WEDNESDAY 10 OCTOBER 2007 ________________ Present Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury, B Corbett of Castle Vale, L Eccles of Moulton, B Fowler, L (Chairman) Howe of Idlicote, B King of Bridgwater, L Manchester, Bp Maxton, L McIntosh of Hudnall, B Scott of Needham Market, B Thornton, B ________________ Witness: Mr Richard Wallace, Editor, The Mirror, examined. Q450 Chairman: Mr Wallace, thank you very much for coming, particularly today, as you have got the Pride of Britain Awards, have you not? Mr Wallace: We had it last night and it is televised tonight, so you should all tune in to ITV at 9 o’clock, a very worthwhile programme. Q451 Chairman: Absolutely, I have seen it before and it is very good. I think you know what we are doing, and that is to inquire into media ownership and the news and what the impact of concentration of media ownership is on the balance of opinion as seen actually in the news itself. We also want to know what is actually happening and how news has changed and how news gathering has changed. It is at this point a fairly wide brief. Obviously therefore one of the points we are looking at is ownership and the effect that that has on editorial content. I imagine you as Editor do not have too much difficulty deciding what party to advise your readers to vote for when it comes to an election? Mr Wallace: Absolutely not, we are proudly supportive of the Labour Party and have been since 1945 directly so, no, that is a given, as it were. Q452 Chairman: And you have never advised your readers to vote Conservative since the War? Mr Wallace: No, the readers have not asked me to advise them to vote Conservative. Seriously, a very large rump of our core readership is very much supportive of the Labour Party. Q453 Chairman: Is there a disadvantage in circulation terms in that you are seen as a party paper? Mr Wallace: I do not think so. I think the whole nature of party politics has changed in the last ten years or so in the sense that ideology appears to be moving to the back burner, as it were, and politics has become very much about issues. The last Prime Minister carved out a little centre island which everybody is now shoulder-charging each other to get upon, and that has also identified a new type of voter almost, who is about issues rather than party politics, which creates a difficulty for me because I have to obviously play to the hard core Labour Party-supporting membership which is traditional working class, and at the same time there is a new type of Middle England which again is formerly working class and lower middle class which is not about politics and about ideologies per se but which is about issues, and so the whole issue of which party they are going to support does not really concern them other than which particular individual and their policies do they support. This is a sea change that we are undergoing now, so it makes it difficult for us to navigate our way through because our core base - the traditional, industrial working class - is dying out. It is a fact of life that the country has changed very rapidly, certainly in the last 20 or so years. I would guess there might be an effect on our circulation as a result of that. We are navigating through those waters right now so it is difficult for me to predict otherwise. 2 Q454 Chairman: Obviously I understand what you are saying about elections, but how do other issues get decided? Is that a matter strictly and only for you as the Editor? If you wanted it to become a Euro sceptic paper, or something of that kind, would you be able to take that decision or would you have to consult with the Chief Executive of the whole Group? Mr Wallace: There is very much a delineation between the business end and the editorial end. Making big decisions like that comes round from what you are hearing from the readers. One of the things that I have tried to do in the last few years is to stress to my team that we need to reflect in the paper their concerns, their interests, et cetera. Europe is a great example. Frankly, nobody really cares about Europe, certainly our readers do not, it is not a huge issue on their radar; what is on their radar is crime, health, education, it is all the things that affect them directly. They do not believe in their hearts that they are about to be ruled by Brussels so therefore they do not care about that particular issue and it is not on their radar, so my job is to reflect what their concerns are and what they are thinking and also what they find interesting and what they find amusing. To that end crime is a huge issue and we will bang on to the Government, whoever is in government, until there is a perception that things are changing, so very much I am governed by what the readers are thinking. Q455 Chairman: And there would be no question of going soft on the Government because you are a Labour-supporting newspaper? Mr Wallace: Certainly we gave the last Prime Minister more stick than probably most because we felt, and because certainly our readership felt, that the decision to go to war in Iraq was incorrect, and that was a very strong position that we took and, frankly, the Government was not amused by that position and did actually say, “Aren’t you meant to be on our side?” and it is like, “Yes, but there are times when friends disagree.” 3 Q456 Chairman: And who took that decision? Was that strictly a decision taken by the Editor at the time in consultation with his editorial colleagues or was there any wider consideration of it inside the corporate body? Mr Wallace: I was on the staff at the time but I was based in the US. From what knowledge I have, it was very much an editorial decision, and the business end of it does not really come into it at all. Q457 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall: May I ask one question, Mr Wallace, to follow up on this question of the way that you are led by your readership. Is there any sense in which you regard yourself or your newspaper as a leader of opinion or an opinion former? Mr Wallace: In a sense, yes, because we provide so many different services. It is a complicated relationship that we have with our audience or with our customer, or whatever you wish to call them; the reader. I remember once I was talking to a group of our readers and one of them said to me, “I bought your paper today,” and I said, “Thank you very much. Why did you buy it?” and he said, “Because I wanted to know what to think.” I forget what the issue was, it was some burning issue of the day, and part of our remit, certainly when there are people in this very building banging on about something in particular, our job is to explain whether that is a good thing or a bad thing and translate almost. “If the Government says ‘Here’s an extra billion pounds for hospitals,’ does that mean that Aunty Margaret is going to get her knee op sooner or later? Somebody needs to help me here,” and that is part of our role. That is one of the aspects of the service that we provide. In a sense we do lead, when we say, “Do you know what, folks, this is a bit of a bad idea.” One of the advantages of the technological age we live in is that now they can react immediately and email me directly. We have forums on our website and what have you so we know very quickly. 4 Q458 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall: Just to put it very simplistically, if you said, “Do you know what, folks, this is a bit of a bad idea and all the blogs and emails came back saying, “Actually we think you are wrong; it is not a bad idea at all,” would you change your view? Mr Wallace: Yes, absolutely. Q459 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall: So it would not be the paper’s view any more that it was a bad idea? Mr Wallace: To be honest, it would depend on the individual circumstances. I would imagine if we were to ask all our readers if they wanted to bring back hanging then I think we would probably get a majority on that, and I probably would be not inclined to change our view on that. Q460 Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall: That is exactly the kind of issue I was hoping you might raise. Mr Wallace: I have every confidence in our core readership that once all the arguments were explained sufficiently, certainly on an issue like that, there is a knee-jerk reaction on those kinds of issues, however, when you go into it in any depth at all it is not quite as simple as that, and you often find if you get into a debate with them about it they are kind of like, “Yes, okay, fair point.” Q461 Lord King of Bridgwater: I am interested in the first point you made where I think you said to the Chairman inevitably you will be a Labour-supporting paper in the final analysis and that the die-hard Labour voters are your core readership.