I am no lawyer: but I am very interested in the 'Duty of Candour' principle. How far, one wonders, will it extend beyond follow-up after "emergency situations" and actions thereupon by the authorities, which seems to be the application for which it is being discussed.
Where I've encountered it before [in my Energy interests] is its application in Judicial Reviews. The principle is that, inevitably, the authorities enjoy a vast disparity of knowledge and information in such cases, and are required to cough it up, even to the extent of revealing advice given and received between officials and their counsel.
I can tell you, it puts the wind up civil servants and ministers - one of the reasons they have been trying to get the courts to be stricter over what gets heard under JR (as predicted here years ago).
Now of course we know that Whitehall etc have long found ways to live with FOI, so as not to have it cramp their style. But it still does, to some extent. Even so, FOI and JR notwithstanding, Whitehall and others still frequently dissemble, nay sometimes lie through their teeth, in official pronouncements.
So - just how much more comprehensive will be the scope of Duty of Candour following the passage of the Hillsborough Law? And how will we be able to invoke it against the bastards?
ND
5 comments:
OT, sorry, but I'm wondering just how much good these Tory turncoats are doing Reform. I don't remember either the delightful Nadine (completely wrapped round Boris' little finger) or Maria Caulfield standing up in the House and telling either Boris or Sunak that mass immigration was a betrayal of Brexit voters.
From an advocacy manual. "In the Common Law countries a trial is NOT an exercise designed to discover the truth. The rules of evidence are mainly designed to exclude".......
I have often thought one hires a lawyer with the explicit objective of not having the truth revealed. Seems to work.
I see that Sir Kier has ordered the Investigatory Powers Commissioner to run a new inquiry into a certain neo Nazi hired by MI5. Porkies were likely told in court, not once, not twice but three times - even the judges noticed it was very whiffy. So whiffy they complained.
So we have not got to any sort of candour. But it would be fun to have an MI5 operative and his handlers spit roasted in open court under oath. All very hush hush they said, but a glance at the evidence so far indicates it hardly matters at all to national security. But jolly embarrassing to the secret squirrels.
Be interesting to see how this candour rule gets along and where the ifs and buts get put in. Pity no more Yes Minister sketches are being made.
Just about every Basic Human Right enshrined in Brussels law, that Remainers bang on about so wistfully, is "subject to, errr, national security considerations ..."
OT again, but high energy costs are killing what manufacturing remains
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/16/wedgwood-to-freeze-production-at-staffordshire-factory-for-90-days
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/feb/18/staffordshire-potteries-ceramics-companies-closures-royal-stafford
(As well as energy, some of this is fashion - who has a china cabinet in the best room, as grandma did? - and some of it is increased housing poverty - who has a "best room" anymore?)
And “public ‘elf” — as we saw with COVID. Amazing how quickly pretty much every and any freedom and “rights” got ditched, which might have been justified.
But what happened to those who criticised the sweeping powers government awarded to itself as overreach? Many of those who are now most fervently trying to activate “human rights” protests especially in relation to unlawful migration were gunning to hardest for ever greater curtailments on our liberties.
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