• Max Mosley believes News of the World coverage contributed to his son's suicide

• Two 'victims' of the press - Kate McCann and Christopher Jefferies - say they felt 'raped' by the press

• The mother of Hugh Grant's baby received abusive phone calls because the star criticised the press, it is claimed

• Police say not all 28 names mentioned in Glenn Mulcaire's notes are necessarily from the News of the World

• Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger told the inquiry of a "shocking" failure of checks and balances that led to the inquiry

• Rusbridger urged the inquiry to examine the issues of media plurality and competition and to set up a new mediation service for the public who have issues with the press

• Journalists union says the PCC is a 'self-serving gentleman's club' that has failed abysmally at self-regulation

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Leveson inquiry: the barrister for victims of press intrusion has claimed the mother of Hugh Grant's baby was threatened. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA 

6.02pm: The Leveson inquiry has now published audio of the first three days of hearings:

16 November afternoon - David Sherborne on Hugh Grant, Chris Jefferies, Charlotte Church and the McCanns.

16 November morning: Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the NUJ; Alan Rusbridger, editor in chief of the Guardian and David Sherborne, barrister representing the 51 core participant victims

15 November: afternoon - James Dingemans, Northern & Shell

15 November morning - Rhodri Davies QC for News International; Jonathan Caplan, QC for Associated Newspapers

14 November afternoon

14 November morning - Robert Jay QC for the inquiry talks about Mulcaire's notes

5.31pm: Here's the full text of David Sherborne's remarks about the sinister calls allegedly made to the mother of Hugh Grant's baby.

Sherborne:

The story is told in his supplemental witness statement. The fact that it comes as a supplement, despite his main statement being only a week or so old, is testament to how recent these events are.

They involve the mother of his recently born daughter, a woman with whom, despite what the popular press love to write, he has a good relationship, but he can deal himself with the nonsense which has been published about this relationship by the self-appointed moral guardians of Fleet Street, the Daily Mail columnists.

Last Friday I had to make an emergency application for an injunction to restrain a campaign of appalling harassment which this lady was having to endure, simply because she was his former girlfriend and just had his child. That's not strictly true. The real reason for the harassment is probably far more sinister, and it is revealed in the evidence which she gave, namely that she has received threats because of the fact that the father of her child has spoken out against the press.

She recalls how, whilst Mr Grant was appearing on Question Time, discussing the closure of the News of the World, Rupert Murdoch and press standards generally, she received a barrage of telephone calls from a withheld number from someone who managed to get it from somewhere, and when she finally answered she was threatened in the most menacing terms, terms which should reverberate around this inquiry: "Tell Hugh Grant he must shut the fuck up."

Unsurprisingly, she was too stressed to call the police. After the birth of her child, the fact of which appears to have been leaked somehow, this hounding turned into a continued pursuit of her and her child by paparazzi and other photographers. It became so nasty that when her mother tried to get evidence of the identity of one paparazzo in a car, he then tried to run her over, hence the emergency injunction which was granted by Mr Justice Tugendhat last week. A written judgment is being handed down on Friday.

Leveson:

Has any of this gone to the police?

Sherborne:

It has been notified to the police, yes.

You can say what you like about Mr Grant, and believe me, enough of the newspapers have now, but then as Mandy Rice-Davies said, they would say that, wouldn't they? However, he has agreed to speak, as others have, not because of any financial motive. He has chosen not to sue for the hacking of his telephone. As the newspapers sit here with their livelihood at stake, as they tell us, the victims are here on their own time and ... at their own risk.

5.10pm: There seems to be a little confusion as to what Sherborne meant when he claimed the mother of Hugh Grant's child had been subjected to abusive telephone calls.

Here's what the transcript of what he said:

[Whilst Grant was] appearing on Question Time, discussing the closure of the NoW, Rupert Murdoch and press standards generally, she received a barrage of telephone calls from a withheld number from someone who managed to get it from somewhere, and when they finally answered she was threatened in the most menacing terms, which should reverberate around this inquiry: "Tell Hugh Grant he must shut the fuck up". Unsurprisingly she was too stressed to call the police.

4.44pm: My colleague James Robinson says the police clarification on the names of journalists in private investigator Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks is significant. Neil Garnham, QC, says that there may not be 28 News of the World staff as claimed on Monday.

He has just tweeted:

This is significant. Met's QC says it can't be assumed that 28 names in Mulcaire notebooks are NoW hacks 'altho a lot probably are' #leveson

Here's the transcript of what the QC, Neil Garnham, said:

As Mr Jay correctly told you in his opening, there are approximately 28 readable corner names in the Mulcaire notebooks. But it is not correct to suggest that a fair inference can be that they were all NoW employees. Some of them probably are. For many others, it's impossible, at least thus far, to say whether they were or were not. It certainly cannot be said that the MPS have established that all the taskings indicated by the corner names were made by NoW employees.

