by Brian CathcartHere is a prediction: in the weeks to come ministers and newspapers will claim that Hacked Off have been granted privileged access to the corridors of power to discuss Leveson implementation. And since we’ve met ministers, they will argue, we can’t complain about how often editors see ministers.Below is a full account of our meetings with ministers and officials. Three things are now clear about these encounters:1. Ministers have been using meetings with Hacked Off as a kind of figleaf to cover major concessions during talks with the press;2. Hacked Off were transparent about our meetings, whereas ministers sought to conduct negotiations in secret. We blogged or issued press releases (or both) about most of them;3. Our short, formal meetings cannot rival for impact the privileged, informal and private access enjoyed by the likes of Rupert Murdoch, who dined recently with William Hague, George Osborne and Michael Gove, meetings which only emerged after probing by The Guardian.On 30 November, the day after the Leveson Report was published and David Cameron did his best to sabotage it, Culture Secretary Maria Miller asked, through Hacked Off, to speak to some victims of press abuses. Instead, three Hacked Off staff attended and explained that victims were too angry and upset to see her, and that they would not risk being exploited by the government for publicity purposes.On 20 December, Hacked Off met Miller and Oliver Letwin, the policy minister, at their request. Mr Letwin explained some of his ideas for the royal charter. At this meeting he readily acknowledged that such a charter would need protection in statute to ensure it could not be meddled with by ministers. We blogged about this on the same day here and put out a press statement, saying we thought charter overcomplicated and undemocratic.We met Letwin and Miller again on 3 January, the day after Letwin sent us a delayed partial draft of his charter plan, including the proposed protective clause. We were asked not to make this public. We had a further meeting with Miller and Letwin on 10 January at which we gave our full response to the charter plan as it stood, expressing scepticism but pressing Letwin to produce a complete draft. He promised one within days.We heard nothing of this draft, and nor did we meet any minister, for a month. On 11 February, Hacked Off were called to 10 Downing Street for a short meeting with the Prime Minister. (The Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, was leaving as we arrived.) He said the new draft charter would be published the following day and that it would have no protective clause. He also said that the press would have influence over appointments to the recognition body and that this was ‘in Leveson’. It is not. As we left, the Prime Minister’s director of communications, Craig Oliver, put pressure on us to accept the new, watered-down charter, saying , “It is the toughest form of regulation in the world. Don’t reject this.”Hacked Off met Miller and Letwin the following day to be talked through the new charter draft an hour before its publication. This draft proved to contain concession after concession to press demands, and to reflect not one of the suggestions Hacked Off had made for effective Leveson implementation.That is the story so far. Six meetings in all, and no meaningful consultation whatever. There were four further encounters involving experts and officials, but again these had no impact. Most involved the recognition criteria: we were not told in these that they were being watered down to suit the press.We listened to the charter proposal in good faith on the grounds that Letwin insisted it would deliver ‘the whole of Leveson’. We met him three times and made many suggestions, most of which he seemed to welcome, but in February we found he had ignored them all.Even now we are prepared to meet ministers again, but not to discuss the sell-out charter that is currently on the table. Though all evidence shows that the public, most of Parliament, almost all the victims and many, many journalists are in favour of implementing Leveson properly, it seems that Conservative ministers are listening to only one voice: the voice of the press.Brian Cathcart is director of Hacked Off. He tweets at @BrianCathcart.