacy because what you’re really doing there is taking something that belongs to somebody and selling it effectively for the benefit of a newspaper and that’s what it really comes down to. Somebody’s privacy is their personal property, it is deeply precious to them and to sacrifice that in order to keep a newspaper going cannot be right.”

Zac Goldsmith: “Plurality is obviously really important, I don’t think anyone would doubt that but if the only way a business can stay afloat is by engaging in immoral or unethical behaviour then that business should either change its model or go out of business, no one said that Auschwitz should have been kept open because it created jobs, this is just a non-argument in my view.”

GB: “To be fair I don’t think I was even trying to begin to make an argument on those lines…”

SC: “I think it’s Paul Dacre who put this argument also in one of the seminars at Leveson. It’s specious, the notion that, by that notion he’s trying to associate basic commercial viability with somehow pertaining to the public interest will justify any kind of abuse of the power of the tabloids like bribery or any kind of falsity if it helps make the newspapers more commercial, that would somehow justify…

“The other point to make is that any kind of regulations imposed would be across the board, so, his market share wouldn’t be any different, it would still be a level playing field, those are impositions everyone would be subject to, so he would just have to, someone like Paul Dacre and the Daily Mail would have to come up with a different business model.

“I also take issue with the idea that, were he not to include stories in his newspapers about what people got up to in their bedrooms, people would stop buying the newspaper, I think that’s nonsense, there’s plenty of people in England who are curious about asylum seekers and house prices that would carry on buying the Daily Mail, without the tawdry dirt that he likes to include.”

Not quite how the Daily Mail spun it eh?! Still, you can understand why they’d want the story to be about an out of context, supposed Nazi “slur” on the press, rather than Goldsmith’s (and Coogan’s) point that, if the only way a paper can survive is by invading privacy, ruining lives and breaking the law, it doesn’t deserve to survive at all, that the argument ”well, they provide all these jobs init?” is no argument at all.

As Conor Pope wrote at the time of the closure of the News of the World:

“In my mind this is a good thing. Anger has been directed at NewsInt for the fact so many innocent people, be they journos, secretaries or designers, have lost their job due to the demise of the paper. This, of course, makes sense. There is no joy to be found in gloating in someone’s joblessness. Unfortunately, there is a ‘but’ here.

“Because, although it is sad that those people have lost their jobs, when it really comes down to it, it was us who called for the advertising boycott that pushed it over the edge and I am very, very glad that the News of the World will no longer exist. The British media is better for it. It sends a huge message that we won’t put up with what has come to pass as journalism…

“In the end, these people worked for the News of the World. It’s been public knowledge for years that phone-hacking had happened there and I’ll bet a hell of a lot of people who worked there knew already what we only discovered this week. These people decided to work there, no doubt aided by the fact it was a very successful newspaper. But frankly, after what has happened there, it doesn’t deserve to exist anymore.

A friend one told me he that the water around an iceberg would have to be colder than the iceberg itself or it would melt. The culture of illegal activity had to be supported by many more around it who maybe had nothing to do with it. For example, today’s edition carries not a single mention of phonehacking. Seriously.

“The people who work there now, although hard done by, did not feel it newsworthy to have a single mention of not only the reason the paper no longer exists, but the biggest story of the week.”

Doubtless there would be even fewer tears shed at the demise of the Mail.

See also:

• A three step guide to writing a Simon Heffer column – Alex Hern, November 8th 2011

• Sunday Times Editor: Newspapers take the PCC “very seriously” – Really??? – Shamik Das, November 1st 2011

• Coogan: “If the Daily Mail went to the wall tomorrow I’d be delighted” – Shamik Das, October 13th 2011

• Look Left – The week the press were finally reined in – Shamik Das, July 9th 2011

• The tabloid press have the same attitude to the law as a bunch of feral muggers – Max Mosley, May 16th 2011

The witness statements from yesterday’s hearing of the Leveson Inquiry made headlines across the press.

The Independent and Telegraph splashed with the heartbreaking statement from Milly Dowler’s mother that the News of the World’s hacking of her phone gave them false hope she was alive, while The Times and Guardian decided to focus instead on Hugh Grant’s testimony.

Amongst the tabloids, however, there were fewer front pages drawing attention to the inquiry – in fact, just one, from the Daily Mirror. The Sun, Mail and Express lead instead with, respectively, “Xbox Cyber Fraud”, a crackdown on store cards, and a blood pressure pill.

The real dodging of the story happens inside, however.

