A royal charter – of the kind mooted by No 10 to help entrench independent press regulation – dates back to before the constitutional monarchy was introduced and before regular sittings of parliament began, having been granted by monarchs in person, or in their name, to incorporate 900 bodies since the 13th century.
They have been used to found cities, universities, royal hospitals, charities and professional bodies including the little known Chartered Institute of Journalists, which was granted its royal charter by Queen Victoria to protect and serve those employed in the field of journalism in 1890.
Among the best known organisations established by royal charter are the BBC, the Bank of England, the British Red Cross and the British Council. Royal Charters are granted by the privy council, a body set up in the early days of the monarchy to advise the king or queen on matters of state, and are not put before parliament.
The structure is used to help fortify the independence of the BBC, in that parliament has no role in amending the royal charter that governs the corporation. But it also means that the renewal of the charter is ultimately a private negotiation between the BBC and the relevant ministers working towards the privy council.
David Cameron is considering establishing a new body by royal charter, which would act as a "verifier" for a new press regulator. This has left editors scratching their heads as few know how it will work.
One editor, who asked not to be named, said: "What we don't want is to be like the BBC and get a kicking as a political football every ten years, but they are funded by taxpayers' money. This idea could be brilliant, or it could be dangerous – we just don't know enough about it yet to judge."
The Chartered Institute of Journalists is itself not a model, says its general secretary, Dominic Cooper. The CIJ has just 1,500 members and is designed to protect journalists in the work place – acting as both a trade union and a professional body – not to protect the public from journalistic bad practice.
However, the CIJ, which does itself oppose any form of state intervention in press regulation, believes the royal charter model may be usefully explored as an alternative to statute. "Creating some sort of privy power seems quite an interesting alternative to Leveson's recommendations for statue, which we oppose," said Cooper.
Today, the privy council is headed by Nick Clegg and is made up of all cabinet ministers and a number of junior ministers. It holds the right to grant charters or remove them, raising the possibility of the government being able to remove the right of a new regulator to regulate if it feels it has fallen seriously foul of its own code of practice.
The royal charter option being explored by Cameron will not act as a regulator according to reports but as a body that will audit the performance of a regulator. But there is little detail as to how the royal charter would work. "We don't have the detail so it's difficult to say whether it's a good or bad thing. It sounds good, so it might just be a clever wheeze by Oliver Letwin," said one editor.
All royal charters are different - they do not follow the same format - and can include whatever bylaws an organisation deems relevant.
The royal charter establishing the Chartered Institute for Public Relations, is bound by its charter to act in the public interest, for example. It provides for a code of professional conduct, a process for investigating complaints, and the creation of a constitution and procedure of committees to hear cases. It also lays down the rights of any member to rebut a complaint, to be represented and to call and cross-examine witnesses. In effect, it establishes a means of regulating a profession.
Philip Morgan, director of policy at the CIPR says: "The royal charter means we are required to act in the public interest, not strictly speaking to act in the our members' interest. We apply a code of conduct as our charter incorporates a regulatory function and we have the power to hold our members to account."
However the charter does not oblige all PRs to join up - Morgan says the institute has 10,000 members from a pool of an estimated 50,000 practitioners.
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