3.55pm: The Leveson inquiry has now closed for the day and will resume on Monday morning at 10am.

3.50pm: Leveson may ask individual journalists who covered the Madeleine McCann and Christopher Jefferies case to respond to criticism made by David Sherborne, QC, before the break.

Leveson tells Sherborne he has presented one side "very graphically" and he wants to be satisfied he has a full picture of the incidents the QC described.

"I just want to make sure whether there is another side, and if so what it is in the context of ethical decision-making at journalist level and at other levels.

"I can always pick these up with editors. But in relation to some of them [articles] it may be sensible to go a bit further."

Leveson said Sherborne had made his points very "forcefully that there could be no public interest in this particular story and the consequences of harm were very real".

3.49pm: The inquiry has resumed.

3.39pm: The inquiry has now taken a break to allow some private discussion among lawyers.

3.35pm: The inquiry has also heard from Neil Garnham, QC, who is representing the Metropolitan police.

Garnham says it cannot be assumed that all 28 names of journalists in Glenn Mulcaire's notes were from the News of the World.

The Mulcaire notebooks indeed went to some 11,000 pages, and they evidence from 2,266 taskings. But the police cannot say, because they do not know, whether every tasking targets a different individual, and that is unlikely.

3.32pm: Robert Jay, QC for the inquiry, is now discussing documents relating to the police inquiry into phone hacking.

He confirms that Sue Akers, who has overall responsibility for Operation Weeting - the police investigation into phone hacking - will give evidence.

3.26pm: Leveson has resumed and is discussing procedure. However Associated Newspapers is concerned that David Sherborne's claims about threats to the mother of Hugh Grant's child relate to anything activities relating to his clients.

Counsel for Associated, Jonathan Caplan, tells Leveson he checked the details of the emergency injunction obtained by Sherborne on her behalf and it was "not against the Daily Mail but against some paparazzi photographers".

3.24pm: Here's a summary of David Sherborne's opening statement which continued this afternoon. He represents 51 core participant 'victims' of press intrusion.

• Press intrusion has contributed to two suicides, and one attempted suicide, Sherborne has claimed. Max Mosley believes the press coverage of his private affairs was partly to blame for the death of his son, while Charlotte Church says her mother was admitted to hospital after attempting suicide following lurid revelations about the father. Footballer Garry Flitcroft will also allege that the pursuit of his family following disclosures about his private life was a factor in his father's death.

• Sherborne has also claimed that the mother of Hugh Grant's baby received threatening phone calls when the star appeared on TV railing against the press. She was told to "Tell Hugh Grant to shut the fuck up".

2.55pm: Sherborne paints a dark and hopeless picture of the future of the British press.

He questions their appetite for change. What hope is there about the prevailing culture when the most powerful newspapers, even in the face of recent revelations, steadfastly complain that what we need is a freer press? Sherborne asks.

"It is time we had change, and by that I mean real change," concludes Sherborne.

2.53pm: Sherborne is now turning his guns on Paul Dacre, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail.

He says not only did he "rubbish" the chairman of the Leveson inquiry, but he also dismissed the members of the panel of advisers appointed.

Self-regulation by the PCC, as one of my clients says, is tantamount to handing the police station over to the mafia.

 The mother of Hugh Grant's child claims she was threatened the night the star went on the BBC to rail against the press. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

2.47pm: Sherborne has just disclosed to the hearing that the mother of Hugh Grant's baby has been threatened in the most menacing way because the star has gone to war with the press.

Last Friday, Sherborne said, he had to seek an emergency injunction, on behalf of a woman who just had Hugh Grant's child.

The real reason for her injunction is that she has received threats because the father of child has spoken out against the press.

She received a barrage of telephone calls one night Hugh Grant appeared on Question Time railing against the press.

"[While Grant was] appearing on Question Time, discussing the closure of the NoW, Rupert Murdoch and press standards generally, she received a barrage of telephone calls from a withheld number from someone who managed to get it from somewhere, and when they finally answered she was threatened in the most menacing terms, which should reverberate around this inquiry: "Tell Hugh Grant he must shut the fuck up". Unsurprisingly she was too stressed to call the police."."

Sherborne also claims that someone tried to run her mother over.

Leveson is so concerned about this, that he interrupts Sherborne and asks has any of this gone to the police.

 Christopher Jefferies: was released without charge and was entirely innocent of any involvement. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

2.44pm: Sherborne says the press do not lessons. Jefferies may have won his libel action but there is no guarantee the press will not do the same all over again to another innocent member of the public.

