Former cabinet minister David Mellor has said the exposure of his private live was a “small price to pay” for press freedom.Mellor – secretary of state for national heritage under John Major – resigned in 1992 shortly after his affair with actress Antonia de Sancha was reported in the Sun. The politician said details about the relationship had been “cooked up” by publicist Max Clifford and deputy editor Stuart Higgins.He told the inquiry it was an “inconvenient moment for one's private life to fall out of the cupboard” as he called for a second Calcutt report into press practice the same year. He went on to blame the British public for demanding salacious stories about public figures, but said politicians should expect to have their private lives investigated by the press.He said: “We can't go on with the press fouling it's own nest by being incapable of behaving appropriately in relation to their desperate desire to feed the British public's equally desperate desire for gossip."He later added: “The press is not running a morality patrol to cleanse public life. The press are running a morality patrol for their own squalid reasons about their circulation.“It is a question of trying to draw a line and a little bit of scalpel-like surgery rather than a bludgeon to try and keep the best of the freedom of the press.”Mellor said former prime minister Margaret Thatcher saw Rupert Murdoch as a “kindred spirit” and criticised the proprietor for not buying in to British society while his newspapers have influence over the country.He added: “Why would someone like Tony Blair fly to the middle of Australia to address a group of Murdoch executives if it wasn’t a sign on his part that he needed the support of Mr Murdoch... Why did Murdoch exercise this overt power over leading politicians and force them to go to tedious conferences they didn’t need? Because he could.”Mellor, who coined the phrase “the press - the popular press - is drinking in the Last Chance Saloon", said future regulation should ensure the press lives up to the standards it expects others to conform to. He criticised the Press Complaints Commission and said proprietors must be compelled to join up to a future body.John Lloyd - Financial Times contributing editor and director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism – said journalists would be reluctant to accept stronger regulation and will not place ethics above being “servants to the news desk”.Lloyd said journalists have a “built-in aversion” to anything that infringes their right to behave “irresponsibly”.He said: “Nearly all newspaper people, not matter what part of the jungle they may live in, or make their living in, will have a kind of built-in aversion and a preference for a part of society which retains the right to be irresponsible.”He later added: “There is this strong underpinning in the newspaper industry of a dislike of being marshalled into the same kind of more responsible corrals into which other professions are accustomed to work.”Lloyd told the inquiry editors often refuse to give talks at the Reuters Institute because it would be a “talk to the death”.He discussed the financial state of the industry with Lord Justice Leveson, who said it was concerning proprietors were mainly interested in profit and a “race to the bottom” to publish salacious stories.Lloyd replied: “The trend in newspapers which are increasingly cash-strapped does tend towards commentary and light journalism. I think the trend towards commentary of various kinds will continue.”He later said a future regulatory body should attempt to settle privacy and libel claims before the courts, and called for equal prominence for corrections and clarifications.