SOME readers may have seen or heard me on the BBC over the last few days giving my reaction to the Leveson Inquiry’s recommendations.

What I have attempted to do in those television and radio appearances is to make the voice of the regional press heard a little more loudly than it has been so far in the press regulation debate.

The regional press is the most read part of the printed media in this country. More people read a regional or local newspaper at some point during a week than read a national.

Yet the potential impacts of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations for future regulation on the regional press are barely being mentioned in the wall-to-wall coverage that followed last week’s publication of his inquiry report.

Leveson himself produced a 2,000-page report that contains no more than ten paragraphs about regional newspapers.

Television news constantly referred to the awful behaviour of the British press, as if all newspapers took part in the dreadful practice of phone hacking and other criminal acts.

The reality is it was a tiny percentage of the British press that acted in a reprehensible manner.

The sticking point in the Leveson recommendations is the potential use of statute to underpin future regulation of the press.

My view on this has not changed.

I am fundamentally opposed to any form of legislation to regulate a free press.

It would be the thin end of the wedge. The moment Parliament has a say in what newspapers can and cannot do is a moment we should all fear.

Politicians who are in favour of so-called statutory underpinning say there is nothing for newspapers to worry about in such a measure.

Call me cynical, but experience tells me that the time to worry is when politicians tell you there is nothing to worry about.

The other important aspect in this is that beefed-up regulation of the press backed by law would not necessarily have stopped the dreadful behaviour of some national newspapers.

Phone hacking, bribery, payments to police and other public officials, contempt of court were among the key issues investigated by Leveson.

Yet these are all illegal already. I fail to understand how a new law can make something that is against the law any more illegal than it already is.

I have huge sympathy for press victims like the Dowlers and McCanns. Press regulation has to change because of what happened to them and others.

I have no sympathy for the likes of Hugh Grant, Steve Coogan and Max Moseley. If the likes of those three are now providing moral guidance for the nation then God help us all.

Celebrities cannot whore themselves around the media when they have a film or a book or a record to sell and then complain about unwanted press attention.

However, regulation of the press has to change. I support the idea of independent self-regulation backed by binding legal contracts agreed to by all who sign up for the new system.

I agree a new independent regulator should have the power to fine those who break the code of conduct up to £1 million.

But I would go further. An independent regulator should have the power to suspend publication of the worst transgressors for a limited period.

That is a personal opinion and one that will not go down well with many other editors.

But such a power would make legislation impossible because no one would want to give government the power to suspend publication of newspapers.

In the meantime, we await the inevitable compromise agreement that will be reached between Parliament and the newspaper industry.

● One final point to ponder on Leveson: if the press is to be subjected to tough new regulation, how on earth is the internet to be policed?

Social media are full of lies, insinuations and utterly unsubstantiated allegations reported as fact. Newspapers are publications and so are Twitter and Facebook.

Quite how they fit in to a world of media regulation is something government has to consider.