'Daily Mail' editor Paul Dacre backs press self-regulation

Self-regulation is the "only viable way" of policing a free press in the UK, the editor of the Daily Mail has claimed.

Paul Dacre, who is the editor-in-chief of Associated Press which publishes the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and the Metro newspapers, said self-regulation in a "beefed-up form" would be the "only way of preserving the freedom of the press".

Speaking during a seminar on press regulation held ahead of Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into phone hacking, Dacre announced that a new corrections and clarifications column would be published on page two of all Associated Press newspapers.

However, he also accused politicians of seeking revenge on newspapers in the phone hacking investigation after they were exposed by the press in the parliamentary expenses scandal.

The editor noted the "rank smells of hypocrisy in the political class's current moral indignation over the British press that dared to expose their greed and corruption".

The seminar, held at the QE2 Conference Centre in Westminster, is exploring issues surrounding the future regulation of the media, including how to address instances of malpractice.

"Such practices (phone hacking) are a disgrace and have shocked and shaken us all," said Dacre.

"They need to be purged from journalism and reforms instigated to prevent such criminal activities ever happening again."

Dacre said that the Press Complaints Commission, of which he is the current chair, had been "naive" in its investigation of phone hacking, but it was not fair to say that the PCC could not work as a regulator.

"The truth is that the police should have investigated this crime properly and prosecuted the perpetrators," he said.

"If phone hacking results in the abolition of the PCC, then logically it should result in the abolition of the police and the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service)."

Dacre said that he would prefer to implement a newspaper ombudsman who could deal directly with press standards.

"Any future reforms must take into consideration the needs and commercial realities of all newspapers - the provincial press, mass-selling red-tops as well as loss-making broadsheets," he added.

> Les Hinton to give more phone hacking evidence

Meanwhile, the private investigator at the heart of the News of the World phone hacking scandal has contacted the alleged victims to ask them to stop "persecuting" him with lawsuits.

The Guardian reports that lawyers representing Glenn Mulcaire have claimed that he has already served his punishment with a jail term for hacking offenses, and so other alleged victims have nothing to gain by suing him.

Despite accepting that the victims are "no doubt extremely angry" with Mulcaire, his law firm Payne Hicks Beach said that they "may take comfort from the fact that he has gone to prison for his actions, unlike almost anyone else, and that he continues to pay a heavy price".

> Glenn Mulcaire to sue News of the World over phone hacking