More than 130,000 people have signed a petition calling for independent regulation of newspapers in the light of the phone hacking scandal.
Gerry McCann – the father of missing Rothley girl Madeleine – launched a petition on behalf of campaign group Hacked Off calling for the Government to implement the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry.
Mr McCann and his wife Kate, from Rothley, were the subject of a series of false stories in the national press accusing them of involvement in their daughter's disappearance when she went missing from a Portuguese holiday resort in 2007.
He and Chris Jeffries, who was wrongly arrested for the murder of Bristol woman Joanna Yeates, launched the online petition on Friday and yesterday afternoon it had attracted 131,830 signatures.
That has made it one of Britain's fastest growing online petitions ever.
Lord Justice Leveson recommended the creation of an independent regulatory body for the press, free of editors and politicians, which should be backed by legislation.
However Prime Minister David Cameron is not in favour of introducing laws to regulate the press.
Yesterday, MPs debated Leveson's report and former attorney general and Harborough MP Sir Edward Garnier described it as "thorough".
He said: "We are not talking about state regulation of the press in the sense that Mugabe controls the press, in the sense that Putin controls the press, in the sense that the Chinese politburo controls the press."
