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Public Confidence in the Media and Police

I am going to make some progress, and then I will give way a couple more times before I close. So, Mr Speaker, the question is, given the difficulties I have mentioned, how do we maximise the chance of making a clean break with the past? I want to set out some very clear lessons. First, we have got to try to proceed on a cross-party basis; otherwise, we will have each party trooping off to media organisations and promising the lowest common denominator. If I say ““independent regulation””, there is a danger someone else will say ““self-regulation””, and so on. We could end up constantly competing with each other in a kind of regulatory arbitrage over who can be the softest and most appealing to newspapers, television stations and their owners. I do not think we should pretend this is simply about tabloids or even simply about newspapers. I am a huge supporter of the BBC and the licence fee, but, frankly, I think there did come a time in recent years when the income of the BBC was so outstripping that of independent television that there was a danger of BBC news becoming rather dominant. So, there are dangers right across the piece here. The offer to work together with all parties on this agenda is indeed a genuine one.