Some of the journalists who monstered Jefferies are the same journalists responsible for the McCanns. I'd love to name names.

2.42pm: Sherborne says Jefferies felt he had been raped by the press.

"I don't think it would be too strong to say it was a kind of rape that had taken place," Sherborne says Jefferies will tell the hearing.

2.39pm: The coverage of Jefferies in the tabloids including one headline in the Daily Mirror was "a frenzied campaign to blacken his character and persuade the public he was guilty".

He was monstered in almost every sense imaginable, wrongly accused to being a sexually perverted voyeur ... a suggestion that he was involved in a previous murder and linked to a convicted paedophile....

All of it was nonsense, and all of it despite warnings from the attorney general.

2.35pm: The McCanns' experience is not isolated, says Sherborne.

Christopher Jefferies was somebody who no-one would have heard of but who terrifyingly found himself linked to the murder of Joanna Yeates.

He was "catapulted like the McCanns from anonymity into the public spotlight".

The Daily Mirror were fined £50,000 and the Sun £18,000 for contempt of court for articles published about a suspect arrested on suspicion of murdering Joanna Yeates.

2.33pm: Gerry and Kate McCann, the parents of missing child Madeleine McCann will also give evidence to the hearing.

They will tell of the "blatant intrusion" into their private lives by journalists desperate to "bring home exclusives" to commercially motivated bosses.

They "begged for restraint" but little was shown, says Sherborne.

One of the worst moments was when the Kate McCann's private diary was printed. This diary contained conversations with her missing daughter and was in the possession of the Portuguese police.

Sherborne says she felt "mentally raped" when it was printed.

2.31pm: Charlotte Church will tell Leveson how she has been hounded incessantly by eager photographers looking for a scoop

 Charlotte Church Photograph: Simone Joyner/Getty Images

She has been chased in a car, photographers pulled her door open to try and take pictures up her skirt. The press also revealed she was pregnant when she hadn't even told her parents, Sherborne told the hearing.

2.27pm: Charlotte Church will put paid to the myth that celebrities seek out these sensational stories in the press in order to advance their careers. Sherborne said:

Charlotte Church will recount how a week or so ago a story hit the newspapers about how she is meant to have made an exhibition of herself drunkenly proposing to her partner in a karaoke bar.

It was a good story, a karaoke bar; a drunken proposal, the problem is it was a complete fabrication, not least because she wasn't there. Did anyone check with her? No ... To use the Kelvin MacKenzie if it sounds right, let's lob it in.

2.23pm: The other core participants will give evidence of a constant stream of lies told about them without consequence.

"Sheryl Gascoigne will explain the minute she married Paul Gascoigne she became a villain in certain sections of the press … despite the fact she was a victim of domestic abuse," said Sherborne.

"Fiction had turned into accepted fact … at least until she decided to bring a certain number of libel actions."

Initially she decided the best way to deal with the hostile press was to keep "a dignified distance" but she changed her tack when her children began to become upset at the "lies" in the newspapers.

2.20pm: JK Rowling will tell the hearing how the press invaded her children's privacy.

Sherborne told the hearing how she has a well-known dispute with certain sections of the press but also against the picture agency, Big Pictures, which was responsible for a picture published in the Express sharing a private outing with her husband and children.

She has experienced press and photographers camped outside her house; her young children have had notes put in their school bags; photographers follow her family on holiday.

How would you feel "scared, a little bit like a prisoner" if you feared a "photographer jumping out of the bushes" at any point to snap a picture? asked Sherborne.

2.18pm: Steve Coogan's story may not be as dramatic as Charlotte Church's but it is equally important.

The press love to vilify him and have gone to great lengths to invade his private life.

"It is a miracle that no member of the public has got hurt," says Sherborne in reference to photographers in hot pursuit of celebrities.

2.16pm: Sherborne says part of the story that hackers would have found out shortly prior to publication that "Charlotte's mother was admitted to hospital after an attempted suicide."

In an act of sensitivity, the newspaper then tried to give her an exclusive as part of a Faustian pact that in return they would not run another lurid story about her husband's affair.

This is the real, brutally real impact this kind of journalism has.

2.13pm: Charlotte Church will also provide evidence of the damage News of the World caused when it published a story in 2005 headlined Church: Three in a bed cocaine shock

You might be forgiven that this was some revelation about Church herself, but it wasn't. Instead it was about an affair her father was having.

The story, it subsequently, transpires, was the produce of phone-hacking by Glenn Mulcaire.

2.12pm: The woman with whom he had a relationship sold her story, motivated possibly by her feeling that Mr Flitcroft's wife had a right to know about the affair.

"Was Mr Flitcroft's right to privacy really outweighed by some specious public interest?" asks Sherborne.

