In his Digital Britain report yesterday, communications minister Lord Carter announced that the government would hold an "exploratory review" of the rules on cross-media ownership.

But while welcoming the move, Ms Bailey slammed what she called the lack of urgency in the government's approach, claiming the review could take up to two years.

Now Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Ashok Kumar has echoed her concerns in a letter to Lord Carter urging him to set a timetable for the review.

Dr Kumar's local paper on Teesside, the Trinity-owned Evening Gazette, has recently shed five jobs and closed three district offices.

He said the government needed to "act to instil some urgency" into the review or risk it becoming a "lawyers' paradise."

He said: "I have now written to Lord Carter asking him to more fully lay out the remit of this new review, and more importantly to ask for a rigid timetable so that recommendations can be on his table as soon as possible.

"The local newspaper industry is in serious trouble now, with rising costs on the one hand and a slump in advertising on the other. It cannot afford to wait for a long drawn out review which could become a lawyers' paradise."