Right to a Fair Trial in UK Law

Moreover, the court finds, 49 EHRR 421, 437, para 55, that, for the right to a fair trial to remain sufficiently "practical and effective", article 6(1) requires that, as a rule ("en règle générale"), access to a lawyer "should be provided as from the first interrogation of a suspect by the police, unless it is demonstrated in the light of the particular circumstances of each case that there are compelling reasons to restrict this right."

In most litigious situations the expression "waiver" is used to describe a voluntary, informed and unequivocal election by a party not to claim a right or raise an objection which it is open to that party to claim or raise. In the context of entitlement to a fair hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, such is in my opinion the meaning to be given to the expression.

What a fair trial requires cannot, however, be the subject of a single, unvarying rule or collection of rules. It is proper to take account of the facts and circumstances of particular cases, as the European Court has consistently done. Before considering the right not to incriminate oneself with which this appeal is specifically concerned, it is helpful to review the way in which the European Court has treated other rights held to be comprised within article 6.

However, as the applicant recognised (see paragraph 38 above), the entitlement to disclosure of relevant evidence is not an absolute right.

The jurisprudence of the European Court very clearly establishes that while the overall fairness of a criminal trial cannot be compromised, the constituent rights comprised, whether expressly or implicitly, within article 6 are not themselves absolute.

If the breach is established before the hearing, the appropriate remedy may be a public acknowledgement of the breach, action to expedite the hearing to the greatest extent practicable and perhaps, if the defendant is in custody, his release on bail. It will not be appropriate to stay or dismiss the proceedings unless (a) there can no longer be a fair hearing or (b) it would otherwise be unfair to try the defendant.

In any case in which it is said that the reasonable time requirement (to which I will henceforward confine myself) has been or will be violated, the first step is to consider the period of time which has elapsed. Unless that period is one which, on its face and without more, gives grounds for real concern it is almost certainly unnecessary to go further, since the convention is directed not to departures from the ideal but to infringements of basic human rights.