MR JUSTICE WARBY Approved Judgment NT1 & NT2 v Google LLC Convictions, confidentiality and privacy 44. Criminal trials take place in public, and the verdicts returned and sentences imposed are public acts. Historically, it has been lawful to report these matters at the time and subsequently with the benefit of either absolute or qualified immunity from liability, at least in defamation and contempt of court. Statute has imposed or allowed for reporting restrictions in certain circumstances, either to protect privacy interests, or the due administration of justice, or both: see, eg, s 2 of the Sexual Offences Amendment Act 1992, and s 4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 (“the 1981 Act”). Subject to laws or orders of this kind, however, privileges or immunities for fair and accurate reports have existed at common law, under the Defamation Act 1952, and now the Defamation Act 1996, as well as under s 5 of the 1981 Act. Section 8 of the 1974 Act is an example of a qualified privilege or immunity. 45. The question of whether and if so when information about a conviction can count as an item of confidential information and/or an aspect of an individual’s private or family life, the use or disclosure of which may be actionable, has been considered on a number of occasions in the Courts of the United Kingdom since 1974. It has not so far been held capable of being confidential information. It is not until quite recently that there has been an acknowledgment that information of this kind can fall within the ambit of an individual’s private life. 46. In Elliott v Chief Constable of Wiltshire, (The Times, 5 December 1996), Sir Richard Scott V-C struck out a claim in breach of confidence, describing the suggestion that a conviction announced in open court could be confidential as “absurd”. In R (Pearson) v DVLA [2002] EWHC 2482 (Admin) Maurice Kay J rejected a submission that continued reference to a spent conviction on the paper driving licence of a professional lorry driver represented an interference with his rights under Article 8(1) of the Convention. The Judge held that Article 8 was not even engaged (and that if it was, the applicable regime was justified in pursuit of the legitimate public policy aim of enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of sentencing in respect of repeat offences). The 1974 Act was held to create no more than “a limited privilege, provided not under the Convention but by domestic legislation.” 47. In L v Law Society (above) at [24]-[25] the Master of the Rolls rejected a submission that the protection afforded by the 1974 Act renders details of spent convictions confidential. At [37]-[44] he rejected a submission that the proceedings should be held in private to protect the appellant against disclosure of his “private life” within the meaning of Article 8 of the Convention. As to confidentiality, agreeing with Maurice Kay J in Pearson, Sir Anthony Clarke MR held that the Act “… 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.”