"11. The P.C.A. believes that unless public interest immunity applies to material supplied by a complainant or a witness in the course of a complaint under Part IX of the 1984 Act, potential complainants (and their witnesses) will be deterred from co-operating with a complaints investigation unless and until a civil action is resolved. This would have a very detrimental effect on the important public interest in effective investigations into alleged misconduct by police officers.
"12. That public interest immunity applies in this context does not mean that the public interest considerations identified above will always be held to outweigh any competing public interest consideration. There will be public interests (for example, the acquittal of the innocent and the conviction of the guilty in a criminal
"In our view this [the ability to use the complaint file] gives the police an advantage over the plaintiff which is not insubstantial - and which results in plaintiff-complainants refusing to co-operate with the complaints procedure until after their civil claim for damages has been heard and settled. This is a serious matter because it may deprive the police of any reasonable chance to enforce discipline on an officer if, in fact, he has misconducted himself."
"The P.C.A. is of the view that the maintenance of P.I.I, [public interest immunity] covering all complaints information in this context is not necessary to avoid deterring genuine complainants and that indeed the law as stated in Neilson has from time to time caused serious difficulties in practice for the operation of the police complaints investigation system (as the case law recognises). The P.C.A. would therefore wish to submit to their Lordships that there has been, since Neilson, a shift in the balance of public interest on these matters."
"However, there will of course be circumstances in which P.I.I, will continue to apply to particular types of information within the context of the investigation of complaints into police misconduct. It will be
"The matters raised above as to the application of P.I.I, do vitally depend on the specific circumstances of the investigation of police misconduct and the disciplinary or other consequences which may flow from such investigation. Therefore the P.C.A. will suggest to their Lordships that the conclusions reached by their Lordships should be confined to the application of P.I.I, in the context of complaints against the police and of the facts of these particular cases. The application of P.I.I, in other contexts (in which the P.C.A. has no locus) must depend on a careful consideration of the view of the party entitled to claim P.I.I, and of all the relevant circumstances in each such context."
"Any department quite naturally and reasonably wishes, as any private business or any semi-state board must also wish, that its documents or correspondence should never be seen by any outside eye. If it can obtain this result by putting forward a general vague claim for protection on the ground of candour it can hardly be blamed for doing so. 'It is not surprising' it has been said (Professor Wade. Administrative Law, 2nd ed. at page 285) 'that the Crown, having been given a blank cheque, yielded to the temptation to overdraw.' And the defect of such an argument is that discrimination and relaxation of the
"The police are carrying on an unending war with criminals many of whom are today highly intelligent. So it is essential that there should be no disclosure of anything which might give any useful information to those who organise criminal activities. And it would generally be wrong to require disclosure in a civil case of anything which might be material in a pending prosecution: but after a verdict has been given or it has been decided to take no proceedings there is not the same need for secrecy. With regard to other documents there seems to be no greater need for protection than in the case of departments of Government.
"It appears to me to be most improbable that any harm would be done by disclosure of the probationary reports on the appellant or of the report from the police training centre. With regard to the report which the respondent made to his chief constable with a view to the prosecution of the appellant there could be more doubt, although no suggestion was made in argument that disclosure of its contents would be harmful now that the appellant has been acquitted. And, as I have said, these documents may prove to be of vital importance in this litigation."
"The ground put forward has been said to be Crown privilege. I think that that expression is wrong and may be misleading. There is no question of any privilege in the ordinary sense of the word. The real question is whether the public interest requires that the letter shall not be produced and whether that public interest is so strong as to override the ordinary right and interest of a litigant that he shall be able to lay before a court of justice all relevant evidence. A Minister of the Crown is always an appropriate and often the most appropriate person to assert this public interest, and the evidence or advice which he gives to the court is always valuable and may sometimes be indispensable. But, in my view, it must always be open to any person interested to raise the question and there may be cases where the trial judge should himself raise the question if no one else has done so. In the present case the question of public interest was raised by both the Attorney-General and the Gaming Board. In my judgment both were entitled to raise the matter. Indeed I think that in the circumstances it was the duty of the board to do as they have done.
"The claim in the present case is not based on the nature of the contents of this particular letter. It is based on the fact that the board
"Claims for 'class privilege' were fully considered by this House in Conway v. Rimmer[1968] AC 910 . It was made clear that there is a heavy burden of proof on any authority which makes such a claim. But the possibility of establishing such a claim was not ruled out."
