In April 2009, the Press Complaints Commission will have a new boss, Baroness Buscombe. Peta Buscombe is a former lawyer of broad experience, most recently as Chief Executive of the Advertising Association, where she earned the respect of a number of admirers.

In many ways she looks more suitable for the job at the PCC than the incumbent, Sir Christopher Meyer, former British Ambassador to Washington, who has never really recovered from indiscretions and his own inner thoughts revealed in DC Confidential – a book about his time in the US.Lady Buscombe has a reputation for being a toughish cookie who doesn’t hang back when a there’s a job to be done; the media watchers will be anxious to know if her sympathies will be with the public or the press.

For those (like me) who consider the PCC in its current form a toothless poodle of the press barons there is a mixed message in the words of Tim Bowlder, chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance, which made the appointment: “In our discussions, [Buscombe] made clear her strong belief in a free press and in a system of self-regulation recognised by the public as independent of the industry.”

Recently, a number of (mostly tabloid ) editors have been jumping up and down howling “Press Freedom” and baying for the blood of Mr Justice Eady, a High Court judge who has upheld actions by individuals whose privacy has been violated by these papers. They accuse him (wrongly, of course – see blogs passim) of imposing new Privacy Law on them by the back door (or indeed, the back passage).

All thinking people understand the need for a national press that can reveal crime and hypocrisy by those in public positions. But the tabloids, especially the Sun and the Screws, want freedom write anything they like about anyone with the faintest whiff of celebrity about them.

We must hope that the new PCC chairman understands the difference between “Public Interest” and “Of interest to moronic Sun/Screws-buying members of the public”.

That she feels strongly the PCC should be “recognised by the public as independent of the industry” is encouraging. At the moment, while purporting to have a majority of members who have no connection with the press, the PCC is heavily influenced by the presence of several high-profile editors including Peter Wright of the Mail on Sunday – as much a culprit as any when it comes to invading privacy.

Parliament in its pusillanimity, caved it to pressure from the big press bosses when it ignored the recommendations of the Calcutt committee in the early ‘90s and agreed to Press Self-regulation. In my experience the only group of people capable of self-regulation is the congregation of saints. The rest of us need external discipline, with chastisement to back it up.

Now on the rare occasions the PCC does find a paper has transgressed it, can do little more than wrap an editor over the knuckles, and ask them to apologise (usually on page 23). Even if they had the inclination, they have no powers to meet out chastisement that hurts. To do that they would need to be a properly constituted, genuinely independent quasi-legal body with the right to take evidence and make binding rulings.

If Lady Buscombe wants to oversee an organization that can make any real difference, the first thing she should do is to lobby for these changes in the PCC’s constitution. A lot of people will be watching.