However imperfect our media, better a free press than a government-controlled one

I would be the first to agree that Britain's newspapers and broadcasters often get it wrong and have a great deal to answer for.

However, the last people on earth who can be trusted with authority to address this are politicians or political activists with a grievance about how a cause dear to their heart has been reported.

Periodically misbehaviour by the press this leads to calls for tougher regulation, and this reached its' peak after the phone hacking scandal with the Leveson inquiry.

The latest political group to call for government regulation of the media are the Green Party, whose leader Zack Polanski called this week for the government to "sort out" the press.

The Greens have circulated a petition calling for all newspapers to be forced to join a government-approved regulator.

This is an extremely bad idea.

Would you trust a government-controlled press to have broken the story of the post office horizon computer failure which resulted in hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters/post-mistresses being wrongly convicted ? Or the contaminated blood scandal?

Let's not forget that when the phone hacking scandal broke, existing pre-Leveson laws against media abuse had enough reach to that 67 journalists were arrested or charged with breaking them. Nine people were convicted. Those arrested and charged included two of the most powerful people in Britain, one of whom had been the incumbent Prime Minister's Communications Director at the time the scandal broke, and who was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

So the suggestion that Britain's existing laws are not strong enough to control misbehaviour by the press is very far from proven.

And although it was entirely reason for David Cameron to have set up the Leveson inquiry, the main lesson from that exercise is what dire legislation can come out of one, especially when politicians give in to their worst instincts. 

In my humble opinion section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 which came directly from Leveson is arguably the most unjust and pernicious bit of legislation ever put on the UK statue book, and that's a high bar as it is up against strong competition.

This law, which thank God was never brought into effect before Rishi Sunak kept his election promise to repeal it in 2024, meant that a media organisation which was sued for defamation could find itself forced to pay the costs of the people who sued regardless of what the court found - even if every word of what they had published was found to be both true and the publication in the public interest.

This preposterous law was an attempt to blackmail all media organisations into signing up to a government regulatory body. Zack Polanski and the Greens now propose to simply legislate that they have to.

In my book both are invidious.

Government regulation of the press is a fundamental conflict of interest.

Better a free press, however imperfect and sometimes irresponsible, than a government-regulated one.

If my memory is correct the Rt Hon Eric Pickles, later MP for Brentwood and Ongar and holder of various government offices, was still leader of Bradford council when he said

"If the press is drinking in the last-chance saloon, a wise government will think long and hard before calling time."