The press watchdog’s outgoing chairman has warned further state intervention in media monitoring would be “fundamentally dangerous”.

Sir Alan Moses formally stepped down from his role of chairman of the Independent Press Standards Organisation at the end of 2019.

He has been replaced former Justice Minister Lord Edward Faulks QC after serving as IPSO’s founding chairman in 2014.

In an interview with Times, published ahead of his departure, Sir Alan described IPSO’s model of “self-regulation with a contract” as the best system available for monitoring the media.

Sir Alan, pictured, said: “The alternatives — no regulation or a statutory licensing system — seem to me completely unacceptable.

“The idea that the law should control what newspapers should and shouldn’t say, as the price of being able to publish, seems to me quite wrong… and fundamentally dangerous.”

In another interview with the Financial Times, Sir Alan said the portrayal of Islam and Muslims in the British press has been “the most difficult issue” facing IPSO since its launch.

He added: “I speak for myself, but I have a suspicion that [Muslims] are from time to time written about in a way that [newspapers] would simply not write about Jews or Roman Catholics.”