The Sun finally gets its chance to do a bit of finger-pointing with its headline:

“Hugh Grant: Mirror and Mail hacked me”

They do eventually get round to mentioning the involvement of the Sun’s sister title, the News of the World, in the horrendous emotional pain inflicted on the Dowlers.

The Mirror seems to disagree with the Sun about who exactly was hacking Grant - on their website, the link to video of the inquiry proclaims:

“Grant accuses paper of hacking: Actor Hugh Grant told the Leveson Inquiry that his phone may have been hacked by The Mail on Sunday.”

Their main story gives the same impression, miraculously avoiding the part of the testimony where Grant names the Mirror:

“Grant claimed that, as well as being told by police that the News of the World had hacked his phone, the Mail on Sunday had gathered private information about him.”

The Mail, however, takes the biscuit for avoiding the issue. Obviously, newspaper front pages have limited space, so it may be that they simply thought the crackdown on store cards was a more important story. The same can’t be said, however, for website front pages. The Daily Mail has 9,299 words on theirs.

Of those, 49 are devoted to the Dowlers’ testimony, and there is not a single mention of Hugh Grant or his allegations.

Clicking through will reveal the Grant story, as well as the Mail on Sunday’s strongly worded denial of his claims they published information that could only have been received through phone hacking.

The Mail on Sunday:

“…utterly refutes Hugh Grant’s claim that they got any story as a result of phone hacking.

“In fact in the case of the story Mr Grant refers to the information came from a freelance journalist who had been told by a source who was regularly speaking to Jemima Khan. Mr Grant’s allegations are mendacious smears driven by his hatred of the media.”

Whether this story will hold up remains to be seen; Jemima Khan tweeted yesterday:

“MoS say a freelance journo heard story about “plummy voiced woman” from a source close to me. That’s not true as the 1st time I heard anything about this was when I read about it in the MOS.”

The Sun blames the Mirror, the Mirror blames the Mail, the Mail blames Jemima Khan, and the Guardian says ‘kill ‘em all’ and let Murdoch sort it out. And that’s only the first day of the inquiry…

See also:

• Dowler solicitor: News Int acting “like Soviet Union… you think the KGB are following you” – Shamik Das, November 8th 2011

• Leveson Inquiry hears of the ethical rot of Fleet Street – Alex Hern, October 7th 2011

• The NUJ is the solution to the sickness at News International – Ruwan Subasinghe, October 6th 2011

• Hugh Grant, Ed Miliband and Unite join to bury the Digger for good – Alex Hern, September 27th 2011

• Why have none of the tabloids led on Milly phone hack scandal? – Shamik Das, July 5th 2011

The new head of the PCC, Lord Hunt, has today given an interview to the Guardian in which he’s laid out his priorities for leading the commission.

Lord Hunt said:

“I want to be guided by the people who really know.

“I’m determined to set the agenda as long as [the people in] the industry are prepared to share with me their thoughts about the way in which the challenge of self-regulation can be met successfully.”

The challenges of self-regualtion are hard to meet successfully when some of the people who are supposed to regulate themselves don’t really want to do so; as Left Foot Forward reported earlier this month, certain papers treat the PCC with barely disguised contempt:

The Richard Desmond-owned Daily Star and Daily Express have both withdrawn from the PCC - they are no longer covered by the body. They very clearly have no respect for it, and do not take it seriously at all.

At the time, in January this year, Tabloid Watch asked:

“And what happens to Desmond? Well, it appears there’s nothing to stop his papers carrying on as usual – filled with all the lies, hatred and dreadful ‘journalism’ that have filled their pages since he bought them. Will it get worse now the PCC fig-leaf has gone? Can it possibly get worse?”

To a certain extent, Lord Hunt recognises these problems. Although he presents no solution for those papers which want to drop out of the commission altogether, he understands that the separate problem of those papers which “stay in” the commission but simply ignore their rulings needs to be tackled.

The Guardian says:

He concedes that the commission, though recognised for its mediation and arbitration work, has not been a regulator.

He says: “The important thing is to try to get a balance between a complaints handling service and a regulatory approach, and speaking as a lawyer, these are separate matters, and if there has been a difficulty in the past, it is that people have confused the two.”

The current PCC, with its separation between those two functions, has led to some laughably inept regulation.

Earlier this month, we reported:

Despite the PCC ruling there were “two separate occasions of significant inaccuracies on the newspaper’s front page” – which they describe as “a matter of serious concern to the Commission”, no sanction was imposed. Full Fact describe the Mail’s treatment of the PCC as “extraordinarily derisive”.