2.10pm: The judgment against him whether right or wrong had an impact on his private life.

Helicopters followed him, his children were teased at school. He will tell the hearing about the barrage of publicity he and his father, and his wife faced subsequently and the abuse he received.

Flitcroft believes the newspapers' pursuit of him and his family was a contributing factor to his father's suicide.

2.06pm: In 2001 Flitcroft won his injunction against publication of his affair but this was later overturned.

"It is a judgment it is widely be accepted would be different today," says Sherborne.

He told his wife about the affair before the injunction was lifted and A was identified as the footballer.

2.05pm: Leveson inquiry has resumed and Sherborne has turned to "chequebook journalism" and the case of footballer Garry Flitcroft, who he says is better known for references in legal textbooks than for his activity on the football pitch.

He was the person involved in the first kiss and tell injunction following the Human Rights Act.

1.03pm: The Leveson inquiry has now broken for lunch and will return at 2.05pm.

1.00pm: Here's a lunchtime roundup of what the Leveson inquiry has heard so far:

• Former Formula One boss Max Mosley believes the behaviour of the News of the World's contributed to his son's suicide. His son suffered depression, the hearing heard.

• Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the NUJ, told the inquiry that the PCC is a self-serving gentleman's club that has failed abysmally at self-regulation of the press.

• Stanistreet said that a News of the World executive urged the private detective Derek Webb to become a journalist after the arrest of Clive Goodman, the royal editor, in 2006.

• Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media, has told the inquiry of a shocking failure of checks and balances that led to the phone-hacking scandal.

• Rusbridger urged the inquiry to examine the issues of media plurality and competition. He also proposed a new non-judicial mediation service to offer a quick and cheap resolution for the public. This, he said, may require some "tweaks" to the law but not statutory regulation.

• Milly and Bob Dowler will be the first core participant "victims" to appear next Monday.

• David Sherborne, lawyer for many of the phone-hacking victims, said there had been a "serious breakdown of trust between the press and the general public".

12.55pm: Sherborne is now painting a picture of a feral press completely out of control in relation to the Mosley story.

"This section of the press regards itself as above the law.

"Sadly in Mr Mosley's case ... there is a terrible postscript. In the aftermath of the trial, Mr Mosley's son, who was suffering from depression died of an overdose."

Mosley believes the News of the World's pursuit of his family was a contributing factor in his son's death.

"As Mr Mosley tried to sort out his son's personal effects, he was mobbed by journalists at his house.

"An isolated incident? No. The same at his son's funeral."

12.51pm: After failing to win an injunction against the News of the World, Mosley had a choice – "to retreat or prepare himself for a full-blown trial". "Thankfully, he chose the latter," said Sherborne because his case has strengthened the protection of everyone's privacy.

Sherborne went on to tell how the "Nazi theme" the News of the World attached to the Mosley story "was a preconceived story for which they needed the facts to fit".

He said camera footage of one of the women at the Mosley party, Woman E, showed how the News of the World reporter Neville Thurlbeck instructed her on how best to capture Mosley in a "Sieg Heil" salute.

The Seig Heil salute never happened and Mosley won his case.

12.48pm: The News of the World's follow-up story on Mosley the following Sunday "rubbed salt in the wound".

Is this the right way for law to work? It certainly is how the press want it to be. Whilst the original story with the Nazi lie was bad, in the follow-up story, the newspaper sought to rub salt in the wounds ... Who can look at him without thinking what he chooses to do with other consenting adults in private?

Mr Mosley was faced with a choice: whether to retreat and accept this humiliation, something which the papers were counting on that he would do. Or he could prepare himself for a full trial, with all the cost and embarrassment that this would bring.

At the time Mosley was trying to get an injunction preventing publication but had lost because the "dam had burst" with photographs going viral over the internet.

 Max Mosley Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

12.45pm: Sherborne is now talking about Max Mosley's treatment by the News of the World.

Mosley is sitting behind, just to the right, of Sherborne and won his privacy action against the paper.

He will also tell the inquiry the damage caused to his family.

The failure of the News of the World to give Mosley any notice of the story was a deliberate move designed to ensure Mosley didn't have enough time to seek a court injunction to prevent the paper hitting the newsstands.

"Is this the right way for the law to work, it is certainly how the press want it to be," says Sherborne.

What Price Privacy Now? What Price Privacy

12.43pm: Here's the full What Price Privacy report about which Sherborne has been speaking:

12.41pm: Freedom of the press, says Sherborne, is conditional.

12.40pm: My colleague Josh Halliday has filed this report on Michelle Stanistreet's opening statement.

