Leveson report proposals would be illegal: Chakrabarti

Chakrabarti, a London-based prominent Indian-origin human rights activist, said any such clampdown would breach the Human Rights Act and be open to legal challenge.

The Leveson's report last week recommended an independent self-regulatory body for the British media industry, backed up by legislation. Currently, the British press is self-regulated through the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

British Prime Minister David Cameron had set up the inquiry last year after it emerged that journalists at the now-defunct News of the World tabloid of Rupert Murdoch had hacked the phone of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old murdered schoolgirl, as well as targeted dozens of crime victims, celebrities and politicians.

Chakrabarti, 43, one of six assessors who worked on the Leveson Inquiry, said: "We were chosen as advisers because of our areas of expertise.

"Mine is human rights law and civil liberties. In a democracy, regulation of the press and imposing standards on it must be voluntary," she told the 'Daily Mail'.

"A compulsory statute to regulate media ethics in the way the report suggests would violate the act, and I cannot support it," Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty, said.

"It would mean the press was being coerced in being held to higher standards than anyone else, and this would be unlawful," she said.

At the heart of Chakrabarti's objections to the Leveson report is that any new law that made the government quango Ofcom the "backstop regulator" with sweeping powers to punish newspapers would violate Article 10 of the European Convention On Human Rights which guarantees free speech and is enshrined in Britain's Human Rights Act, too.

Her intervention is hugely significant because as one of only six 'assessors' who helped guide the Levenson inquiry and its conclusions, her position threatens the viability of key parts of the report, the paper Daily Mail' said.

Chakrabarti said that if the recommendation were made law, any publication which became subject to compulsory regulation would be able to challenge it in the courts, and seek a legal declaration that the 'Leveson law' flouted human rights.

If the law were not repealed, the publication could seek to have it overturned at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. (More)