Shooting the messengers

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I have feared right from the start of the current financial crisis that we would face calls for the press to be regulated and gagged.

Those fears have been realised with the publication of the Treasury Select Committee's terms of reference for its inquiry into the banking crisis. One huge irony of this is that the extension of the inquiry to cover the role of the media was demanded by former Tory leader Michael Howard and the terms of reference were published the day before frontbench Tory spokesman Damian Green was arrested for putting information into the public domain that the authorities would rather have kept to themselves. Presumably, Michael Howard will not be lining up with his successor as leader of the Conse...

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