Leveson inquiry: PCC an abysmal failure, says NUJ chief

12.32pm: Sherborne is back on his feet and has turned to the 2006 What Price Privacy? report by the Information Commissioner, a report based partly on Operation Motorman's inquiry into a private detective used by several newspapers.

The information seized by police from this private investigator included documents with ex-directory telephone numbers and itemised phone bills.

Secondary documentation seized consisted of the detective's own handwritten notes, and the names of 305 journalists.

The report found 3,522 alleged cases of illegal access to records by the media – "thousands of section 55 offences," says Sherborne.

This will be discussed at the hearing, says Sherborne.

12.21pm: Leveson has now taken a five-minute break.

12.20pm: Alleged computer hacking will also be raised by Sherborne at the inquiry.

He says Ian Hurst, the former army intelligence officer he represents, will talk about the "Trojan horse" software that was placed on his computer to access private documents.

12.16pm:Sherborne is now talking about the covert surveillance operation that News International ordered on the solicitor Mark Lewis who was acting on behalf of the Dowler family and other phone hacking victims.

This, says Sherborne, was not some "nefarious activities in the dim dark days of 2005, 2006" when Glenn Mulcaire was working for News of the World.

"This was discussed as recently as the middle of last year at the same time as the company was telling the select committee it was doing everything to get to the bottom of what went wrong," says Sherborne.

12.14pm: He also criticised News International's insistence on client confidentiality when questions first started to arise about potentially incriminating emails the publisher had handed over to third party solicitors for investigation. This is a reference to an investigation conducted by law firm Harbottle & Lewis.

Solicitors are bound by client confidentiality, says Sherborne, but not News International.

12.11pm: Sherborne is now ripping apart News International's early claims that phone hacking went beyond one reporter.

It is "a scandal", says Sherborne, that the reporting of the phone hacking affair ,was confined to broadsheets and broadcasters.

There was "no finger-wagging", he said among the tabloids.

12.08pm: The scale of the phone hacking raises questions about who knew what? says Sherborne.

"Can it really be sensibly be argued that this is a simple case where checks and balances were not observed and a handful of rogue journalists were allowed to run amok with a cheques book?" asks Sherborne.

Or was this a system condoned by people in senior positions in the newspaper? he asks.

In any event, Sherborne says there was a cover up at the News of the World.

 "There was ... a concerted effort in any case after the event to conceal the ugly truth from surfacing."

12.06pm: The police are still analysing the notes of Glenn Mulcaire five years after they were seized.

The volume of notes and documents relating to the case is:

Evidence, not so much of a cottage industry, but rather an industrial revolution; a cultural change, we would say, away from good old-fashioned journalistic activity."

12.05pm: Sometimes the voicemails allegedly accessed on behalf of News of the World journalists were used as "quotes from pals" or "just to stand up stories for which they otherwise had no proof", says Sherborne.

12.03pm: Sherborne is now summarising News of the World's activities.

"None of these stories had a public interest whatsoever ... [there was ]no defence for this flagrant invasion of privacy."

11.59am: The inquiry will also hear from Tom Rowland, a Daily Telegraph property journalist. The interest in him related to information he may have picked up about homes being bought and sold by the wealthy and the famous.

The paper even targetted those who supported them most, including Sara Payne, the mother of Sarah Payne, who became a close friend of the then editor Rebekah Wade (now Brooks).

The revelation her phone was likely to have been hacked was a sickening postscript, perhaps a new low [for the newspaper].

11.57am: Sherborne is now talking about a witness, code named HJK, who was hacked by the news of the world.

HJK is a member of the public whose phone was hacked because of a relationship with someone famous.

"It was a terrible experience all round," says Sherborne and HJK will explain how shortly after being diagnosed with a serious illness they were confronted by a photographer who jumped out in front of them to take a picture. This, Sherborne suggests, is because someone got hold of HJK's medical records.

11.55am: Mary Ellen Field, an assistant to model Elle Macpherson, will also address the inquiry next week.

11.52am: Sherborne now turns to the issue of celebrities who have had their phones hacked. He says it would be wrong to merely dismiss sympathies for these people simply because they are famous.

He said it is because of them that the law is now developing to protect everyone.

It is because of "those with sufficient access to lawyers", or those who have "the bravery of these people to run the gauntlet of the press that the law, particularly the law of privacy has been developed to protect everyone, and everyone alike," says Sherborne.

11.51am: Milly Dowler's parents, Sally and Bob will be the first to give evidence at the Leveson inquiry next Monday, Sherborne has revealed.

11.48am: Sherborne goes on to say the press didn't just stop at intercepting her voicemails.

When her parents went to reconstruct their daughter's last journey, the News of the World tailed them and photographed them.

