Police contact with Press must NOT be curbed, says ex Met boss Lord Stevens

• Lord Stevens calls for new media guidelines to rebuild 'trust and confidence'
• Journalists must be able to hold police and forces to account, he will say
• Last year's Leveson report called for a clampdown on police/media relations

By Stephen Wright for the Daily Mail

Published: 18:40 EST, 24 November 2013 | Updated: 20:55 EST, 24 November 2013

'Trust and confidence': Sir John Stevens will call for new media guidelines for relations between press and police

Relations between police and the media must ‘encourage, not restrict, two-way openness and contact’ so journalists can hold officers and their forces to account, a former head of Scotland Yard will say today.

In what will be interpreted as a critique of a section of the Leveson report into Press standards, Lord Stevens will call for new media guidelines within forces which ‘re-build trust and confidence’.

He is also expected to call for ‘streamlined and minimal requirements’ which do not restrict contact between officers and reporters.

Lord Stevens, who served as Metropolitan Police Commissioner between 2000 and 2005, will make a powerful intervention on police/media relations in a major report on policing to be published today.

The report by the Independent Commission on the Future of Policing – headed by Lord Stevens – will make uncomfortable reading for current Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe who has clamped down on unofficial contact between journalists and police officers and staff.

It will also be perceived as a thinly-veiled attack on a section of Lord Justice Leveson’s report into Press standards last year which controversially touched upon relations between police and the Press.

It is also likely to be seen as a riposte to former Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Elizabeth Filkin, who last year published a controversial report calling for even stricter controls on the way police officers interact with journalists.

It was adopted by Scotland Yard which warned officers against ‘drinking’, ‘flirting’ or ‘carousing’ with reporters and told them to keep a note of any contacts.

But critics say the ‘blunt instrument’ approach to police/media relations is counter-productive and could allow scandals in the force to be covered up.

They argue it prevents newspapers such as the Daily Mail exposing failings in the Stephen Lawrence case and revealing the corrupt practices of the now disgraced ex-Met Commander, Ali Dizaei.

In her report, Ms Filkin said the  ‘close relationship’ between parts of Scotland Yard and the media had caused ‘serious harm’.

Sir Bernard – who prior to the hacking scandal was regarded by many journalists as a ‘very media-friendly police chief’ – said new rules for officers about relationships with journalists would be implemented.

Critics say Ms Filkin’s report, and that of Lord Justice Leveson, have had a ‘chilling effect’ on police openness with the media.

Criticism: Lord Justice Leveson, pictured with his report into Press standards published last yea. It discussed relations between police and the Press

Last year’s Leveson report called for a clampdown on police/media relations, with a record kept of meetings with senior officers and tighter curbs on briefings with reporters.

It also warned police whistleblowers against going to journalists and advised officers to seek other ‘confidential avenues in which they may have faith’, such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Lord Justice Leveson wrote: ‘There remains an important point of principle which I need to come back to: that information which is confidential should remain so, unless there really are exceptional circumstances justifying the placing of that information into the public domain. Additionally, and looking at this more widely, the ends do not usually, or at least necessarily, justify the means.’

His report also said the term ‘off the record briefing’ should be scrapped. Instead, there should be ‘non-reportable briefing’, to inform reporters about things which cannot be used in reports, and an ‘embargoed briefing’ when reporting of the content is delayed.

Clamp-down: Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe wants unofficial meetings between police and press to stop

He did not recommend a blanket ban on officers chatting with reporters over drinks, but said the dangers should be set out by police chiefs.

But critics say the Leveson proposals have had a ‘freezing effect’ on police/media relations, meaning it is extremely difficult to hold forces to account on major stories already in the public domain – or scandals which have yet to be exposed.

Shortly after taking over as Met chief, Lord Stevens – then Sir John Stevens – said he wanted his officers and staff to engage fully with the media.

But in his wide-ranging report today – which was commissioned by the Labour Party – Lord Stevens will address the breakdown in relations between officers and journalists in the aftermath of the hacking scandal and the Leveson inquiry.

He is expected to say the current policy of ‘not engaging with the media’ could cause ‘serious problems with ensuring public confidence’.

It is understood that during his inquiry Lord Stevens and his high-powered team of ex police and security services’ chiefs, as well as senior politicians and academics, were told by interviewees that the police ‘need the media as much as media need police’.

Lord Stevens, who after leaving the Met was briefly a columnist at the News of the World, was also told the Filkin report has failed because its foundation ‘relied on too many anecdotes and misunderstanding and not on hard or reliable evidence’.

Last night the Police Federation of England and Wales welcomed Lord Stevens’s call for an improved media strategy.