THE report from Lord Justice Leveson does, in fact, hold few surprises. Such has been the debate and coverage of the inquiry carried out by Sir Brian that most of what the final report carried was well known and well trailed.

That he has chosen to recommend a form of statutory legislation to underpin a new regulatory regime for the British press was, regrettably, to be expected. He is after all a judge, and those in the law tend to believe that more law, not less, is the answer.

Now the debate begins in earnest to find a solution to the challenge facing the Prime Minister and Parliament which is split over whether any laws brought in to control the press, no matter how light a touch is promised, amounts to the beginning of censorship and the end of freedom of speech in this country.

The suggestion that press freedom should be enshrined in a law sounds sensible, but if that freedom is qualified by the threat that a so-called free press must do as it is told, then it will be worthless.

The answers will not be simple. New laws take time to introduce. And does this mean the licensing of newspapers in this country as they do in Russia and other less free nations? And what constitutes a newspaper?

A parish magazine, a free sheet, an Internet news site, an individual’s blog? Will only registered journalists be permitted to have an opinion, a voice?

This paper, and this editor in particular, have argued against legislation. The fear must be that any laws proposed to underpin a strong regulatory body would, little by little, grow to suppress and stifle free speech.

When that day dawns then we will have lost something precious, something not gifted to us by nature, but hard won by generations who fought and in some cases died to protect our liberties. For those liberties to be snuffed out by a coalition of self-serving celebrities and MPs seeking revenge for the exposure of their expenses scandal would indeed be shameful.

Hitler and Goebbels knew the value of first controlling the message as a way of controlling the people. They failed to defeat free nations. The message from history is clear. But there is no escaping that, for some part but not all, the press has brought this on itself. Large parts of the public have little sympathy for papers that have overstepped the mark too many times. The shocking case of Milly Dowler illustrated those excesses only too clearly.

Yet still I would contend that whatever the past errors, to put at risk the liberty of free speech in this country is too high a price to pay, not for newspapers, but for all of you.