D v NSPCC, 1978 [1978] AC 171
Citation:D v NSPCC, 1978 [1978] AC 171
Rule of thumb:If there is a vulnerable witness can they be kept anonymous in Court? Yes, vulnerable witnesses can be kept anonymous. This is of course not perfect, but it is better than witnesses being too scared to testify at all or too scared to speak freely in Court.
Background facts:
.
Judgment:
Where a witness is in a particularly vulnerable position, particularly in relation to evidence they are giving about child sex abuse, their identity has to be protected, and it similar to the protection for police informants or police undercovers. The Court affirmed that this could be abused by witnesses and it make harder for an accused person to inform their lawyer about questions they wanted to ask the witness & indeed reduce public accountability, but the balance still lay in favour of this system being applied, and litigants just have to make the best of it. The Court also affirmed the general principle that any body doing the work of the state can be subject to judicial review – it is not just ministers but also statutory bodies or private groups contracted out to do public services. The Court also affirmed that a broad interpretation has to be taken of the public services to include not just Government Minister but all bodies carrying out public functions, particularly those public bodies created under statute.
Ratio-decidendi:
‘I cannot leave this particular class of relevant evidence withheld from the court without noting, in view of an argument for the respondent, that the rule can operate to the advantage of the untruthful or malicious or revengeful or self-interested or even demented police informant as much as of one who brings information from a high-minded sense of civic duty. Experience seems to have shown that though the resulting immunity from disclosure can be abused the balance of public advantage lies in generally respecting it... The state cannot on any sensible political theory be restricted to the Crown and the departments of central government (which are, indeed, part of the crown in constitutional law). The state is the whole organisation of the body politic for supreme civil rule and government – the whole political organisation which is the basis of civil government. As such it certainly extends to local – and, as I think, also statutory – bodies in so far as they are exercising autonomous rule’, Lord Simon
Warning: This is not professional legal advice. This is not professional legal education advice. Please obtain professional guidance before embarking on any legal course of action. This is just an interpretation of a Judgment by persons of legal insight & varying levels of legal specialism, experience & expertise. Please read the Judgment yourself and form your own interpretation of it with professional assistance.