Public Interest Immunity and Statutory Privilege

Abstract

The rules governing the exclusion of evidence in the public interest are usually discussed as if they were wholly the creation of the common law. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a submerged statutory underside to Crown privilege, an underside which is no less important for being hitherto largely invisible to the judicial eye. More than 100 Acts and statutory instruments restrict the use which government departments and other public bodies may make of the information they acquire. Each such Act or instrument is a potential barrier to the use of the information in the courtroom. Just why this vast mass of legislation should have remained for so long forensically invisible is not immediately apparent. It is true that most of it was drafted to regulate disclosure outside the courtroom and its evidentiary provisions are often tucked away in obscure subsections whose import may be unclear to those administering the Acts.