As Full Fact say:

The PCC is too timid to stand up to the newspapers with whom it deals.

It fatally undermines the good work that the PCC’s complaints staff do by showing that ultimately, when the Commission itself is called upon to regulate rather than mediate, it is weak.

On other areas, however, Hunt shows less understanding of the role he is stepping into.

The Guardian reports that:

He chooses to praise the code - “there is nothing wrong with it,” he says firmly.

Really? Really??

This is the code which exempts headlines from the rules, which says that pejorative reference to an individual’s sexuality is bad but that homophobia in general is absolutely fine, and which rules that the words “the fact is” do not indicate that something is a fact:

Nine months after the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker penned an article calling sea-level rise “a colossal scare story” - prompting a complaint from Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute - the Commission ruled that:

“It is not of course for the PCC to make findings of fact on where the truth about climate change lies.”

The body is obliged to make judgments on clear factual inaccuracies, and Ward had exposed a whole selection – yet Booker was exonerated, and his article remains.

In effect the PCC relieves columnists of the obligation to base articles on facts. This tendency reached absurd heights recently, when - despite requiring newspapers “to distinguish between comment, conjecture and fact”, the body ruled that the words “the fact is” - prefacing a review of published research findings - did not indicate a statement of fact.

With the opening statements of the Leveson inquiry being made today, Lord Hunt has to prove that the PCC is still relevant against charges from all sides that it is obsolete and out of date.

On one aspect at least, he is trying to keep up with the modern world:

Surely the major problems occur because of the tabloids? “No,” he replies, “I think the greater challenge is with the bloggers, whether it’s Guido Fawkes or whoever.”

See also:

• Sunday Times Editor: Newspapers take the PCC “very seriously” – Really??? - Shamik Das, November 1st 2011

• PCC responds to criticisms over hackgate - William Gore, July 20th 2011

• Clegg’s plan for cleaning up the press: “Freedom, accountability, plurality” – Shamik Das, July 14th 2011

• IPCC reform? We need PCC reform first - Tim Holmes, February 24th 2010

• Not enough evidence to collar Coulson as report slams News of the World and “toothless” PCC - Shamik Das, February 24th 2010

As we’ve pointed out on this site before, there isn’t a great deal of expertise involved in placing misleading press stories about benefits in right-wing papers on behalf of the government.

It’s particularly easy if the stories involve statistics, which the majority of journalists will happily swallow whole without asking any awkward questions. Given prevailing levels of innumeracy and gullibility, there’s really no excuse for failing to get the lobby singing from the same spreadsheet.

So how do we explain these contrasting statements about disability benefits in today’s Telegraph and Mail?

The Mail say:

‘Almost 200,000 people were granted a disability benefit last year without ever having a face-to-face assessment. A staggering 94 per cent of new claimants for Disability Living Allowance started receiving their payments after only filling out paperwork.’

The Telegraph say:

More than 30,000 people were given additional benefits on the basis of nothing more than filling in an application form.

Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) showed that 94 per cent of new Disability Living Allowance (DLA) claims last year were approved without a face-to-face assessment of their needs by officials.’

Technically, ‘more than 30,000’ and ‘almost 200,000’ could be referring to the same figure, which might just possibly correspond to the 94% figure both stories cite. But that’s not what’s happening here. The two papers highlighted different figures because the underlying story which both papers are trying to reproduce involves passing off statistics about one thing as if they were about another.

This sort of thing goes on all the time, but in this case the spin failed to hold the story together because it was transparently ludicrous.

The claim is that most disability living allowance claims are based solely on claimants filling out a form: this in turn is intended to make the case for cutting DLA expenditure and caseloads by 20%, in accordance with the June 2010 budget. Iain Duncan Smith says in the Mail “At the moment, hundreds of millions of pounds are paid out in disability benefits to people who have simply filled out a form.”

In fact figures released today by the Department for Work and Pensions (pdf) indicate that the amount of DLA expenditure on new claims which were based only on a form was £30m in 2010. £30m is not hundreds of millions. Likewise, the percentage of new claims based only on a form is 16 per cent, which is not 94 per cent.

It is certainly true that an estimated 94 per cent of new claims didn’t involve a specific medical examination. But to suggest that all of these claimants had ‘simply filled out a form’ would be grossly misleading.

