R Sarah Finch v Surrey County Council
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lady Justice Andrews,Mr Justice Warby |
| Judgment Date | 03 February 2021 |
| Neutral Citation | [2021] EWHC 170 (QB) |
| Docket Number | Case No: QB-2020-004292 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
| Date | 03 February 2021 |
In the Matter of a Contempt Application of the Court's Own Initiative Pursuant to CPR 81.6
Against the British Broadcasting Corporation (“the BBC”)
In Connection with Proceedings in the Administrative Court CO/4441/2019
[2021] EWHC 170 (QB)
THE RT. HON. Lady Justice Andrews DBE
AND THE HON. Mr Justice Warby
Case No: QB-2020-004292
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
DIVISIONAL COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
Trevor Burke QC and Jonathan Scherbel-Ball for the BBC
Hearing dates: 18 December 2020 and 27 January 2021
Approved Judgment
I direct that no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
Lady Justice Andrews and
On the morning of 17 November 2020, the BBC made a video and audio recording of half a day's hearing in the Planning Court before Holgate J. The Judge was hearing argument on the first day of a 2-day judicial review of a controversial decision by Surrey County Council to grant planning permission to UK Oil and Gas to carry out “fracking” operations at a site at Horse Hill, near Horley.
BBC South East Today is the BBC's regional television news programme for the South East of England, covering Kent, East Sussex, part of West Sussex and part of Surrey. On the evening of 17 November 2020, South East Today broadcast in its 18.30 and 22.30 news bulletins a special report on the Horse Hill case, which included a short clip from the video (“the report”). All of this was done without the knowledge or consent of the Court.
This behaviour, as the BBC admits, was a breach of the statutory prohibitions on making and transmitting unauthorised recordings of court proceedings, and therefore involved at least two criminal offences. In our judgment (and as the BBC also admits) the number and seriousness of the breaches makes this a case of contempt of court.
This is the judgment of the Court on the question of penalty.
The legal context
A hundred years ago, it was commonplace for photographs to be taken in and around the court room and published in the press. But the practice became highly controversial. As a result, since 22 December 1925 it has been an offence for any person to take photographs in a court, or in or around a court building, and an offence to publish any such photograph. The relevant provisions are those of section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925, barely amended in the last 95 years:-
“ 41. — Prohibition on taking photographs, &c., in court.
(1) No person shall—
(a) take or attempt to take in any court any photograph … of any person, being a judge of the court or a juror or a witness in or a party to any proceedings before the court, whether civil or criminal; or
(b) publish any photograph … taken … in contravention of the foregoing provisions of this section or any reproduction thereof;
…
(2) For the purposes of this section—
…
(c) a photograph … shall be deemed to be a photograph, portrait … taken … in court if it is taken or made in the court-room or in the building or in the precincts of the building in which the court is held, or if it is a photograph … taken … of the person while he is entering or leaving the court-room or any such building or precincts as aforesaid.”
Unsurprisingly, it has been held that the term “photograph” includes moving images, so that filming in a courtroom, court building, or its precincts is prohibited: see J Barber & Sons v Lloyd's Underwriters [1986] 1 QB 103 [105D-E] and HM Attorney General v Yaxley-Lennon [2019] EWHC 1791 (QB) [2020] 3 All ER 477 [27]. The effect of s. 41 is therefore to prohibit the live-streaming of court proceedings, in the sense of broadcasting those proceedings to the world at large; the language of the section “clearly includes the transmission or broadcasting of any photograph via the internet, no matter how transient that might be”: R (Spurrier) v Secretary of State for Transport [2019] EWHC 528 (Admin); [2019] EMLR 2016 [21]. Proceedings may be live-streamed within the court, which includes a location that is designated as an extension of the courtroom, but not elsewhere: Spurrier [30–31].
S.41 creates a summary-only offence, punishable by a fine of up to £1,000; but serious breaches can amount to contempt of court at common law, exposing the wrongdoer to the more severe sanctions available in that jurisdiction, including committal to prison: see Solicitor General v Cox [2016] EWHC 1241 (QB) [2016] EMLR 22 and Yaxley-Lennon (above) [27], [82–87].
