In his seminar delivered at the Leveson Inquiry, Dacre re-asserted his opinion that self-regulation "in a considerably beefed up form" remained "the only viable way of policing a genuinely free press". He was critical of Cameron ("too close to News International") who "in a pretty cynical act of political expediency has prejudiced the outcome of this inquiry by declaring that the" Press Complaints Commission, "an institution he'd been committed to only a few weeks previously, was a 'failed' body". Dacre claimed legislation passed in the last 20 years already helped stop necessary journalistic enquiry, and meant that the press was "already on the very cusp of being over regulated". After returning to his negative opinion of liberals, who "by and large hate all the popular press", he said "that Britain's commercially viable free press – because it is in hock to nobody – is the only really free media in this country." His advocacy of newspaper owners being legally unable to reject any regulatory body was viewed as a reference to Richard Desmond, whose Northern & Shell company owns the "Daily Express", and had withdrawn from the PCC.