21:03
Tieng Anh Vui
A royal charter to regulate the press will not be introduced until the autumn at the earliest, the BBC has learnt.
Phone-hacking victims have written to the culture secretary to demand that a Privy Council meeting next week approves the charter, which has Parliament's backing.
Instead, the meeting will consider a rival proposal put forward by some newspapers.
Ministers insist they are following due process to avoid a court battle.
BBC political editor Nick Robinson said that, next Wednesday, a small group of ministers would travel to Buckingham Palace for a meeting of the Privy Council.
The body which advises the Queen would consider whether to grant a royal charter to a system of newspaper self-regulation, he said.
Crucially, though, it would not be the charter agreed by major party leaders David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg in March.
Victims of phone hacking would be bitterly disappointed that it would, instead, consider separate plans put forward by a majority of newspapers for self-regulation with a lesser role for the state, our political editor said.
The Guardian, Financial Times and Independent are the only newspapers not signed up to the industry's rival charter.
Hacking scandal
Ahead of a meeting with Culture Secretary Maria Miller, campaign group Hacked Off has written to urge her to defy "a tiny if powerful vested interest".
Ministers insist they are not about to back down and approve press proposals but are, instead, following due process to avoid a battle in the courts - even if that makes further delays inevitable.
In November, Lord Justice Leveson published a landmark report calling for an independent regulatory body to be established to oversee the press, backed by legislation.
That came after the judge headed an 18-month public inquiry set up to investigate press ethics and standards in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal at the now-defunct News of the World newspaper.
Mr Cameron, Mr Miliband and Mr Clegg agreed to set up a new watchdog by royal charter with powers to impose million-pound fines on UK publishers and demand upfront apologies from them.
But the newspaper industry rejected the idea of "state-sponsored regulation".
Blocking plan
There are a series of key differences between the industry's plan for press regulation for England and Wales and that agreed by politicians and campaigners.
The newspapers' proposal would include the following:
- Remove Parliament's power to block or approve future changes to regulation. Instead the regulator, trade bodies and a newly created "recognition panel" would have to agree to changes
- Remove a ban on former editors sitting on the panel
- Give newspaper and magazine readers a say on the industry's proposals for regulation
- Make it more difficult to bring group complaints
- Amend the power of the regulator to "direct" the nature, extent and placement of corrections and apologies, saying it should "require" rather than "direct"
Newspaper owners backed down on initial demands to have a veto over the board members of any new press regulator, accepting appointments should instead be made by "consensus".
Some owners had wanted the power to block those they saw as hostile to the press.
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