Why Have the Leveson Inquiry’s Recommendations not Been Implemented in Full?

SUMMARY

• The Leveson Inquiry (2011-2012), led by Lord Justice Leveson, examined the culture, practices, and ethics of the British press, prompted by the phone-hacking scandal involving the News of the World newspaper.
• The proposals for reform of UK press regulation in 2012 were not implemented in full, despite popular and parliamentary support, and despite the creation of the legal framework.
• Instead, the UK press has been allowed to opt for in-house self-regulation or for a modified form of the discredited Press Complaints Commission. Press regulation was also notably absent from 2024 general election manifestos.
• While weaknesses in the inquiry system account for the slow pace of change, the power of media to resist change also explains why these proposals have ‘faded into forgetfulness’.

In December 2025, Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine went missing in 2007, launched a campaign for greater press regulation. He spoke of how he and his family had been the victims of ‘monstering’ by journalists. He was not alone. He was one of thirty signatories of a letter to government demanding that the press be better regulated and the public better protected, along the lines proposed by Lord Leveson in 2012.

The campaign begged an obvious question: why were the proposals for reform of UK press regulation made by Leveson not implemented in full, despite popular and parliamentary support for the report’s recommendations, and despite the creation of the legal framework for the reformed system of regulation? Why had Leveson been allowed, in the words of one commentator, to ‘fade into forgetfulness’ (press regulation was mentioned by neither the Labour nor Conservative manifesto in the 2024 election)? Was this just the typical fate of all such public inquiries or was it a further sign of the ‘power without responsibility’ of the British press?

What was the Leveson Inquiry?

The story of the Leveson Inquiry begins with the same complaints that McCann voiced in 2025 – the systematic and illegal press invasion of privacy. Following the revelation that the hacking extended beyond the famous to the phone of a missing schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, Prime Minister David Cameron announced in July 2011 a public inquiry into the press. He spoke of a ‘failure of our political system over many, many years to tackle a problem that’s been getting worse.’ The remit given to the inquiry was broad. It was not just to deal with phone hacking, but with the press in general, and with relations between politicians, the police and journalists.

When the report was published on 29 November 2012, the Prime Minister promised to act on its advice unless its recommendations were ‘bonkers’. But while the coalition government did go some way to implementing Leveson, the House of Lords concluded two years later that the regulatory regime continued to fall short of what Leveson envisaged.

Leveson as a case of history repeating itself?

Was Leveson just another example of the ‘policy cycle’ that the noble lord had himself identified? Certainly, this was the view of some critics who saw Leveson as another in a long sequence of ineffective interventions, in which regulation remained in the hands of those it was intended to regulate.

But is this a fair summary of what happens when there is a public inquiry into the press? Before Leveson, press regulation had been the object of six major inquiries since 1945. Initially, their attention was not on the behaviour of journalists, but rather on that of owners. Subsequent inquiries became ever more concerned with the conduct of journalists and those who managed them. In general, they focused upon the system of regulation employed by the press, recommending ever greater powers and ever greater independence to what became, in the end, the Press Complaints Commission.

The inquiries were not wholly ineffective. In shifting attention from ownership (about which little was done) to journalistic practice, the inquiries were instrumental in establishing the new press regulator and in highlighting the problem of the invasion of privacy. On the other hand, the changes still relied upon a system of self-regulation. To this extent, the Leveson report was just another phase in the ‘policy cycle’ as noted by its author and by other observers of the public inquiry system. Except that Leveson advocated a more robust system of legally enshrined regulation. But this variation made little difference to the forgetfulness that awaited it, raising the question as to whether this was a consequence of the weakness of the public inquiry system or the strength of the press in resisting regulation.

Less the weakness of the inquiry, more the power of the press?

This is a possibility that Leveson himself acknowledged, noting ruefully that ‘history demonstrates a distinct and enduring resistance to change from within the press’. In addition to their negative coverage of the Leveson Report, several newspapers also created the Free Speech Network to coordinate their opposition, representing Leveson ‘as a threat to press freedom’. Even before the report was published, the papers had either committed to the alternative system of self-regulation represented by Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) or had adopted their own ‘in-house’ regulatory regimes. Whatever Leveson had recommended, it seems, the press would have resisted it, as they had other, earlier inquiries. The history of inquiries into press regulation is also punctuated with examples of media resistance to change, whether to Younger in 1972 or the 1977 royal commission or Calcutt in the 1990s. Both John Major and Tony Blair gave evidence to Leveson about how they feared antagonising the press. Furthermore, it is notable how, while concerns about press behaviour has been a perennial issue, it has not featured prominently in the parties’ message to the voters. This was the case in 2024, as we have noted, but it was also true for almost all elections since 1945.

Conclusion

The ‘forgetfulness’ that would seem to characterise government policy on press regulation since Leveson cannot be attributed to a now compliant and responsible press, as the complaints of Gerry McCann and others testify. And the failure to take decisive steps may be attributed to flaws in the public inquiry system, which could be better organised, as Matthew Flinders has suggested. But these alone cannot explain the failure to engage fully with the problems posed by the press. The inquiry approach may have proved ineffective, but this would seem to owe as much to the power of the press to resist change and to intimidate politicians as it is to the inadequacies of the policy process itself.

Research for this article was funded by the Centre for Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia.