MPs and the press have battled for centuries The London mob rose in defence of the Lord Mayor and press freedom. They marched on Westminster, dragged Lord North from his coach and attacked him with cudgels they had stolen from the constabulary. The poor man managed to escape into Westminster Hall, where he burst into tears. The Commons did send the Lord Mayor to the Tower - where he was wined and dined for a few weeks before being released to the acclaim of Londoners and the ringing of church bells. Not a happy precedent for the present PM. If David Cameron accepts state regulation, some newspapers will hound him from here to the election. If he does not, he risks being voted down in the Commons. What about a dab of regulation, a merest mention in statute? I'm told that already exists, with judges urged to take account of the rulings of the present Press Complaints Commission when deciding issues such as privacy. But wait - there could yet be a third way. As one senior Tory told me knowingly: "Leveson's report will have to be fully considered by all the relevant select committees and that may take some time." How shrewd! Freedom of the press is becoming something of a sacred cow and there is only one thing to do with sacred cows: push them into the long grass. Public sector paupers Tomorrow another report, written by Centrica boss Sam Laidlaw, will land on the desk of Patrick McLoughlin, the Transport Secretary, detailing the causes of his department's great rail franchising foul-up. You will recall that bidding for the West Coast Main Line had to be cancelled at a cost of squillions to the taxpayer. Mr Laidlaw's interim report suggested that civil servants were no match for private sector negotiators. Civil servants in the line of fire have been getting their excuses in early. Peter Strachan, the DfT's head of major projects, has spoken of "stark inconsistencies" in the accounts of those involved. Kate Mingay, one of three officials suspended over the fiasco, is in court this morning to start legal proceedings against the department. Yet a former deputy PM, Lord Heseltine, says this disaster is only the tip of the iceberg. Speaking at an Institute for Government seminar this week, he said that £264 billion of public sector contracts are let each year - and 60 per cent of them run over budget, time or both. Hezza said officials supervising such contracts earned around £100,000 - compared with the £300,000 by their counterparts in the private sector. The government's solution is to send officials to be trained but then the private sector offers them £300,000 to leave. He insisted that either Whitehall has to pay more or accept that most public sector work will be over budget or over deadline. He is right, yet paying a few officials three times as much as their colleagues would cause outrage in Whitehall and among the public. Perhaps one answer would be to revive the system that existed until 2001 and have all rail franchising negotiations done by an arm's length body, separate from the DfT. This could then pay enough to attract high-calibre staff who could hold their own with the private sector. For the sake of a few million extra in salaries, the taxpayer could save billions. Civil drivel A missive from the Cabinet Office gives the results of the annual Civil Service People Survey, completed by 297,000 officials: "The benchmark employee engagement index has risen by two percentage points to 58 per cent, returning us to the level achieved in 2009," it says. The benchmark scores for all but one of the nine engagement driver themes in the survey have increased in the last year. Not just tosh, but ocean-going tosh. If this is what ministers have to put up with, you can see why they complain about the Civil Service.