Day 147 - 04 Jul 95 - Page 08
1 final decision about them. Until such time as
2 your Lordship has made a decision on these questions, they
3 remain interlocutory.
4
5 The question, really, is perhaps not whether such an
6 application is interlocutory -- because, quite plainly, on
7 the wording of that rule, it is. The question is whether
8 your Lordship, having regard to that provision that such an
9 application is to be regarded to be treated as
10 interlocutory, whether, even though that is so,
11 your Lordship is compelled to sit in chambers to hear it.
12 That is not a submission which I make. I do not say that
13 your Lordship is compelled to sit in chambers to hear it.
14 It is not like hearing an action in camera. It is nothing
15 of the same quality; and that is an irrelevant red herring,
16 with respect.
17
18 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am minded to agree with that, because it is
19 a normal event of any trial that something crops up in the
20 evidence and someone makes an application there and then.
21 I have not wished to follow that course, by and large, in
22 this case, because I have considered that it is more
23 orderly to deal with a bunch of stored up applications in
24 one go.
25
26 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, more or less all the time, I have agreed
27 with your Lordship. I do not think there has been more
28 than once that I have said I would like your Lordship to
29 sit in chambers. I did so on this occasion because of what
30 I see is the peculiarly sensitive public relations
31 questions to which the transcript question gives rise; and
32 that is the principal reason why I asked your Lordship to
33 do it.
34
35 My Lord, as I say, I do not feel terribly strongly about
36 it. What I would like to suggest is that we conclude the
37 question on the transcripts, which the Defendants are
38 anyway prompted to come back to this morning by your
39 Lordship, and that should remain in chambers. Thereafter,
40 my Lord, I will not object strongly if your Lordship
41 decides to go into open court, because questions of witness
42 scheduling and discovery, though they would normally be
43 held in chambers, we have heard quite a lot about that in
44 open court.
45
46 Can I give the another example of the sort of circumstances
47 in which a judge, even without a jury, might be disposed to
48 sit in chambers? Suppose, for example, the question should
49 arise whether the court should admit evidence under the
50 enabling provision of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act?
51 That is something where, again, the court might say: "Well,
52 in the interests of justice it is better that I should sit
53 in chambers, rather than in open court, until the point has
54 been decided."
55
56 My Lord, I would submit that in relation to the transcript
57 question -- mostly for the Defendants' sake, but also
58 partly for our sake, as I know what misuse is likely to be
59 made of it -- that that part of this hearing should
60 remain -----
