Staff in the Metropolitan Police were “shocked” by the amount of hospitality received by senior officers, the Leveson Inquiry has heard.Dame Elizabeth Filkin, former parliamentary commissioner for standards, said complimentary gifts from the press, including tickets to expensive sports events, were seen as excessive by lower ranking members of staff within the force.She added: “Many of the police officers and staff were obviously highly shocked at the amount of hospitality that the senior people appeared to be receiving... many of the lower ranks felt people were ‘filling their boots’ and that was a very general view.”“From what people had seen from the publication of the registers, most of the people that I spoke to within the Met felt that people had been receiving excessive hospitality.”Filkin published a report into the relationship between press and the police, commissioned by the Home Office, in January this year.Lord Justice Leveson told her: “The great advantage of the work you've done is that it rather foreshadows some of what I have to do, and therefore it would be perfectly in order, would it, for me to use what's been said to you for the purposes of the inquiry.”Filkin spoke to police, staff, politicians and journalists, and told the inquiry she exercised her own judgment on whether what she was being told was reliable. She said Met officers had told her they would not use the force’s internal whistleblowing service because they feared being exposed.She said: “There were concerns or fears about their future if they were regarded, in their terms that they used to me, as a troublemaker.”Filkin went on to highlight several issues, including the favouring of some journalists and newspapers by the Directorate of Public Affairs, which would offer stories to certain reporters to keep others out of the press, and said transparency should be a priority for the Met in dealing with the media.Also giving evidence was Roger Baker, Her Majesty’s inspectorate for the northern region and a former chief constable in the Essex police force. He told the inquiry that as chief constable, he never accepted anything more than tea, coffee or water from members of the press, saying he regarded meetings with the media as “on duty”.He added: “It makes me sound extremely dull... I didn't need to be in a more convivial environment – we just got on and did business. In truth, there was never occasion to do that. I always found tea, coffee or water suffices.”Baker said he recognised an “intensity” at the Met, due to the size of the force and it being on the doorstep of the national media. He advocated for more clarity in the relationship between police officers and journalists, and said off-the-record briefings should be limited and recorded in order to safeguard the public.He added: “There needs to be a real clarity on what is appropriate and what isn't. If no clarity on rules, you can't regulate.”Baker said there should be a greater understanding of social media within the police, describing an incident in which a police officer had published inappropriate pictures on Facebook.He said: “Exposing your genitalia while identifying yourself as a member of X-shire police might not be the corporate image you are trying to convey.”The inquiry heard the HMIC team compiling the ‘Without Fear or Favour’ report, headed by Baker, spoke to officers involved in Operations Elveden and Weeting, but did not want to interfere with current investigations.