The UK does not need a new system of press regulation. It needs the one Parliament already designed to be used.

That is the central conclusion of the Press Recognition Panel’s tenth annual report on the Royal Charter system of press self-regulation, published this week. Over a decade after the Leveson Inquiry exposed systemic failures in press ethics, the independent body responsible for assessing press regulators says the framework created in response remains intact, tested and fit for purpose; noting the operation of an effective independent regulator, in Impress. However, the system has not been properly incentivised.  This has left many publishers to persist without meaningful accountability, and allowed press abuses to go on unchecked.

The report argues that the UK’s accountability deficit is not the result of regulatory design flaws, but of political choices and industry resistance that have left most major publishers outside independently verified regulation.

The Recognition System was established in 2013 under Royal Charter following the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press. The Press Recognition Panel (PRP) was created to assess press regulators against 29 criteria designed to ensure independence from both government and the industry, transparent standards, fair complaints procedures and access to low-cost arbitration.

Impress remains the only regulator recognised under the system. It has undergone repeated independent reviews confirming that it meets the Charter’s requirements.

Crucially, the PRP does not regulate publishers directly. It assesses regulators. The Royal Charter includes a “double-lock” mechanism preventing political interference: amendments require a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament and the Scottish Parliament, alongside unanimous agreement from the PRP board.The system was explicitly designed to avoid state control while providing independent oversight. Yet most national newspapers do not participate in it.

Instead, they belong to the industry-run Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), which has never sought recognition under the Royal Charter. Others, including the Guardian and the Financial Times, operate internal complaints systems.

The PRP’s conclusion is simple and unsurprising: the framework works where it operates, but the majority of the press remains outside it….and thus, not much is changing.

A key turning point, the report argues, was the failure to commence Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. Section 40 was intended to create incentives for publishers to join a recognised regulator by offering balanced protections in defamation and privacy claims. It was never brought into force and was repealed ahead of the 2024 general election without replacement.

According to the PRP, that repeal removed the only structural lever Parliament had enacted to support participation in independent regulation.

The report notes that successive governments have declined to fully implement the Leveson framework. Labour, which had previously pledged to do so while in opposition, has since said it is “carefully considering next steps”.In the absence of incentives, participation in recognised regulation has not expanded. The system exists, but it has never operated at scale.

The result, the PRP argues, is a fragmented regulatory landscape in which the public’s ability to seek redress depends on who published the story.

Publishers regulated by Impress must offer low-cost arbitration and are subject to independently verified standards. IPSO members are not assessed under the Royal Charter criteria (although reviews previously carried out by the PRP indicate that IPSO would fail the tests, if it did apply). Internal systems at individual newspapers are not externally verified at all.

This means that whether someone can access arbitration, obtain a correction or challenge systemic failures depends entirely on the publisher involved.

The report describes this as an “accountability gap”.

Polling commissioned by the PRP and cited in the report shows substantial public dissatisfaction with the current system. 54% of respondents say the press should be regulated by a body independent of both government and the industry. Only a small minority support industry-led regulation.

4 in 5 people asked believe the press often invade peoples’ privacy and three quarters said they thought new outlets often publish misleading or false information. Only around one in five say they would feel confident knowing where to file a complaint.

Academic evidence submitted to the PRP reinforces these findings, showing widespread confusion about how newspapers are regulated and lower levels of trust in the press compared with broadcast journalism.

A substantial section of the report documents contemporary press harm. It rejects the idea that such harm belongs to the phone-hacking era.

Evidence submitted to the PRP highlights ongoing problems including intrusion into grief, misleading headlines, discriminatory narratives and cumulative community-level harm.

The report points to:

• Intrusive approaches to bereaved families before formal confirmation of deaths.
  
  
• Reporting on suicide that may fall short of best-practice safeguards.
  
  
• Persistent negative framing of migrants and asylum seekers.
  
  
• Concerns about antisemitism and collective harms affecting Jewish communities.
  
  
• Disproportionate and hostile coverage of trans people.
  
  
• Sexist portrayals of women in public life.
  
  
• Stigmatising narratives around disability and mental health.
  
  
• Failures of verification, including fabricated “experts” and AI-generated sources.
  
  
• Misleading reporting on climate and energy policy.
  
  

A recurring theme is that many complaints systems are structured to address harm to identifiable individuals, not cumulative narrative harms affecting entire communities.

Under the Editors’ Code, for example, discrimination provisions apply only to individuals, not groups. The PRP report suggests that this limits the ability of existing systems to address systemic patterns of coverage.

Criticism of IPSO features prominently in the evidence cited. Academics describe it as operating primarily as a complaints intermediary rather than a fully independent regulator. Campaign groups argue that remedies often come late and consist of adjudications that do little to offset the damage caused by widely circulated headlines.

The PRP does not directly regulate IPSO, but it reiterates that IPSO has never submitted itself for independent assessment under the Royal Charter framework.

The report also highlights the growing challenge of digital distribution. News is increasingly consumed via social platforms where regulatory trustmarks are not visible and content circulates stripped of context. In such an environment, the PRP argues, clear and independently verified accountability press matters more not less.

After ten years of reporting, the PRP’s conclusion is that the UK does not require a new inquiry or a redesigned model of regulation. The model Parliament endorsed after Leveson remains in place, and is the best possible way of addressing the press standards “accountability gap”.

Independent regulation, it argues, is not statutory control. It protects press freedom by removing political and industry influence from oversight while giving the public meaningful routes to redress.

The system, the panel says, is ready to be used and what's missing is simply participation.

Whether IMPRESS ever operates as originally envisaged will now depend less on structural reform than on political will and on whether major publishers are prepared to submit to genuinely independent scrutiny.

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