Evidence - Illegally Obtained Evidence

That there was no right of privacy in English law
Relevant evidence remained admissible, despite being obtained improperly or unlawfully, subject to the court's discretion to exclude it.

Although an apparent breach of the ECHR could be relevant in considering whether to exclude evidence, it was not determinative per se, as an appellant's rights were safeguarded under s.78 of the 1984 Act which provided for a review of the admissibility of evidence

That the fact that conduct might be typified as unlawful or oppressive did not automatically require its exclusion on the grounds of unfairness
that it was necessary to have regard to all the circumstances in which the evidence was obtained, and the determination whether to stay criminal proceedings as an abuse of process was distinct from the determination of the fairness or otherwise of admitting evidence under section 78 of PACE 1984.
The exercise for the judge was not to mark his disapproval of the conduct of the investigations or proceedings by a discretionary decision to stay them but to examine the question whether it would be unfair to the defendants to admit the evidence

It was not the ECHR's role to determine whether the evidence was admissible and it found that the secretly taped evidence did not render the proceedings wholly unfair, as the domestic courts could have used their discretionary powers to exclude the evidence under the PACE Act 1984 s.78.

That the judge had no discretion to exclude admissible evidence merely on the ground that it had been improperly obtained. The provisions of s.78 did not alter the substantive rule of law that entrapment or use of an agent provocateur did not per se afford a defence.
The judge had discretion to exclude the evidence if he thought that the obtaining of it would have such an adverse effect on fairness that he ought not to admit it. In these cases the evidence of the secret tapes had been properly admitted

The necessary inference was that the officers did not confine themselves to investigating T in an essentially passive manner, but exercised an influence such as to incite the commission of the offence.

The officers' actions went beyond those of undercover agents and since without their intervention the offence would not have been committed, right from the outset T was deprived of a fair trial and there had been a violation of Art.6.

Whilst it would be acceptable if officers were to provide a person with an unexceptional opportunity to commit a crime and that person then freely took advantage of the opportunity provided, it would be unfair and an abuse of process to allow law enforcement agencies to instigate an offence by offering inducements and luring a person into a course of action he would not normally have followed.

Whether the proceedings should have been stayed on the ground of abuse was a matter of discretion for the judge, balancing the interests of avoiding an affront to the public conscience and the public interest that those charged with serious crimes should be prosecuted, and notwithstanding B's offence, the judge had been entitled to conclude the proceedings should not be stayed

That the right to silence was a generally recognised international standard which lay at the heart of the fair procedure guaranteed by Art.6(1). The right not to incriminate oneself was primarily concerned with respecting the will of an accused person to remain silent and presupposed that the prosecution in a criminal case would seek to prove the case against the accused without resort to evidence obtained through methods of coercion or oppression in defiance of the will of the accused. In determining whether a procedure had extinguished the essence of this privilege, the Court should examine the nature and degree of the compulsion, the existence of any relevant safeguards in the procedures and the use to which the material so obtained was put.
In A's case, the use of taped material concerning L and J breached Art.6(1) as there was no evidence that any admissions made by A in this context were involuntary in the sense that he had been coerced into making them or that there was any entrapment or inducement.
However, the admissions allegedly made to H were not spontaneous and unprompted statements volunteered by A. Rather, they were induced by the persistent questioning of H who, at the instance of the police, had channelled their conversations in circumstances which were to be regarded as the functional equivalent of an interrogation without any of the safeguards normally attached to a formal police interview.
A would have been subjected to psychological pressures which impinged on the "voluntariness" of the disclosures which were alleged to have been made. Accordingly, the information gained by the use of H impinged upon A's right to silence and the privilege against self-incrimination.

Notwithstanding the fact that there was no prejudice to the appellant as a result of the placing of covert listening devices in a police yard, general unlawful acts by the police amounting to a deliberate violation of a suspected person's right to legal professional privilege were so great an affront to the integrity of the justice system, and therefore the rule of law, that the associated prosecution was rendered an abuse of process.