Police

It was settled law that in the absence of special circumstances, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service did not generally, in the interests of the whole community, owe individual members of the public, whether they were victims, witnesses or those who were prosecuted, a common law duty of care in undertaking and performing their operational duties of investigating, detecting, suppressing and prosecuting crime. A statutory power could not of itself generate a common law duty of care. Whether a statutory duty gave rise to a private common law cause of action was a question of construction of the statute.

The existence of a broad public law duty alone could scarcely give rise to a common law duty of care owed to an individual. If a statutory duty did not give rise to a private right to sue for breach, the duty could not create a duty of care that would not have been owed at common law if the statute were not