For the past three years British political and public life has been convulsed by revelations about press misconduct. Claims that newspapers listened clandestinely to the telephone messages of politicians, celebrities and private individuals have not only caused an outcry; they led to the closure of a century-old newspaper, Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, and calls for statutory curbs on the British press.

There have been a number of inquiries into the conduct of journalists by House of Commons select committees and, most notably, Lord Justice Leveson’s marathon investigation into the press.

These public inquests have been part spectacle, part exposé. Lost in the process is the fact that much of the wrongdoing was already an offence under existing law. Victims of phone hacking have received substantial damages and prominent journalists have been brought to trial, most notably in the so-called hacking case that has been running for the past 130 days at the Old Bailey.