Sir Alan Moses, Chairman of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), tonight gave a lecture to the annual conference of the Society of Editors.

Dr Evan Harris, associate director of Hacked Off, who was in the audience responded to the speech:“Sir Alan Moses failed to show in his speech that the legitimacy of IPSO comes not from colourful oratory, the personality of the Chairman, or the assertions of independence in the face of a flawed, industry-controlled, appointments process, or by a tinkering with the processes.

“Legitimacy for those you are supposed to serve, the public, will come from whether IPSO complies with the Leveson criteria set out down by a senior judge after an exhaustive 14 month inquiry, endorsed by a democratically-elected Parliament, bound the terms of Article 10 of the Human Rights Act and is independently audited as doing so.

“Until then IPSO - like the PCC whose staff, rules, premises and industry control are the same as IPSO’s - will rightly be seen as a sham regulator and will be another failure.”

Prof Brian Cathcart, founder of Hacked Off added:

"This was billed as the speech in which Sir Alan Moses would stand up for victims of press abuse and challenge the big proprietors and editors. Instead we had the same feeble patter we would have heard from a chair of the PCC. After a week in which three more journalists were convicted of committing crimes for their employers, the public was entitled to expect much more from Sir Alan. He could have told them they must change and learn the lessons. He failed. Though he talks about reform, there is no real evidence here that he believes in it."