UK starts work on draft bill to regulate newspapers

Lord Justice Leveson has called for a new independent watchdog - crucially to be underpinned by legislation.

While Deputy PM Nick Clegg wants a new law introduced without delay, the PM is opposed to any statutory control.

Meanwhile, British actor Steve Coogan has accused the PM of betraying victims of hacking.

Lord Leveson's 2,000-page report into press ethics found that press behaviour was "outrageous" and "wreaked havoc with the lives of innocent people".

He said the press - having failed to regulate itself in the past - must create a new and tough regulator but it had to be backed by legislation to ensure it was effective.

Speaking in the Commons, Cameron said he broadly welcomed Lord Justice Leveson's principles to change the current system but that he had "serious concerns and misgivings" over bringing in laws to underpin any new body.

Labour leader Ed Miliband has joined Clegg in supporting a new press law.

Following cross-party talks on Thursday night - which will resume next week - the Department of Culture, Media and Sport will begin the process of drawing up a draft bill implementing the Leveson recommendations.

The prime minister believes this process will only serve to highlight how difficult it is to try to legislate in a complex and controversial area while Labour and the Lib Dems think it will demonstrate the opposite.

At the core of this disagreement, were two separate political calculations. David Cameron thought the press would swiftly agree to tougher self regulation which would make any new law unnecessary, allowing him to go into the next election as a champion of a free press.

Labour and the Lib Dems, meanwhile, do not trust papers to clean up their own act and assume the victims of press intrusion will say they are being sold short.

Writing in the Guardian, Steve Coogan, who told the Leveson Inquiry that journalists had been going through his rubbish bins, said Cameron was "playing a despicable political game - disingenuous at best, bare-faced lying at worst. By rejecting Leveson's call for statutory regulation, Cameron has hung the victims of crime out to dry."

He added: "Quite simply, if future regulation is not backed by statute, Leveson's report is nothing more than a large slap on the wrist."

Coogan is a supporter of the Hacked Off campaign, which represents victims of phone hacking and press intrusion including the parents of missing Madeleine McCann, and Christopher Jefferies - who was falsely accused of murdering Jo Yeates.

Many of Friday's newspapers have praised Cameron's opposition to law-backed regulation.