Guardian, Davies and Media Standards Trust challenge PCC's phone hacking report

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The Guardian has strongly criticised industry regulator the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) following the commission's report into alleged phone hacking by journalists .

The PCC's report published today was sparked by a series of articles in the Guardian in July by Nick Davies, alleging that News Group Newspapers had paid out more than £1 million to settle legal actions. These actions threatened to expose the use of private investigators by journalists to illegally hack into mobile phone messages of public figures, the articles claimed.

In its report the commission said it found no evidence to suggest ongoing phone hacking by News Group journalists since 2007, when the PCC conducted its initial inquiry into the practice.

"This complacent report shows that the PCC does not have the ability, the budget or the procedures to conduct its own investigations," said the Guardian in a statement .

In a statement the newspaper described the report as 'complacent' and lacking the independent evidence to counter 'a single fact in our coverage'.

"Doubtless because of its restricted powers, the PCC has, unlike Nick Davies, not spoken to a single person involved in the widespread past practice of phone hacking, limiting its own original inquiries to an exchange of letters with someone who was not even at the News of the World at the time of the hacking," it said in a statement published online.

"If the press wants self-regulation it cannot allow external bodies to do the real work of investigation and regulation."

Speaking on BBC Radio 4, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger described the PCC's report as 'worse than pointless'.

"If you have a self-regulation system that's finding nothing out and has no teeth, and all the work is being done by external people, it's dangerous for self-regulation," he told the Today programme.

"If you have a regulator behaving this uselessly, I suspect MPs will start saying this is not regulation."

Back in July the Media Standards Trust (MST) called on the PCC to appoint an independent body to conduct the inquiry into the phone hacking allegations, suggesting the commission was 'unable to conduct a comprehensive investigation'. Speaking in a blog post today, MST director Martin Moore has suggested that in its current structure, the PCC is not set-up to handle such inquiries.

"Press self-regulation, as currently constituted, simply does not allow for the types of investigation necessary to reveal the sorts of privacy intrusion the Guardian alleged, or for giving the public renewed trust in the press," he wrote. In a lengthy response to the PCC's report , Davies, who wrote the original Guardian articles, has pointed out where he claims the commission has ignored evidence in investigating whether it was misled by News of the World in its original inquiry into phone hacking in 2007.

According to Davies, the report has ignored evidence given to a select committee that suggested up to 6,000 people had their phones hacked or intercepted and other evidence submitted to the committee of News of the World investigators hacking Prince Harry and Prince William's phones.

"The PCC may yet discover that the only real victim of its attack is its own credibility," said Davies.