Leveson Inquiry: A free press is in the public interest Whenever politicians seek to justify the possibility of statutory controls on newspapers, they emphasise how much they consider a free press to be essential for a free society. They then lament the failure of self-regulation to curb the "worst excesses" of some - usually tabloid - publications and conclude that perhaps it is not that important after all. The letter published by The Guardian yesterday and signed by 42 Conservative MPs and two Tory peers follows this familiar template. "No one wants our media controlled by the government," they write, "but, to be credible, any new regulator must be independent of the press as well as from politicians." It is their belief that any replacement for the Press Complaints Commission should be underpinned by statute law. Indeed, they maintain that the debate is being clouded by an "obsessive argument over the principle of statutory regulation." For legislators, this is a curious observation. The concerns expressed widely in the newspaper industry about the prospect of statutory regulation are not "obsessive" but central to the principle that the letter's authors purport to hold dear. The signatories make the specious argument that the type of statutory underpinning that they have in mind will stop short of state control of the press; and no doubt, to begin with, it will. But once a press law is on the Statute Book, politicians will find the temptation to ratchet it up impossible to resist. In fact, the letter provides evidence of this slippery slope by suggesting that a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity has arisen to enshrine in law a single standard for what constitutes the public interest. This is precisely what will happen once a Bill gets into Parliament: amendments will be tabled to tighten the regulatory framework and introduce new French-style laws on privacy and the public interest. With Lord Justice Leveson expected shortly to publish his recommendations for a new regulatory regime, this intervention by Conservative parliamentarians could prove crucial to how David Cameron handles the report. Pressure is growing in the Commons for all-party talks, with a consensus beginning to develop in favour of legislation. One argument often advanced in its favour is that since the broadcast media are controlled by a statutory body, why should the press be different? The answer is that if people don't like a newspaper, they need not buy it, whereas TV programmes are beamed directly into most people's homes whether they want them or not. This distinction has long been recognised in law. To seek to bring the press under statutory regulation will impair freedom of speech and the liberties of the subject, however much MPs try to gild the lily. Furthermore, how does Parliament propose to define the public interest? It is easy to think of stories that would have been - indeed were - dismissed as tittle-tattle by those with lofty views of what the public should find interesting yet which turned out not only to be true but of great significance. The failing marriage of the Prince of Wales and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, springs to mind. Any public interest test would almost certainly have prevented the reporting of personal information that was, in fact, being supplied by at least one of the protagonists. Arguably, this newspaper's revelations about the expenses abuses by MPs could have fallen foul of a public interest test - not necessarily directly, but indirectly because newspapers (let alone broadcasters) would be unwilling to undertake such investigations. The chilling effect of Leveson is already being felt: publications are under greater pressure to abandon particular inquiries while others are reluctant to pursue stories likely to cause controversy, even when they are in the public interest. This is especially harmful to cash-strapped local newspapers which fear for their very survival. How is that good for democracy? Politicians like to claim they are thick-skinned; but given the chance, they will legislate to keep nosey journalists out of their business. It is self-serving - or downright naïve - to claim that they would be doing so in the interests of maintaining "a free press essential for a free society."