Madeleine McCann’s mother Kate said she hoped the Leveson report would mark the start of a new era for the press and urged Prime Minister David Cameron to “embrace the report and act swiftly”.

McCann, whose daughter went missing when the family was on holiday in Portugal in 2007, gave moving evidence during the Leveson Inquiry about her experience at the hands of the media, and was at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in Westminster for the publication of the report.

She said: “I welcome Lord Leveson’s report and hope it will mark the start of a new era for our press in which it treats those in the news responsibly, with care and consideration.”

“Needless to say, more time will be needed to read, digest and understand all the implications of the report but initial impressions are positive. I hope the Prime Minister, and all the party leaders, will embrace the report and act swiftly to ensure activation of Lord Leveson’s recommendations within an acceptable and clearly defined timescale.”

Giving evidence to the inquiry last November, McCann said she felt like “climbing into a hole and not coming out” when the News of the World printed her intensely personal diary, which she began after Madeleine disappeared.

“I felt totally violated. I had written these words at the most desperate time of my life, and it was my only way of communicating with Madeleine.”

The diary, which was so private McCann did not even show it to her husband Gerry, was published in the News of the World on September 14, 2008. The newspaper later apologised.

The inquiry later heard that the News of the World’s former head of news was told to deliberately mislead the McCanns’ spokesman Clarence Mitchell about the paper’s plans to publish the diary.

Ian Edmondson said former editor Colin Myler told him to have a “woolly” conversation with Mitchell about plans to publish the journal so he did not know what the newspaper was doing. Myler said he would never have published the diary – which was obtained from a female Portuguese journalist – if he had realised she was not aware of what the paper was planning to do.

Yesterday’s report described how the McCanns, although originally given favourable coverage in the media, were treated like a commodity, in a similar way to Milly Dowler’s parents.

“If ever there were an example of a story which ran totally out of control, this is one,” it said.