LONDON, (Reuters) – Prime Minister David Cameron abruptly ended cross-party talks on regulating Britain’s famously aggressive newspapers on Thursday and tabled a vote on light-touch rules instead, prompting allegations he is in thrall to the press barons.
Victims of scandal-hungry tabloids who have had their phones hacked and life stories misreported have pressed Cameron to implement the findings of a judge-led inquiry that recommended the creation of a tough press regulator backed by legislation.
It is a stance that has been broadly backed by the opposition Labour party and the Liberal Democrats, the junior party in Cameron’s two-party coalition government, but one which has been fiercely resisted by newspaper owners who argue such statutory legislation would imperil press freedom.
Cameron sided with the newspapers on Thursday and put himself at odds – not for the first time – with the LibDems, telling a news conference that putting detailed legislation on the statute book was “fundamentally wrong in principle”.
“It is wrong to cross that Rubicon by writing key elements of press regulation into the law of the land,” he said. “It is wrong to create a vehicle whereby politicians could in future impose regulations and obligations on the free press.”
His decision to force a vote in parliament on Monday on his own proposals – a form of self-regulation that would encourage papers to opt into a new regulatory framework policed by a regulator – sets up a standoff with his political opponents that he is far from sure of winning.
Cameron’s Conservatives have 303 seats in the 650-member lower house of parliament, the LibDems 57, and Labour 255.
