While all three party leaders said they were satisfied with the terms of the “historic” deal, sealed at 2.30am on Monday morning, many of the country’s leading newspaper publishers were wary.
The body will have powers to impose fines and demand prominent corrections, and courts will be allowed to impose exemplary damages on newspapers that fail to join reports The Guardian
Cameron urged the newspaper industry to sign up quickly to the agreement. He said: “It is closing time in the last chance saloon. This replaces a failed regulatory system with one that will work because it has some real independence at its heart and is going to be properly overseen without allowing parliament to endlessly interfere.”
The newspapers are furious that Cameron’s policy adviser, the Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin, sealed the deal at 2.30am on Monday morning in Miliband’s office, accompanied by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg and four members of the victims’ group Hacked Off.
In a statement, Associated Newspapers, News International, the Telegraph Media Group and the Express’s publishers, Northern & Shell, said they would be taking “high-level legal advice” on whether they would join the regulator.
“No representative of the newspaper and magazine industry had any involvement in, or indeed any knowledge of, the cross-party talks on press regulation that took place on Sunday night,” they said. “We have only late this afternoon seen the royal charter that the political parties have agreed between themselves and, more pertinently, the recognition criteria, early drafts of which contained several deeply contentious issues which have not yet been resolved with the industry.”
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