Responding to Lord Hunt’s speech to the Society of Editors Conference in Belfast, Professor Brian Cathcart, Director of the campaign group, Hacked Off said:

This is tired old scaremongering from the industry body which failed to regulate the press effectively for more than twenty years.

Nobody at the Leveson Inquiry proposed state regulation. The suggestion of a licensed press actually came from Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, with his idea to restrict the distribution of press passes.

The BBC and ITV are regulated media organisations, but no one seriously believes that they are under the control of the state. All that is being asked is that editors are made accountable when they get it wrong, rather than being able to libel and abuse people with impunity.