State regulation of the press is 'abhorrent', says Hugh Grant

Actor Hugh Grant said yesterday that statutory regulation of the press would be ‘abhorrent’.

He called instead for a voluntary system, with a ‘backstop’ of sanctions for newspapers that breached the industry’s code of conduct.

In an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme, the star defended the claim he made to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards that The Mail on Sunday might have hacked his phone. But he admitted he had no evidence.

Last week, Paul Dacre, Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers,  publisher of The Mail on Sunday, told the inquiry that he had found no evidence of phone hacking.      Read Full