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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now David Cameron will face one of the toughest decisions of his political career this week when the Leveson Report is finally published on Thursday. The Prime Minister will have to respond. Now Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for tougher regulation of the press enforced by law but the Conservative party is divided and in a moment I’ll speak to two Tory MPs on different sides of that divide. Now let me introduce our Leveson panel, I am joined now by Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi, he is leading a group of around 70 MPs who do want tougher press regulation underpinned by the law, also joining me are Conservative MP and former Cabinet Minister, Cheryl Gillan, she believes change should be made without perhaps involving the law and the political columnist and public policy editor of the Economist, Anne McElvoy, a very good morning to you all. I want to start with you, Nadhim Zahawi then, you’re a convert aren’t you, to the cause of some kind of legal underpinning to whatever Lord Justice Leveson comes up with?

NADHIM ZAHAWI: I sat on the Joint Committee for Privacy and Injunctions and going into that committee I was instinctively against any form of statutory underpinning or any form of interference from politicians or government but as you take the evidence, we realised very quickly that you need whatever new regulator is set up to have real teeth. Now there are several problems, one is called the Desmond problem, i.e. if it is self-regulating one of the proprietors can say well I’m not joining in, now how do you compel everyone to …

DM: This is Richard Desmond of the Express Group.

NZ: Precisely. The other problem is not trying to protect Hugh Grant and wealthy footballers and powerful politicians, I think we’re all big enough and ugly enough to protect ourselves but it’s protecting the Millie Dowler’s, the McCann’s, the Chris Jefferies. Jefferies was mauled by the press, tried, hung, everything done to him without him having any ability to …

DM: I think everyone agrees with that but what you are saying is that there needs to be some legal underpinning.

NZ: But here’s the problem, it is making it affordable to appeal so that ordinary people can actually have a recourse to do this. Now I am very attracted to what Lord Hunt and Lord Black are suggesting, I just think it needs a legal underpinning. We’ve seen it in the Advertising Standards Authority, the legal profession has a similar thing where there’s a provenance in statute but they are independent. I do not want to see politicians controlling the media, I want to see it fully independent.

DM: Cheryl, you’re nodding your head there and of course when we talk about those flagrant abuses that some tabloids and other papers have carried out as well but it is what’s done for the future, do you think it might be necessary to have, as Nadhim Zahawi was saying, some legal underpinning to whatever replaces the PCC?

CHERYL GILLAN: Well first of all we need to be very clear that we don’t know what Leveson is going to say and I would really like to see what Lord Leveson says after sitting week after week, month after month, and doing a very in-depth inquiry, exactly what he’s going to recommend. Secondly, I’ve looked at some of the other countries that are at the top of the Press Freedom Register such as Finland and Denmark and although they have a very light statutory base, it is mostly done by agreement but with major differences such as every newspaper, every publication has a designated individual that is responsible for the responsibilities that those newspapers and those media outlets are …

DM: A lot of newspapers in Britain now have People’s Editors and things like that, but what further powers do you think should be …

CG: Effectively their Press and Complaints Council has the powers of investigation as well, they have the power to fine and if the newspaper or the media outlet disagree with the judgement they go to court immediately.

DM: Interesting, let me bring Anne in on this, could the British press live with something like that, a fairly light touch but as Cheryl was saying, still stop of the press freedom whatever ...

ANNE McELVOY: That is such a load of nonsense, the Press Freedom List, I’m sorry I have to disagree with you. Having looked at the Scandinavian press, it is absolutely marvellous, it’s fantastically boring and I hope that we don’t end up with a press like that. Also when you say it’s light touch, Cheryl, that’s possibly what you see when you go and look at it from here but if you are actually inside the system you find that the appointments to the body, if you take Denmark for example, were made by the Ministry of Culture, do you find that a desirable outcome? And you know what’s in the background? The Ministry of Justice, if you end up in a really bad situation with the press. All I am saying is that there is this thing, and Nadhim used it earlier, which is this light regulatory law without it bringing you close to the politicians …

DM: What Nadhim was talking about, I don’t want to put words in your mouth but is some sort of underpinning that forces people like Richard Desmond to be part of whatever’s there.

