14 February 2008
Legal Services
The Criminal Bar Association (CBA) has given its support to the government’s proposals for the use of intercept evidence in court. However, it warns that structures to ensure that the rights of the defendant are safeguarded need to be introduced before such evidence can be used.
Following the publication last week of the Chilcott report which advocated the use of intercept evidence in court, the CBA says that although broadly supportive of the scheme, “the practical way in which this may be effected requires extensive further work and until such details are known it is difficult to comment conclusively” but that “there seems to us to be no reason in principle why such material, with the potential to be highly probative, should be the subject of a blanket bar on its use”.
In his speech to Parliament, the prime minister gave detailed conditions including: providing the intercepting agencies with the ability
to retain control over whether their material is used in prosecutions; and protecting the current close cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
The decision is also backed by Law Society president, Andrew Holroyd, who said in an interview with BBC News 24 that, “in light of the use of intercept evidence in other jurisdictions, the ongoing use of foreign intercept evidence in UK courts and improved EU co-operation, the introduction of intercept evidence is the logical next step”.
Meanwhile, Holroyd has condemned allegations that conversations between solicitors and their clients had been subject to bugging. He says: “It is completely unacceptable that defence solicitors should fear that their conversations with clients are being monitored.
“The law requires that conversations between a solicitor and their client are legally privileged. All monitoring should cease and if a conversation between a solicitor and a client is captured accidentally the tape should be destroyed.”
In a letter to the lord chancellor, Jack Straw, Holroyd states that privileged communications with a solicitor are confidential and that systematic eavesdropping of the kind that has been alleged is “completely unacceptable and an affront to the rule of law”.
He goes on: “Whether or not such eavesdropping occurred, the issue highlights the unsatisfactory nature of the current legislative framework...The government should take the earliest possible opportunity to remedy the present ambiguity and consolidate the very complex regulatory provisions that are currently in place.”
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