"Face etched with pain, missing Milly's mum softly touches a poster of her girl as she and hubby retrace her last footsteps," wrote the paper.

"Mile of grief" was the headline on the story.

It told how "the Dowlers follow Milly's footsteps from Walton station and, below, mum Sally can't help but touch the poster of her daughter".

Sherborne said the Dowler's "were subjected to terrible intrusion by the press, intrusion at a time of immense grief".

First stolen voice messages, why not steal these moments too? Ethically what is the difference?

11.46am: It was this revelation that led to the Leveson inquiry.

Sally Dowler, Milly's mother will tell the Leveson inquiry in her own words of the "euphoria" she felt when she logged into Milly's phone and found messages deleted. These acts of interception of her voicemail were "despicable", says Sherborne.

11.45am: Sherborne is now outlining what happened when Milly Dowler disappeared. Five days later a call was left on her voicemail. The call was a hoax. News of the World put it in their first edition under the headline "Missing Hoax Outrage".

"What we now know another outrage, another act of cruelty and insensitivity" of which there was no mention in the News of the World ... the interception and deletion of Milly's voicemails.

11.44am: Sherborne is still speaking, but for those interested, here is a link to Alan Rusbridger's full speech.

David Sherborne, who is representing 51 'victims' of the press

11.42am:Sherborne says the "victims" will be able to give a true picture of the damage the press have caused when they appear before Leveson next week.

11.40am: He refers to remarks once made by former News of the World and Sun editor self-regulation has changed the culture operating in newsrooms.

"I presume by that she meant it in a positive way," Sherborne quips.

11.37am: "I am here to represent the wrongs - systemic, flagrant and deeply entrenched they are," says Sherborne.

One may be under the mistaken impression that it is "the press that is victim" if you were to listen to speeches given at a Leveson seminar last month where various editors and senior figures complained of the draconian laws and gagging orders that stifle freedom of the press.

This is not a surprise, says Sherborne, as the press is a powerful body with a lot to lose.

11.36am: Sherborne says newspapers operate under this modus operandi: what you can't get you buy, what you can't buy you procure through deception and lies; what you can't procure you steal or you make up because it sounds right and sells newspapers.

11.33am: There are 13 News of the World journalists arrested, but it is not just the former tabloid but the whole press that is in the dock, argues Sherborne.

Illegally accessing people's voicemail ... blagging, blackmailing vulnerable or opportunistic individuals into breaking confidences of well known people ... the vilification of ordinary members of the public; the hounding of well known people their family and friends because it sells newspapers - quite an impressive charge sheet you might think. No wonder it may take this inquiry some time

11.30am: There has been a "serious breakdown of trust between the press and the general public," says Sherborne.

He said he sat and listened to News International and Associated Newspapers yesterday and was not impressed.

"Rather than suggest some concrete solutions to rectify the problems or really recognise that anything is wrong other than phone hacking", they suggest more press freedom not less.

"We say this is symptomatic of a level of complacency in the British press or at least part of it," says Sherborne.

11.29am: David Sherborne, who is representing 51 core participant "victims", is now on his feet.

11.17am: The Leveson inquiry has now taken a 15-minute break. We will be back at 11.30am.

11.15am: Rusbridger expands on his earlier suggestion that there may need to be some sort of statutory element in a new regulatory system for the press.

He says "we may need to tweak bits of law" to enable this new system would work but it would not mean statutory regulation of the press.

11.13am: Rusbridger gives some details of how a new mediation service would work.

If the mediation broke down and the case ended up before a judge and a newspaper was proven to have made every effort to resolve the dispute, this could be offered as a complete defence.

Leveson asks could this mediation service have the ability to assess damages up to a certain level.

11.10am: Leveson supports Rusbridger's notion of a new system which would involve a non-judicial disputes service for readers.

I think there's a great deal of scope in finding some mechanism that allows for the resolution of disputes between members of the public and the press, short of the courts, because it has become so expensive.

11.09am: Leveson says that this raises the problem of "pre-publication authorisation" and how one can test it.

"I'm not answering these questions, I'm merely asking them," says Leveson.

11.07am: Another key issue for Leveson is the definition of public interest.

He recognises that journalists may do some things like blagging as part of investigations that are in the real public interest. But he says it is difficult to draw a line because journalists do not know if they will get "the lollipop" until they have completed their investigation and prove themselves.

11.04am: Leveson makes a lengthy response to Rusbridger and says he has a number of questions.

He says he needs to know how is he going to "expose what needs to be exposed" on newspapers particularly following Stanistreet's remarks about a possibly bullying culture at the News of the World.

How am I going to get to the bottom of the culture in newsrooms that is hinted at today unless people say it.

Nobody is suggesting the ethics of those that are mass market newspapers should be different to those that are rather more targeted and that seems to me to be right.