"What, as it seems to me, one has to look at is the likely consequences of a general right to disclosure in civil litigation in the context of the statutory purpose sought to be achieved by the section and to ask, first, whether these likely consequences support the contention that such disclosure would be contrary to the public interest and, secondly, if so, whether that interest is a consideration of such importance as to outweigh the public interest in disclosure."
"likely to be willing to offer free and truthful cooperation in investigations under the section if they know that any statements which they make are liable to be disclosed to the complainant in any civil proceedings which he may be minded to commence?"
"I would, however, add this. Where a litigant asserts that documents are immune from production or disclosure on public interest grounds he is not (if the claim is well founded) claiming a right but observing a duty. Public interest immunity is not a trump card vouchsafed to certain privileged players to play when and as they wish. It is an exclusionary rule, imposed on parties in certain circumstances, even where it is to their disadvantage in the litigation. This does not mean that in any case where a party holds a document in a class prima facie
"It is true that the public interest which demands that the evidence be withheld has to be weighed against the public interest in the administration of justice that courts should have the fullest possible access to all relevant material (Rex v. Hardy (1794) 24 State Tr. 199, 808; Marks v. Beyfus(1890) 25 QBD 494 : Conway v. Rimmer[1968] AC 910 ); but once the former public interest is held to outweigh the latter, the evidence cannot in any circumstances be admitted. It is not a privilege which may be waived by the Crown (see Marks v. Beyfus at p. 500) or by anyone else."
"He accepted that there is a general duty to disclose everything that is relevant except that which the law prohibits. He explained that the Secretary of State's position was, and always had been, that it is not in the public interest that complaints and discipline files should be disclosed. He said that the Secretary of State was not making policy in taking that view but was merely obeying the law, (emphasis added) The test was not 'Will it do any harm in this case?'. The emphasis should be placed upon the integrity of the files. Contributors to section 49 procedures were entitled to know and to be assured that what they had contributed will not be seen by anybody including the inspectorate or the Secretary of State. He said that in this case the Secretary of State had not seen the files in question."
"No doubt [the information] will form part of the brief delivered to counsel for the Commissioners and may help him to probe the appellant's evidence in cross-examination; but counsel will not be able to use it as evidence to controvert anything which the appellant's witnesses may say."
"The main relevance of the passage which I have quoted for the present purposes lies in the assumption of Lord Cross that the protected information would form part of the brief to the respondent's counsel in the arbitration proceedings presumably to make such use of it as he properly could, without trespassing upon its immunity from disclosure. As will be seen, Lord Cross went further and envisaged the use of the information to probe the appellant's evidence in cross- examination. With all due respect and deference, I would hesitate from my part to go so far, particularly in the light of the judgment of Bingham L.J. but the point does not arise in the present case because of the disavowal by the respondent of any intention to cross-examine on the basis of the protected material.
"Leaving that point aside, I consider that the speech of Lord Cross supports the attitude adopted by the respondent in the present case."
"Neither the respondent nor his legal advisers can or should exclude from their minds in contesting a case the information derived from the complaints inquiry. They are bound to keep it in mind and thus use it in a sense, if only to ensure that excluding material is not put before the courts. By doing so, they may help or they may hinder a respondent's case. The guiding principle is simply that they should not speak to introduce material directly or indirectly into the case."
"In my judgment, in the class of documents with which we are now faced there is an overwhelming bias in favour of the public interest being served by the disclosure of those documents and that, therefore, there is no justification for creating a new class of privileged documents which would be the effect of extending the class in respect of which Neilson v. Laugharne [1981] Q.B. 736 remains an authority to the class of documents with which the court is concerned in this appeal."
"Given the central objective of this category of public interest immunity as 'the maintenance of an honourable, disciplined, law- abiding and incorrupt police force' given the grave public disquiet understandably aroused by proven malpractice on the part of some at least of those who served in the now disbanded West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, given the extensive publicity already attaching to the documents here in question following the appellants' successful appeal, it seems to us nothing short of absurd to suppose that those who cooperated in this investigation - largely other police officers and court officials - will regret that cooperation, or that future generations of potential witnesses will withhold it, were this court now to release the documents to C.N.L. to enable them to defeat, if they can, an allegedly corrupt claim in damages."
"The purity of the stream of justice must never, in theory, be stained by soil on the smallest slope at one end of the level playing field. But in practice that can sometimes only be avoided by expense and inconvenience which are disproportionate to the objective sought."
"The catagories of public interest are not closed, and must alter from time to time whether by restriction or extension as social conditions and social legislation develop."