Judgment Approved by the court for handing down.
R (Bridges) -v- CC South Wales & ors
which took place in public. The information had not been obtained by any intrusive
technique such as bugging or DNA sampling. We accept that is a feature of the present
case too.
78.
At [7], Lord Sumption said that, at common law, the police have the power to obtain
and store information for policing purposes, i.e. broadly speaking for the maintenance
of public order and the prevention and detection of crime. Those powers do not
authorise intrusive methods of obtaining information, such as entry on private property,
but they were amply sufficient to authorise the obtaining and storage of the kind of
public information in that case.
79.
Lord Sumption considered the question of whether the interference in that case was in
accordance with the law at [11]-[17]. He concluded that it was. He rejected the
suggestion that the fact that the DPA was a statute of general application meant that it
did not provide sufficient protection in the specific context of data obtained or stored
by the police. As Lord Sumption said at [12]:
“… It lays down principles which are germane and directly
applicable to police information, and contains a framework for
their enforcement on the police among others through the
Information Commissioner and the courts.”
80.
Lord Sumption rejected the argument advanced on behalf of the appellant in that case
that he was entitled to know precisely what data would be obtained and stored or for
how long. He said that that was not realistic. “The infinite variety of situations in
which issues of compliance may arise and the inevitable element of judgement involved
in assessing them make complete codification impossible.” (See [14] and to similar
effect [11]). Lord Sumption said that what is required is law which is “reasonably
predictable, if necessary with the assistance of expert advice” but, except perhaps in the
simplest cases, this does not mean that the law has to codify the answers to every
possible issue which may arise. “It is enough that it lays down principles which are
capable of being predictably applied to any situation.”
81.
For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that, when the case of Catt went to the
European Court of Human Rights, that Court found there to be a violation of Article 8
on the ground that the interference with the applicant’s right to respect for private life
was disproportionate: see Catt v United Kingdom (2019) 69 EHRR 7, at [128]. The
Court concluded that the question of whether the interference was in accordance with
the law was in that case closely related to the broader issue of whether it was necessary
in a democratic society and, in view of its analysis on that question, the Court did not
find it necessary to decide whether the interference was in accordance with the law: see
[106]-[107].
82.
Mr Beer QC urged upon us, on behalf of SWP, what he described as a “relativist
approach”. He cited the judgment (in part dissenting) of Laws LJ in R (Wood) v
Metropolitan Police Commissioner [2009] EWCA Civ 414, [2009] 4 All ER 951, at
[53], where he said: