Lord McAlpine scandal shows Leveson 'must find a way of reining in Twitter and Facebook' MPs say

Lord Justice Leveson must find a way to stop people using Facebook, Twitter and other websites to spread “heinous” slurs on people when he delivers his report into media standards next month, senior MPs have warned.

Lord McAlpine was wrongly identified as a paedophile through a combination of false reports on television and online, showing that if the Leveson report is restricted to criticism of newspapers, it will only address “yesterday’s problems”.

Conor Burns MP, a Conservative member of Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport select committee, said it was now essential for Lord Justice Leveson to address the issue of regulating websites.

He said: “At the moment you have got this situation where newspapers are rightly constrained by libel and defamation laws but people are linking to the stories through the internet and spreading vile and heinous lies about people, who have no right of redress.

“Lord McAlpine’s reputation was in tatters last week because people were able to post things with complete impunity on the internet. We are going to have to bring Facebook and Twitter under the same laws as libels committed by newspapers or television channels.”

He said it was a “serious problem” that must be addressed by Lord Justice Leveson otherwise “it may well turn out to be the case that Lord Justice Leveson is looking into yesterday’s problems”.

Mr Burns was speaking after Lord Justice Leveson faced criticism at the Society of Editors annual conference in Belfast.

The media barrister David Price QC said he did not feel the judge had been the right person to lead the inquiry into media standards because: "If you appoint a lawyer he will be likely to recommend regulation," adding, "He is a criminal lawyer and criminal lawyers are only going to look for the bad things."

Angie Bray MP, another member of the DCMS committee, said: “If there is no way of bringing Twitter and the like into line it makes it absolutely ridiculous to start talking about statutory regulation of the newspaper industry.

“Until you can ensure that everyone is starting off on a level playing field it’s absolutely bonkers to impose further regulation on the newspaper industry, it just wouldn’t be logical.”

Meanwhile John Whittingdale, the chairman of the DCMS committee, told the editors’ conference that statutory regulation of the media would set a dangerous precedent and send out the wrong message to non-democratic countries.