BAILII is celebrating 24 years of free online access to the law! Would you consider making a contribution?
No donation is too small. If every visitor before 31 December gives just £5, it will have a significant impact on BAILII's ability to continue providing free access to the law.
Thank you very much for your support!
[Home] [Databases] [World Law] [Multidatabase Search] [Help] [Feedback] | ||
England and Wales High Court (Queen's Bench Division) Decisions |
||
You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> England and Wales High Court (Queen's Bench Division) Decisions >> KJO v XIM [2011] EWHC 1768 (QB) (07 July 2011) URL: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2011/1768.html Cite as: [2011] EWHC 1768 (QB) |
[New search] [Context] [View without highlighting] [Printable RTF version] [Help]
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL |
||
B e f o r e :
____________________
KJO |
Claimant |
|
- and - |
||
XIM |
Defendant |
____________________
Ali Reza Sinai (instructed by Attwaters Solicitors) for the Defendant
Hearing date: 17 June 2011
____________________
Crown Copyright ©
Mr Justice Eady :
Introduction
i) The Defendant applies for security for costs.
ii) He seeks to strike out paragraph 16 of the Re-amended Particulars of Claim (relating to a claim in libel said to be time-barred).
iii) He was also asking that directions be given for the trial of preliminary issues as to the applicable law (which is no longer necessary).
iv) The Claimant applies for summary judgment on his claims based on privacy and data protection.
There was a further issue left over by the Master on 2 February 2011: the issue of costs in respect of claims discontinued. That soon resolved itself as the Claimant, through Mr Bennett, accepted that he should pay them. I shall return to the issue of security after addressing the merits of the claims as they now stand.
The application for summary judgment on the privacy claim
"24. … The contention that the 1974 Act renders spent convictions confidential misunderstands the Act's intention and its ambit. If it were to render spent convictions confidential it would have (as it were) to seal that part of an individual's criminal record such that no-one except perhaps the individual concerned had access to it. It does not do so.
25. It would also have to render private convictions that were matters of public record and may well have been, as in this case, reported in the press. Notwithstanding the obvious practical difficulty of rendering secret a public judgment which had been freely and properly reported in the press, the Act does not purport to have that effect and does not, in my opinion, do so. It simply ensures, for instance, that an individual cannot be questioned about such convictions in defined contexts or be prejudiced if details of the spent convictions come to the attention of a current employer during the course of that employment. As Maurice Kay J held in R (Pearson) v DVLA [2002] EWHC 2482 (Admin) at 15, with which I agree, 'The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act confers certain privileges … '. It does not attempt to go beyond the grant of those limited privileges to provide a right of confidentiality in respect of spent convictions. While the 1974 Act in some respects may place an individual with spent convictions in the same position as someone with no convictions, it does not do so by rendering the convictions confidential; it does so simply by putting in place a regime which protects an individual from being prejudiced by the existence of such convictions. For these reasons I reject the submission that the 1974 Act renders the appellant's convictions confidential. …"
"9.– Unauthorised disclosure of spent convictions
(1) In this section –
'official record' means a record kept for the purposes of its functions by any court, police force, Government department, local or other public authority in Great Britain, or a record kept, in Great Britain or elsewhere, for the purposes of any of Her Majesty's forces, being in either case a record containing information about persons convicted of offences; and 'specified information' means information imputing that a named or otherwise identifiable rehabilitated living person has committed or been charged with or prosecuted for or convicted of or sentenced for any offence which is the subject of a spent conviction.
(2) Subject to the provisions of any order made under subsection (5) below, any person who, in the course of his official duties, has or at any time has had custody of or access to any official record or the information contained therein, shall be guilty of an offence if, knowing or having reasonable cause to suspect that any specified information he has obtained in the course of those duties is specified information, he discloses it, otherwise than in the course of those duties, to another person.
(3) In any proceedings for an offence under subsection (2) above it shall be a defence for the defendant … to show that the disclosure was made –
(a) to the rehabilitated person or to another person at the express requested of the rehabilitated person; or
(b) to a person whom he reasonably believed to be the rehabilitated person or to another person at the express request of a person whom he reasonably believed to be the rehabilitated person.
(4) Any person who obtains any specified information from any official record by means of any fraud, dishonesty or bribe shall be guilty of an offence … "
"It is suggested that whether information is, or was once upon a time, a matter of 'public record' (whatever the meaning intended by that expression, as compared with the broader expression 'public domain') is simply a factor in determining whether it is so generally accessible that it would not be just to require the party against whom a duty of confidentiality is alleged to treat it as confidential."
The application for summary judgment on the data protection claim
" …
(2) Whereas data processing systems are designed to serve man; whereas they must, whatever the nationality or residence of natural persons, respect their fundamental rights and freedoms, notably the right to privacy, and to contribute to economic and social progress, trade expansion and the well-being of individuals
…
(10) Whereas the object of the national laws on the processing of personal data is to protect fundamental rights and freedoms, notably the right to privacy, which is recognised both in Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and in the general principles of Community law; whereas, for that reason, the approximation of those laws must not result in any lessening of the protection they afford but must, on the contrary, seek to ensure a high level of protection in the Community … "
"Processing of data relating to offences, criminal convictions or security measures may be carried out only under the control of official authority, or if suitable specific safeguards are provided under national law, subject to derogations which may be granted by the Member State under national provisions providing suitable specific safeguards. However, a complete register of criminal convictions may be kept only under the control of official authority."
The application to strike out the libel claim as time barred
Security for costs
Anonymity