Kirsty Weakley asks whether setting up a charity to oversee the new press regulator is a sensible compromise or a just spiralling bureaucracy.

Following the Leveson report into media standards last year the industry is under pressure to set up its own independent regulator and one of the solutions being mooted by editors at the moment is for a charitable trust to oversee a new regulator.

The suggestion has been made by the newspaper sector in response to David Cameron’s policy adviser Oliver Letwin’s proposal of a Royal Charter backed by statute, because setting up a trust would not need to be backed by statute – a key sticking point for many editors.

But how would this work in practice? Reports in the Independent and Telegraph suggest that the new press regulator would be accountable to the charitable trust, which in turn would be accountable to the Charity Commission. The Information Commissioner's Office has also warned in its response that there is a “clear role for the ICO” in future press regulation in the area of data protection rules.

This seems like a whole lot of bureaucracy – with different bodies responsible for different aspects this risks being confusing to the public, never mind the press themselves. There is also the small matter of cost - setting up two new organisations, the press regulator and a charitable trust, is bound to be more costly than just the one. 

Until Lord Hunt comes up with definitive proposals for a successor to the Press Complaints Commission and the role of any charitable trust it would be wrong to draw any firm conclusions, but in the rush to agree a new self-regulatory system that satisfies enough of the Leveson recommendations I fear that Lord Hunt and co. have simply settled on the ideas of a charitable trust as the ‘least bad’ legal structure rather the ‘best’.