A royal charter to regulate the press will not be introduced until the autumn at the earliest, the BBC has learnt.
Press abuse victims have written to Culture Secretary Maria Miller to demand that a Privy Council meeting next week approves the charter, which has Parliament's backing.
Instead, the meeting will consider a rival proposal put forward by some newspapers.
Ministers insist they are following due process to avoid a court battle.
BBC political editor Nick Robinson said that, next Wednesday, a small group of ministers would travel to Buckingham Palace for a meeting of the Privy Council.
The body, which advises the Queen, would consider whether to grant a royal charter to a system of newspaper self-regulation, he said.
Crucially, though, it would not be the charter agreed by major party leaders David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg in March.
Liberal Democrat Lord Wallace, a government spokesman, told Parliament on Monday it was "not appropriate for the Privy Council to consider more than one royal charter at a time on the same issue".
But victims of phone hacking would be bitterly disappointed that the meeting will consider separate plans put forward by a majority of newspapers for self-regulation with a lesser role for the state, our political editor said.
The Guardian, Financial Times and Independent are the only major newspapers not signed up to the industry's rival charter.
Hacking scandalAhead of a meeting with Ms Miller, campaign group Hacked Off has written to urge her to defy "a tiny if powerful vested interest".
Ministers insist they are not about to back down and approve press proposals but are, instead, following due process to avoid a battle in the courts - even if that makes further delays inevitable.
End QuoteSome will see this as further proof that the press are simply playing for time in the hope that no party leader will want to confront them in the months running up to a general election. "
Government sources told the BBC they remain absolutely committed to implementing the package put forward by Lord Justice Leveson.
In November, the landmark Leveson report called for an independent regulatory body to be established to oversee the press, backed by legislation.
That came after the judge headed an 18-month public inquiry set up to investigate press ethics and standards in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal at the now-defunct News of the World newspaper.
Mr Cameron, Mr Miliband and Mr Clegg agreed to set up a new watchdog by royal charter with powers to impose million-pound fines on UK publishers and demand upfront apologies from them.
But the newspaper industry rejected the idea of "state-sponsored regulation".
Blocking planThere are a series of key differences between the industry's plan for press regulation for England and Wales and that agreed by politicians and campaigners.
The newspapers' proposal would include the following:
- Remove Parliament's power to block or approve future changes to regulation. Instead the regulator, trade bodies and a newly created "recognition panel" would have to agree to changes
- Remove a ban on former editors sitting on the panel
- Give newspaper and magazine readers a say on the industry's proposals for regulation
- Make it more difficult to bring group complaints
- Amend the power of the regulator to "direct" the nature, extent and placement of corrections and apologies, saying it should "require" rather than "direct"
Newspaper owners backed down on initial demands to have a veto over the board members of any new press regulator, accepting appointments should instead be made by "consensus".
Some owners had wanted the power to block those they saw as hostile to the press.
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