Sex Offenders Register in UK Law

It follows that, if and so far as the judge in the present case heard submissions and purported to determine whether any and what notification requirements arose under the 1997 Act consequent upon the orders of conditional discharge which he made, he had no power to do so.

However, we do not consider that that failure to warn of the consequences of a reprimand or a final warning could render the decision to reprimand or administer a final warning unlawful as a matter of domestic law. The pre-conditions set out in the Act and the Guidance in effect at the time were met in "R's" case. And the Scheme, as defined by the Act and the guidance does not require the young offender's consent.

Prima facie, therefore, the claimants were entitled to a fair trial of the allegations made against them attended by all the guarantees which are required by the Convention. There is, however, no doubt that that is not an absolute right. The police would have been entitled to decide not to prosecute and discontinue the proceeding: see Deweer at paragraph 49.

The same principle has been recognised and applied in English case law. As Lord Hope of Craighead DPSC observed in R (L) v Comr of Police of the Metropolis (Secretary of State for the Home Department intervening) [2010] 1 AC 410, para 27, even public information such as a criminal conviction may become part of a person's private life once it recedes into the past and other people are likely to have forgotten about it.

That is so, as the court explained in MM, because of the cumulative effect of the failure to draw any distinction on the basis of the nature of the offence, the disposal in the case, the time which has elapsed since the offence took place or the relevance of the data to the employment sought, and the absence of any mechanism for independent review of a decision to disclose data under section 113A.

The aim of the notification requirements regime is to assist in the prevention and detection of sexual offences. In our judgment, it should not include offenders who no longer present a risk of sexual offending.

We respectfully adopt this analysis of the principles which underpin and justify the notification requirements. Their objective is to provide children, wherever in the world they may live, with such protection as the law in this country can offer them against exploitation for sexual purposes. In any civilised country it is elementary. Article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child, to which the United Kingdom is a party, provides, in unequivocal terms, that