In the wake of Wakeham

Christopher Meyer, the new head of the Press Complaints Commission, has much to do to repair the PCC's tarnished image, writes Rod Dadak

To many people's minds, the Press Complaints Commission has made a pig's ear out of a number of decisions over the past year. Then its chairman, Lord Wakeham, had to resign over the Enron débâcle. Sir Christopher Meyer's appointment as his successor is therefore a challenge. He may be a diplomat by training and he may have gone to the high-church Lancing College, but the gloves have to come off in Salisbury Square.

The PCC desperately needs to regain its lost credibility and dispel the image that it is good value to only the Royals and Tony Blair.

Last year, in The Independent, I dared to challenge a PCC decision over Anna Ford. Miss Ford had been on a private holiday and parked herself on a private part of a public beach in Majorca with her friend. A paparazzo had taken a telephoto shot of her, which was subsequently published in OK! magazine and the Daily Mail; her holiday was ruined.

She complained to the PCC, since she had made every attempt to avoid publicity and wanted her privacy respected. The PCC threw out her complaint, saying she wasn't in a private place. I called the decision "bonkers", and the following week, Lord Wakeham took exception and told Miss Ford that if she wanted privacy she should "stay off the beach".

One can be forgiven for thinking that it was a low point in the PCC's application of its code of practice and clause 3, which enshrines the entitlement to respect for private and family life, home, health and correspondence. After all, the PCC deserved credit for introducing that clause before the introduction of article 8 of the Human Rights Act.

But worse was to come. In May this year, the PCC upheld a complaint made by a resident of Dorking, that the publication of a photograph of him dining at a café in the town's high street was an invasion of his privacy. The article in question was a restaurant review under the headline: "Skulduggery over a butterscotch tart". The author described how he had come across Dorking on an early-afternoon outing, how he had gone into a small café and how much he had enjoyed a butterscotch tart.

The article had a total of four photographs to illustrate its contents. One was of the tart in question, and the other three were of the guests in the café, including one of the gentleman who complained. All the photographs were innocuous and were of the sort that appears in newspapers, especially regional newspapers, day in and day out.

The PCC upheld the complaint, ruling that although the case might appear trivial, an important principle was at stake. The PCC's acting chairman, Professor Pinker, claimed that the ruling demonstrated the PCC was concerned with protecting the common man as much as celebrities.

On the evidence of what happened with Anna Ford in what must be one of the most obvious cases of breach of privacy, that was an idle boast. As her claim appears to have been justified, one does begin to wonder whether an innocent photograph taken unintrusively in a café to illustrate those dining there is truly an invasion of privacy. If it is, then three of the four photographs in the article in the Dorking Advertiser are in breach of the code of practice. The only complaint that would not succeed would be the one of the butterscotch tart. Is a restaurant more private than a beach?

Privacy is probably the most important area in which the PCC can play, and should be playing, a role. No less a person than the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Woolf, said so in the A, B and C footballer/sex/lapdancer/confidentiality case: "Once it is accepted that the freedom of the press should prevail, then the form of reporting in the press is not a matter for the courts but for the Press Council and the customers of the newspaper concerned."

The PCC has that responsibility and it must be seen to discharge it. It must enforce its code sensibly and in a manner that commands respect from the public as well as the press. If it does not do so, the hawks who want statutory controls will increase in number. So Sir Christopher may have to use more than just his diplomatic skills.

Rod Dadak is head of defamation at the law firm Lewis Silkin