Politicians 'reject' press's plan for regulation - BBC News

7 October 2013 Last updated at 20:50 ET

Media commentator Steve Hewlett said people in the newspaper industry were "furious"

Senior politicians have rejected the newspaper industry's version of a royal charter setting up a press regulator, the BBC's Newsnight has reported.

A source said a sub-committee of the Privy Council, containing four Lib Dem and four Tory cabinet ministers, thought the proposals were "flawed".

The full Privy Council is also looking at an alternative plan backed by politicians and campaigners.

It is due to announce its decision later this month.

The Newsnight programme was told of the development which emerged from discussions among Privy Council members on the newspapers' proposals for press regulation.

Increase confrontation

These were said not to have met the requirements of the Leveson inquiry into press practice and ethics.

The decision looks set to increase confrontation between supporters of the rival plans.

Steve Hewlett, presenter of BBC Radio 4's The Media Show, told Newsnight that newspaper publishers felt the process had been far from transparent.

He said: "People I have spoken to are furious and are now considering whether there might be a legal challenge to this decision by the Privy Council."

Trevor Kavanagh, associate editor of the Sun, said the news was not a shock.

"It's what we'd been given fairly clear clues would happen," he said.

"I think it has to be seen as a great victory for the forces of oppression of a free press - Hacked Off in particular - and the politicians who have gone along for the ride."

Campaign group Hacked Off welcomed reports of the sub-committee's decision - but expressed concern at the prospect of a delay.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said there was no deadline for the sub-committee to consider the industry's proposals.

A DCMS spokesman said: "They will continue until they reach a decision."

Earlier, Gerry McCann said the newspaper industry's plans for press regulation were "a gentlemen's club agreement" and should be rejected by politicians.

The father of missing Madeleine McCann said the recommendations of the Leveson inquiry were the "minimum acceptable".

At odds

Mr McCann and his family were subject to intense press attention after Madeleine went missing while they were on holiday in Portugal in 2007.

Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry was set up in July 2011 after it emerged journalists working for the now-closed News of the World had hacked the mobile phone of murdered Surrey schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Politicians and the press have been at odds over the details of a royal charter - a formal document used to establish and lay out the terms of a body - to underpin the regulator.

The government's proposals published in March have cross-party backing and the support of Hacked Off.

There are a series of key differences between the industry's plan for press regulation and that agreed by politicians and campaigners.

The newspapers' proposals would:

• Omit a ban on peers and former editors serving on the newly created "recognition panel", which will decide in future whether newspapers are being regulated properly
• Deny Parliament the power to block or approve future changes to regulation. Instead the regulator, trade bodies and the recognition panel would have to agree to changes
• Give the regulator the power to "require" - rather than "direct" - the nature, extent and placement of corrections.