42 per cent of awards were also based on a report from a general practitioner; 36 per cent on another source of evidence such as information from a hospital report, a social worker or allied health professional or from assessment for employment support allowance. In other words, there’s a lot of evidence from ‘face-to-face assessment’ in play, it’s just that most of it doesn’t involve DWP officials.

As for the 16 per cent of claims which were based only on a form, these were presumably cases where a DWP decision-maker had judged that no further evidence was necessary.

The underlying story reported by both newspapers is based on a deliberate and painfully obvious attempt to conflate the small minority of awards where DWP decided only a form was needed with the large majority of awards which didn’t involve a specific medical examination by someone working for DWP.

As for the contrasting figures cited by the Mail and Telegraph, while we can’t locate a source for them, the disparity is likely to be the consequence of this conflation.

This looks awfully like a case of desperate, amateurish spinning in the face of figures which refuse to tell the story government wants people to hear. Let’s just hope that no public funding was involved: perhaps the Taxpayers’ Alliance, inevitably quoted in today’s Mail’s story, should investigate?

See also:

• How the disabled took all the jobs - Declan Gaffney, September 1st 2011

• DWP admits disability reform based on dodgy figures, as reported by Left Foot Forward - Declan Gaffney, August 11th 2011

• DWP faces legal challenge over welfare cuts - Neil Coyle, July 2nd 2011

• The ‘inexplicable’ rise in Disability Living Allowance explained - Declan Gaffney, February 14th 2011

• Government plans to cut DLA could cause extreme hardship - Sue Marsh, January 24th 2011

Eight months ago, Left Foot Forward brought you the definitive guide on How to Write a Richard Littlejohn Column. Now, in our ongoing quest to ensure that no-one need read Right Minds again, we bring you number two in an infrequent series, a three step guide to writing a Simon Heffer Column.

1. Never mention Germany without bringing up Hitler

Angela Merkel doesn’t communicate using phones, email or post; when referring to her correspondance, the correct terminology is “a Führergram from Berlin.”

Don’t actually use the name Germany, instead refer to the “Fourth Reich”, and when discussing politicians who agree with the European consensus, like Lukas Papademos, their rank is “gaulieter”.

Whenever Germany is exercising power, don’t forget to refer to the 1930s:

“Indeed, never has there been a better time since the 1930s for an aggressor to challenge the supposedly civilised world.”

2. Inflammatory militarist analogies make your piece seem more interesting.

If your piece is about economics, the Daily Mail audience may get bored. If you pretend you’re writing about war, everyone will get very excited!

Try referring to jackboots:

“Any fiscal union would comprise only a few countries — those whose economies are strong enough to withstand Germany having to tell them how to run their own affairs — unless joined by other masochistic nations that relish the  occasional kick from the jackboot.”

Or equating economic pressure to warfare:

“Once, it would have taken an invading military force to topple the leadership of a European nation. Today, it can be done through sheer economic pressure: it might be that within a few days the Germans — along with their French allies — will have secured regime change in the two most tiresome countries in the eurozone.”

3. Ignore inconvenient facts

If there’s a point you want to make, make it! Don’t worry about what’s true – it’s not as if the Mail has fact-checkers, after all.

So if you want to write this:

And if marriages are not to be arranged - and of course they should not be - what effect would a change of dynasty have on the subjects of the Crown? Suppose the Prince of Wales’s elder child had been a girl. Suppose she had married the male equivalent of Kate Middleton.

This would mean that for several generations the Royal Family would take its name and pedigree from a pair of party planners.

Or this:

But if a royal princess marries into a foreign royal family, unions of Crowns are still possible, with all that entails.

Then write it! So long as you don’t remind people that we’ve actually already had one Queen marry a German prince, and another Queen marry a Greek prince, and that we are not, to the best of my knowledge, part of a Graeco-Germanic empire, you’ll be fine.

And although some people might argue that reasoning that with cognatic succession in 1901:

“We might have ended up twenty-one years later as one of Hitler’s provinces.”

is reasoning in bad faith, those people don’t have a Daily Mail column. Which means they basically don’t exist, right?

See also:

• Mail and Telegraph plea for racist Tintin book even Hergé disowned – Alex Hern, November 4th 2011

• How to create a Telegraph migration scare story – Matt Cavanagh, September 9th 2011

• Express and Mail fail the migration stats test – Sunder Katwala, August 26th 2011

• Telegraph’s “£500,000 teachers’ pension pot” claim is wrong – Shamik Das, June 30th 2011

• How to write a Richard Littlejohn column – Dominic Browne, March 22nd 2011