Parliament has stepped in to make it a contempt of court to make and publish unauthorised audio recordings. Section 9 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 provides in relevant part as follows:-
“9 Use of tape recorders.
(1) … it is a contempt of court—
(a) to use in court, or bring into court for use, any tape recorder or other instrument for recording sound, except with the leave of the court;
(b) to publish a recording of legal proceedings made by means of any such instrument, or any recording derived directly or indirectly from it, by playing it in the hearing of the public or any section of the public, or to dispose of it or any recording so derived, with a view to such publication;
(c) to use any such recording in contravention of any conditions of leave granted under paragraph (a).
(2) Leave under paragraph (a) of subsection (1) may be granted or refused at the discretion of the court, and if granted—
(a) may … be granted subject to such conditions as the court thinks proper with respect to the use of any recording made pursuant to the leave …
…
(4) This section does not apply to the making or use of sound recordings for purposes of official transcripts…”
Parliament has created some limited exceptions to this regime:
i) The filming and broadcast of proceedings in the Supreme Court is permitted by virtue of section 47 of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. That section amended the 1925 and 1981 Acts to take the Supreme Court outside their remit.
ii) Following a White Paper of 2012 proposing to allow the recording and broadcasting of proceedings in “selected court proceedings”, power to do so was conferred by sections 32 and 58(4) of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. The mechanism for doing this is an order made by the Lord Chancellor with the concurrence of the Lord Chief Justice and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
iii) These powers have been exercised in two respects.
(a) Proceedings in the Court of Appeal when sitting as a full court in public may be broadcast: see the Court of Appeal (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2013 (SI 2013/2786). In practice, proceedings of this kind have been broadcast regularly, though not as a matter of course.
(b) Authority to record and broadcast certain sentencing remarks by way of a pilot scheme was conferred by SI 2016/612. The Crown Court (Recording and Broadcasting) Order 2020, SI 2020/637 created a permanent regime, with effect from 19 June 2020. No such remarks have yet been recorded and broadcast. Negotiations with the BBC and other broadcasting organisations over the conditions under which this should take place are still under way.
In the meantime, the coronavirus pandemic had prompted the rapid increase in proceedings which were not held in any courtroom, but by methods which were entirely remote. Parliament created a temporary and limited regime to ensure open justice in such proceedings. The Coronavirus Act 2020 inserted into the Courts Act 2003, with effect from 25 March 2020, a package of provisions concerned with proceedings that are, in the words of the statute, “wholly video” or “wholly audio”. By s 85A(1), where the court directs that proceedings be conducted in such a way it
“(a) may direct that the proceedings are to be broadcast (in the manner specified in the direction) for the purpose of enabling members of the public to see and hear the proceedings.”
Section 85B of the 2003 Act creates offences of making unauthorised recordings or transmissions of such proceedings. The provisions relevant to this case are those of subsection (1):
“It is an offence for a person to make, or attempt to make—
(a) an unauthorised recording, or
(b) an unauthorised transmission, of an image or sound which is being broadcast in accordance with a direction under section 85A.”
Like the offences created by s. 41 of the 1925 Act, these are summary offences, punishable by a fine.
In July 2020, serious breaches of s. 41 and s. 9 came to the attention of the Court during the trial of a libel action, when it emerged that the claimant's solicitors had advised their clients that a livestream of the trial, which had been authorised for viewing by the press and public in a next-door court room, could be transmitted to a number of individuals in a variety of foreign locations. The trial Judge, Warby J, referred the case to a Divisional Court (Dame Victoria Sharp, President of the Queen's Bench Division, and Andrews J). In a judgment handed down on 6 August 2020, the Court described the situation as “deeply worrying”: see [4], pointing out that
“51. In normal circumstances a judge can see and hear everything that is going on in court. The judge can see who is present, and whether a witness who is giving live evidence has been present in court observing and listening to the evidence of other witnesses. The judge can see whether someone is attempting to influence, coach or intimidate a witness whilst they are giving evidence. The judge can immediately see, as Warby J did in the course of this hearing, that a person sitting in court who is not a journalist appears to be tweeting on their mobile phone without first obtaining permission. That a judge can see...
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