Leveson leaves the field as the tackles fly in - The Guardian

No sooner had Lord Justice Leveson cleared David Cameron of offering commercial favours to News International in return for political support than the prime minister put himself at risk of the exact same charge again by rushing to spike Leveson's central proposal of statutory underpinning for independent press self-regulation.

Some of this renewed scepticism is the prime minister's own fault. Cameron has made some mistakes. He should not have told the BBC's Andrew Marr programme that he would implement Leveson so long as it was not "bonkers". In some of the many meetings with victims' families, he should have made it clearer that he was opposed to intervention by statute in principle, something he only revealed in the Commons on Thursday. Finally, he should not have allowed his culture secretary, Maria Miller, to suggest she would co-operate with other parties in drafting a media regulation bill, but only to prove Lord Leveson's ideas are unworkable.

The apparent U-turns leave Cameron open to the cynical charge that he has been underhand and that the motivation for his actions is still about power.

Downing Street insists that perception is unfair, just as Leveson showed it was unfair to think that the former culture secretary Jeremy Hunt and Cameron were in a deal to hand News Corp a majority shareholding in BSkyB in return for political support.

But Downing Street also knows the perception puts pressure on Cameron to show that he is going to put the squeeze on the newspaper industry, forcing it to improve on its previous failed attempts at self-regulation – and on the proposal put forward by Lord Hunt that Leveson tore apart.

Cameron's aides insist he is genuinely shocked at the intrusiveness of some tabloids, and wants reform. He also thought it unwise of the education secretary, Michael Gove, to tweak the nose of Lord Justice Leveson in the run-up to publication. "It was bad politics and bad manners," said one Tory MP.

So Miller is calling in representatives of the newspaper industry on Tuesday for a round-table discussion in which she will tell them to pull their fingers out. No 10 insists that Cameron has not withdrawn his threat of stiffer action if the press fail within a limited period of time to implement radical proposals for a reform of self-regulation.

It was a point Miller underlined when she said: "What Lord Leveson has made clear is that the current Hunt model has some significant flaws and I would agree with him on that. What we need to see now is the press coming forward and I think the press need to be under no illusions if that isn't forthcoming then we would have to take further action."

Hunt, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, promised that the industry was prepared to come up with something more radical. Cameron wants fines, front-page apologies and editors held to account.

But in some ways two parallel pieces of work are going to be going on at the same time. The press industry will be seeking to prove it they can produce a model of self-regulation that meets the Leveson principles, as Cameron demands.

Simultaneously, cross-party discussions will be under way to see if a workable draft bill to underpin this regulation can be drawn up, and make it permanent. Cameron spelt out his fears about this draft bill. "Once we start writing a piece of legislation that backs up the independent regulator," he said, "we have to write into legislation what its composition is, what are its powers, what is its make-up, and we find pretty soon I would worry – that we have a piece of law that is really a piece of press regulatory law."

But the Liberal Democrats insisted they would not allow this drafting process to be used to arrive at a pre-determined outcome that such legislation is unworkable. A Lib Dem official, in a sideswipe at their coalition colleagues, said: "The statement that this bill is being drafted to show that it will not work does not reflect the position agreed by all three party leaders in the talks on Thursday.

"And the Liberal Democrats in government will ensure that the bill is drafted in good faith. We owe that to the public and the victims."

For the Liberal Democrats there is also politics at stake. It was a huge moment for Nick Clegg to ask the Speaker to be able to make a separate statement in the Commons, because he was revealing the fissure in the coalition.

Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative leader of the Lords, said such a separate statement from ministers in the same government had not been been made by a coalition member since the 30s.

Clegg tried to play down the significance of making the statement, saying coalition government leads to "anomalies, glitches and innovations in this venerable place", but he added intriguingly: "I suspect it will be repeated quite a lot in the future."

Indeed Lord Ashdown, a former Liberal Democrat leader, suggested that in areas outside the coalition agreement, such as newspaper regulation, Clegg could now use this precedent to differentiate himself more. Ashdown told the Guardian: "Being such nice fellows, our natural habit is the pre-emptive compromise. The coalition is teaching us some new habits." With the party coming eighth in Rotherham, and only two years to the next election, many in the party crave differentiation. But Clegg is in practice now working to try to persuade Cameron to compromise. He said: "If we all immediately start digging trenches and digging our heels in the worst of all outcomes will happen which is nothing that will happen at all."

One idea floated is for the government to put forward a draft bill in the next parliamentary session, possibly not advanced as a government bill.

Clegg is also clear in his mind as a liberal that Leveson made a legitimate case for the law to ensure independent regulation is effective. He pointed out that Leveson himself had said the system of incentives – the carrots and sticks he is offering the press so that they all join in the new system – would not work without law. Secondly, changing the law is the only way to give assurance that the new independent regulator is not just independent for a few months or years, but for ever.

Cameron, by contrast, came close to saying in the Commons on Thursday that he will oppose on principle any statutory intervention in the media.

Leveson tried in his report repeatedly to address this argument. On page 67 he pointed out: "There are many forms of statute law which already restrict the activities of the press, whether in terms of their organisation, competition or activities, up to and including what it may be lawful to publish. Not every statutory restriction possible will be proportionate and justifiable. But to contend that no statutory reform could be so is to push the argument far beyond any reasonable statement of principle. Ultimately there is no necessary connection between statutory underpinning of a regulatory system on the one hand and state censorship on the other, nor in my view is there some sort of slippery slope gliding from the first to the second."

But, sadly, Leveson having put the ball into the court of parliament has left the field of play. It is down to the politicians and the press to find an answer.