The PCC completed the investigation of 2,445 complaints in 1999 - of which six out of ten were about accuracy in reporting. About one in eight related to intrusion into privacy. All complaints are investigated under the editors' Code of Practice, which binds all national and regional newspapers and magazines. The Code - drawn up by editors themselves - covers the way in which news is gathered and reported. It also provides special protection to particularly vulnerable groups of people such as children, hospital patients and those at risk of discrimination.

Our main aim with any complaint which raises a possible breach of the Code of Practice is always to resolve it as quickly as possible. Because of our success in this, the Commission had to adjudicate on only 49 complaints in 1999 - the lowest ever number. That is a sign not of the weakness of self regulation - but its strength. All those which were critical of a newspaper were published in full and with due prominence by the publication concerned. As well as dealing with complaints, the PCC deals with a substantial number of calls from members of the public about our service and about the Code. In 1999 we dealt with over 4,500 telephone inquiries. This is an encouraging sign of the accessibility of the Commission to members of the public.

The success of the PCC continues to underline the strength of effective and independent self regulation over any form of legal or statutory control. Legal controls would be useless to those members of the public who could not afford legal action - and would mean protracted delays before complainants received redress. In our system of self regulation, effective redress is free and quick.