The Press Complaints Commission dealt with 4,340 complaints in 2007 – an all-time high in its 17-year history.

The new figures, published today, show a 31 per cent rise on the 2006 figure of 3,325.

The PCC's chairman has put this down to increased confidence among the public.

Sir Christopher Meyer said: "These figures reflect three things: the PCC's greater visibility from a permanent campaign to publicise its services, the extension of the commission's remit to cover more information than ever before and growing confidence among the public in what the commission has to offer.

"This now ranges from confidential settlements, through published corrections and apologies, to formal rulings against newspapers and magazines, many of which took forward our case law on the vexed question of where to set the boundary between private life and information that is legitimately in the public interest.

"Beyond this, we placed an increased emphasis in 2007 on sorting out problems before publication, which could otherwise have led to a formal complaint.

"This included in particular deploying our anti-harassment service and dispersing media scrums."

The PCC's two most-complained about incidents – involving Heat magazine and The Mirror – attracted 628 complaints together but even without these the 2006 figure would have been surpassed.

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