The UK government looks set to fracture over the thorny issue of state regulation of the press after rival camps in the debate move to set out their stalls ahead of Lord Justice Leveson’s report on Thursday.
The latest prominent politician to throw their hat into the ring is the Liberal Democrats deputy leader Simon Hughes, who went on record to say he was ‘not for having a statutory system’ – even though his boss, Nick Clegg, has said a new regulator backed by statute should be implemented (if the recommendations are proportionate and workable).
Speaking to ITV’s The Agenda Hughes said: ““I’m not for having a statutory system but I am for having a system that says, ‘look, there will be a fallback’,” he told ITV’s The Agenda. “If somebody is slated on the front page of a paper and it’s totally untruthful and destroys their life, should they have a right to have something on the front page of the same paper to say that it was wrong?”
Hughes is joined by a group of 70 Conservative parliamentarians who have signed a letter against statutory regulation, firing a warning shot across the bows of Prime Minister David Cameron who (for now at least) is sitting on the fence.