Dacre attacks libel lawyers but admits Maddy errors

On the eve of  Gerry and Kate McCann's appearance on Oprah, Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, told MPs that the press had "overstepped the mark" and made mistakes in their coverage of the disappearance of the couple's daughter Madeleine two years ago this May.

However, Dacre also launched a scathing attack on libel lawyers, labelling them "ambulance-chasers" for the way in which they pursued lawsuits against the newspaper industry. He told MPs on the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee yesterday law firms specialising in libel, such as Schillings and Carter Ruck were "greedy" and "rapacious".

The McCann family and others involved the investigation have all received libel payouts from British newspapers in the wake of their coverage of the hunt for the three-year-old.

Dacre described some law firms as "rapacious and greedy and unscrupulous in the methods they use, and I would be astonished if they were not ambulance-chasing and going to celebrities and saying 'You see that picture, we think we could do something for you'."

He called for a reform of the no-win-no-fee system, highlighting a recent case in which the Daily Mail lost and had to pay £5,000 in damages even though the total legal cost for the paper came to £520,000. He said that this, along with the Human Rights Act "present a lethal weapon crushing press freedom".

"I have been a journalist for 40 years and I have never known such a chilling time for newspapers. The industry is in a parlous state," he said.

However, the 60-year-old, who is also chairman of the Press Complaints Commission's Editors' Code of Practice Committee, added that he did not believe newspapers to be entirely blameless and admitted that mistakes had been made in the way that the case of Madeleine McCann was reported.

He conceded that some newspapers had overstepped the mark in its coverage of the toddler's disappearance but rejected claims that the entire industry was guilty of this. "Lessons have been learned how very considerable interest in stories still meant the boundaries of correct newspaper journalism should be observed and those boundaries were transgressed by some newspapers in the industry," he said.

The McCann's appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show will be broadcast on May 4, two years and one day after she went missing. The family hope that their appearance on the show, which is broadcast in 144 countries and will feature images of how Madeleine would now look, will unearth new leads. ·