AMcE: Hang on a minute, let me answer that one. For a start the Desmond problem has been resolved because Desmond has said he will come in to a regulatory system.

NZ: That’s today but what happens in ten, twenty years’ time with another proprietor?

AMcE: Nadhim, in ten or twenty years’ time, the whole Leveson Inquiry is being made for newspapers as they are now which are changing all the time. In ten years’ time, what about regulating … you can’t look ten years’ ahead.

NZ: One of the things that is attractive that we looked at in the committee was for the digital world having some sort of a kite mark for bloggers and news outlets because those outlets actually aspire to be serious and respected and picked up by the mainstream press. The reality is that the wrong-doing took place in the big newspaper groups. The other issue on Leveson that he needs to tackle is plurality which is a major, major problem, there was over-concentration in the press.

AMcE: Do you know people who are want to run newspapers and are prepared to put their money into running them?

NZ: Well you can have one in a minute, Evgeny Lebedev is doing a great job …

DM: Cheryl, I want to bring you in because we are running out of time and this argument is going to run all week. What about the Conservatives, what is David Cameron going to do with the split in the party? Nadhim and others have written this letter and there are others saying well you’ve got to go along with this, Labour and the Lib Dems will …

CG: We’ve got to see what Leveson says. We’ve also got to take the views of those people that have been harmed by the press, I want to hear what the McCann’s think, I want to hear those people who were hacked, what they think about what Leveson proposes and then I want to make sure, Anne, I’m not holding it up as nirvana for us, quite the reverse, I just don’t want us to have another Dangerous Dogs Act where we immediately legislate, we have a knee jerk reaction and we end up with legislation again that doesn’t work. I want something that everybody buys into, that is effective …

AMcE: That is self-regulation but with more teeth.

CG: I think Anne and I are on the same page.

DM: It’s interesting the page you reach and do you know what, Nadhim isn’t that far away I think but what about, Anne, the political dimension here, how does this play out for Mr Cameron. Does he accept Lord Justice Leveson en masse and legislate if he has to or does he say well look I’ve got an election in two years’ time, I don’t really want to upset the press?

AMcE: Give him a little bit of credit. He is in this story as a kind of player because of his close relationship with Rebekah Brooks so he is massively embarrassed, that will condition some of his responses but I don’t actually think that he wants to regulate. I think he knows it would split the party, some are even more hostile than our panel here today and I think he would like to do it as the last chance. I know a lot of people will say you’ve had your last chance, the last chance saloon has been open for a long time …

DM: 21 years.

AMcE: And many people have been drinking there for rather a long time in the press, that is true, literally and figuratively, but I do think he will won’t want to go along the statutory route. What he will want to do is to make clear that what we come out of this process with has got to look very different from the PCC before. You couldn’t get away with simply continuing what we had before.

DM: Okay, just let me put that very quickly, because we’re running out of time, would that upset you if the Prime Minister said I won’t legislate if Leveson recommended it?

NZ: What I’d like to see is the parties working together in parliament, I think Cheryl is absolutely right, no knee-jerk reactions, let’s see what Leveson recommends and let’s then take it from there. I don't think this should become two camps. I heard David Blunkett in a debate, he again is on the other side of me but he doesn’t want to see polarisation of …

CG: He has got several choices. He can kick it into the long grass, I don't think he’ll do that. He can either accept or reject it or he can go for some sort of self-regulation with a light touch. I think he’s got a tricky hand to play but I trust his judgement on this, he knows that the stakes are high.

DM: Okay and on that note we’ll leave this discussion. Nadhim Zahawi, Cheryl Gillan and Anne McElvoy, thank you all very much indeed.