But there is no doubt that concepts of privacy are differently perceived by different titles and I need to know how I should address that.

I need to know how I should be thinking about privacy and to extend those that have been affected by privacy who will have extremely strong views and where the balance is, I think that's a struggle.

11.03am: Finally, the issue of plurality and competition, need to be explored by the Leveson inquiry, says Rusbridger.

Only last month the tiny family-owned Kent Messenger group was prevented from taking over seven Northcliffe titles because of the distortion of the newspaper market in East Kent. Yet, until the post-Milly Dowler intervention of MPs, there appeared to be nothing anyone could do to prevent News Corp from effectively doubling its already-remarkable dominance of the British media market by acquiring the 61 per cent of BSkyB it didn't already own. "

If you come to the view that there was a genuine fear of News International in public life – partly, but only partly, on account of what private investigators and criminal figures were employed by them to dig up – then it is important, we submit, to recommend a regulatory and legal framework which prevents media companies in this country from acquiring too much dominance.

11.02am: Rusbridger says no one has any quarrel with the job the PCC does in mediating complaints".

He says it is also worth exploring a regulatory system which is supported in some measure by statutes.

He does not specify what this might be but says: "If statute can help make independent self-regulation work well then we would welcome suggested use of statute to be scrutinised properly against concerns of press freedom."

He adds there "may be carrots and sticks once recognised in law or by the courts, solve several of the challenges you have already spoken of in making non-statutory regulation work".

11.01am: Rusbridger suggests a new system of regultation - the Press Standards and Mediation Commission.

It would act as a "one stop shop disputes resolution service so 22 people never had to go to law to resolve their differences with newspapers. It would be quick, responsive and cheap. "

He tells Leveson it will come as no surprise that the Guardian is "not impressed by the way the PCC handled phone hacking".

"We said in November 2009 that it was misleading to call the PCC a regulator, and we note that the incoming chair, Lord Hunt, has gone further: it is absolutely not a regulator in his view. So, it could be argued that, before we abolish self-regulation, we should first try it."

10.36am: Rusbridger is now onto the substantive topic of phone hacking at the News of the World and the failure of the police and News International to take revelations in the Guardian seriously.

He questions why it took so long; why it took four inquiries before the police took it seriously.

He also picks up on Stanistreet's remarks about bullying in the newsroom

"A culture of bullying is highly pertinent ... and this may be something the inquiry wants to ask of staff at the News of the World," says Rusbridger.

10.35am: Rusbridger says journalism has turned from a one-way publishing process into something much more responsive.

"We also live in a world in which every reader becomes a potential fact checker. Social media allows anyone to respond to, expose, highlight, add to, clarify or contradict what we write. We have the choice whether to pretend this world of response doesn't exist, or to incorporate it into what we do."

10.33am: He talks of the changes digital publishing has made to the industry.

It has "sucked advertising" out of the printed press; circulations are declining at a rate of 10% a year and no digital model yet offers guarantees that the industry can maintain editorial endeavours at anything like their "current levels".

10.32am:Rusbridger opens his statement by remarking how "shocking" were the events that have led to this judicial inquiry.

Shocking, for what they revealed about one powerful and dominant company; about the responses of the police and the flawed nature of regulation; about the limitations of parliament and the initial unwillingness of much of the press to write about what had been going on at the News of the World.

There was, in short, a failure of the normal checks and balances in society to hold power to account.

10.30am: Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, is now making his opening statement.

10.28am: Stanistreet says one of the systems that could be a model for future regulation in the UK is the Press Council of Ireland.

She says she is hoping to bring testimony to the inquiry which will illuminate the bullying that goes on in the industry.

She says she is working with journalist to provide examples from across the industry "including testimony from journalists who can shed real light on the culture within the News of the World, on cases of bullying at a senior level, all key factors we believe led to the scale of hacking within the newspaper.

10.26am: Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell, owner of the Daily Express, has illustrated that it's not even a club that newspapers are obliged to join. Desmond has opted out of the system.

It's [the PCC] a model that has failed – but there are plenty of other models of regulation out there – models that have teeth.

10.23am: Stanistreet has launched a broadside against the Press Complaints Commission which, she says, has "failed abysmally".

She says that for years journalists have had to operate under the "media bosses' model of self- regulation".

She says the system in the UK is one that the producers of the output and represents owners only.

The PCC she says "has been little more than a self-serving gentleman's club".

10.23am: NUJ members were impelled to make a second complaint about the Express in 2004 over its coverage of so-called Gypsies.

10.20am: The NUJ secretary general, who worked for the Daily Express says she can speak from personal experience when she says that having the collective confidence of a robust union presence can make an "enormous difference" when journalists want to speak out on matters of journalistic ethics.

