Jargon ruled the day as the committee of MPs investigating privacy spoke to a famous PR man and a Google executive
Four people from the new, state of the art, social media faced MPs and peers on Monday. They were three middle-aged men in suits plus one slightly younger woman in a suit. Hip and happening they were not. Instead they had learned all the jargon and corporate-speak you'd expect from a banker or a car-maker.
The committee was investigating privacy, and it soon became clear that this was of scant importance to the social media. The parliamentarians kept asking if their boards ever discussed ethical issues. If they do, they certainly don't make a song and dance about it.
Daphne Keller of Google was over from her home in the US. She pointed out how amazing were the safeguards used by many sites. Why, she had been banned from looking at pictures of her own children, downloaded by her husband, for fear that they might be looked on by paedophiles!
She was asked why Google couldn't just take down anything – such as the clandestine tapes of Max Mosley's S&M "party" – that had been decreed illegal. She also managed to avoid answering that. Lord Mawhinney gave her a blast of British, or at least Ulster, irony. "Ms Keller, you have got ducking and diving down to a fine art. I hope you will take that as a compliment."
I don't think it was meant as one. It might be flattering to a cheating footballer in the penalty area but not to an international executive.
Next they heard from two PR men, the famous Max Clifford and Phil Hall, who used to edit the News of the World. Mr Clifford was ruing the present situation by which newspapers were too frightened to print anything that might reflect badly on the rich and powerful. "In the present climate, you wouldn't have heard about MPs fiddling their expenses!" There was a certain uneasy stirring around the table.
He went on to ladle abuse on the Press Complaints Commission. "It might as well not exist! I've never known them help anyone. Take the McCanns. The PCC had nothing to do with them, they didn't want to know!"
Warming to this theme, he got on to the topic of Robert Murat, the man who was once wrongly suspected of being involved in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. "That man had his life destroyed by the media. I got involved – I got apologies from all the papers plus several hundred thousand pounds, but the PCC was nowhere to be seen, and I could give you 500 examples. They are not independent, they are paid by the media, end of story!"
Mr Clifford's plan would be to have a truly independent body that would decree if a story was in the public interest – not merely interesting to the public. This would work for ordinary people.
"The rich and famous get more than enough protection – I know, I'm part of it! Superinjunctions don't exist for most members of the public – the law is for the rich and powerful, and in a democracy that is wrong!"
At this point Mr Clifford heard a sound which may have been unfamiliar to him: MPs and peers murmuring in agreement.