British embassy in Washington, D.C., as minister-commercial and deputy head of mission. He returned to London in 1994 to become Prime Minister John Major's press secretary and government spokesman. He was posted briefly to Germany as ambassador in 1997, but was transferred in the same year to Washington as Britain's ambassador to the United States. HM Ambassador to the United States His final posting was as British Ambassador to the United States from 1997 until his retirement in 2003. He underwent emergency heart surgery just before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Meyer gave evidence about his time in the role to the Iraq Inquiry in November 2009. The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) Meyer was appointed chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, the UK press's self-regulating body, in March 2003. During his tenure from 2003 to 2009, Meyer introduced a number of reforms to enhance the profile, independence and credibility of the Commission. These included increasing the majority of independent Commissioners, introducing independent scrutiny of the PCC's internal processes and decision-making, instituting PCC "away-days" twice a year in the cities and towns of the UK and extending the PCC's remit to online editions of newspapers, including audio-visual material. This led to a significant increase in public use of the PCC, with complaints about the press rising from 2,630 in 2002 to 4,698 by the time Meyer retired as chairman. He was also responsible for developing the PCC's pre-publication activity, including its anti-harassment service, which proved highly effective in protecting people from the unwanted attention of media scrums. Meyer's tenure coincided with the gaoling in 2007 of the News of the World reporter, Clive Goodman, and the enquiry agent, Glenn Mulcaire, for phone hacking offences under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. This prompted the resignation of Andy Coulson, the editor of the News of the World. Later, as the phone hacking scandal spread, the PCC, and Meyer himself, were criticised for not having done more to punish those responsible. However, Meyer's powers as chair were relatively limited in this respect; Baron Ivor Judge, the then Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, said in a 2011 lecture to the Human Rights Law Conference, "To criticise the PCC for failing to exercise powers it does not have is rather like criticising a judge who passes what appears to be a lenient sentence, when his power to pass a longer sentence