In 2001, she was one of three NUJ chapel reps at Express Newspapers, who made a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about the Daily Express' coverage of asylum seekers.

Some journalists felt "upset and angry" about the "racist tone" of the coverage including a "hate stirring" front page with the headline "ASYLUM SEEKERS RUN FOR YOUR LIVES".

10.17am: Stanistreet is now talking about Derek Webb, the former policeman turned investigator who was hired by the News of the World to tail more than 100 public figures including Prince William.

She says that Webb alleges that in the wake of the arrest of the paper's Royal Editor Clive Goodman, he was taken aside by a senior executive on the News of the World and told he had to "stop being a private detective and become a journalist."

The same senior executive also apparently told him that he must join the NUJ and acquire an NUJ press card.

"This is a breathtakingly cynical move on behalf of the News of the World but also an interesting perspective on an organisation that is so hostile to the NUJ," says Stanistreet.

10.16am: She says News of the World staff made redundant after the closure of the paper have found to their cost that "the impact of not having strong and independent workplace representation".

 Michelle Stanistreet of the National Union of Journalists

10.13am: Stanistreet says many newspapers are reluctant to recognise the NUJ.

She is highly critical of News International and brands Rupert Murdoch's decision to establish a quasi union at Wapping as a "cynical move"

Take Rupert Murdoch - he created and funded his own proxy union, the News International Staff Association, which was later refused a Certificate of Independence by the Certification Officer because of its lack of Independence from the employer. This was cynically established on the eve of the legislative changes being introduced that saw the restoration of trade union recognition rights. All to keep the NUJ and our sister unions out of Wapping.

10.08am: Now Stanistreet is painting a gloomy picture of the current newspaper industry, a place, she says where "greedy employers...sacrifice quality and content in the process"

She says the immense pressure on journalists to deliver can lead to inaccurate and misleading stories.

The pressure on journalists to deliver is relentless, often to unpredictable and unreasonable timescales, and without the resources to do the job well. Such pressures lead to short cuts and can result in the abandoning of fundamental principles.

That's why it is important for your Inquiry to understand the reality of newsroom culture and the pressures that journalists in some workplaces have come under to deliver the goods, to write stories that are inaccurate or misleading.

10.05am: Stanistreet says the fear felt by journalists who want to speak out about their employers is very real.

The reality is that putting your head above the parapet and speaking out publicly is simply not an option for many journalists, who would fear losing their job or making themselves unemployable in the future.

In our experience, that fear has been a significant factor in inhibiting journalists from defending the principles of ethical journalism in the workplace – and in media organisations hostile to the concept of trade unions there is a particular problem.

10.05am: Stanistreet said she is working to find journalists to give evidence. However, she says, many are too afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals. She said the consequences may be felt long after Leveson has finished.

However, the stark reality is that in many workplaces there is a genuine climate of fear about speaking out.

The fear is not of immediate punishment but of finding that a few months after your Inquiry ends a journalist who has spoken out may find herself on a list of redundancies. We support your draft protocol on anonymity and will discuss specific measures in relation to particular witnesses with the Inquiry team.

10.00am: It is "vital", she says, that the inquiry hears from ordinary journalists.

"They are the workers at the sharp end, who deal with the reality of life in a pressured, busy newsroom every single day."

10.00am: Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists is now on her feet.

She is speaking on behalf of 38,000 members full time and freelance in the UK and Ireland. Stanistreet is a former Sunday Express journalist and worked as a business journalists as well as interviewer and feature writer.

9.59am: The inquiry is now opening

9.58am: The Guardian's James Robinson and Amelia Hill are down at the Leveson inquiry again today. Follow them on Twitter @jamesro45 and @byameliahill

9.52am: Welcome to live coverage of day three of the Leveson inquiry, which kicks off at 10am today.

Yesterday the two country's two most powerful newspaper groups struck a defiant note arguing that a more stringent system of regulation would represent a threat to media freedom.

The inquiry also heard that the tabloid press are preparing for an unprecedented assault with 21 witnesses "victims" of alleged press intrusion and hacking lined up to give evidence. JK Rowling, Hugh Grant and Steve Coogan are among those expected to appear.

They will be joined by other figures who have attained a high profile through no fault of choosing of their own – wrongly linked to a crime such as the Bristol landlord Chris Jefferies or former intelligence officer Ian Hurst, who believes he was hacked.

Today the inquiry will hear from two more newspaper figures – Michelle Stanistreet, the general secretary of the National Union of Journalists and Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, the paper at the vanguard of the phone-hacking story for the past two years.

They will be followed by David Sherborne QC, who is representing the public figures who have been given core participant status