ABSTRACT
In R v Kearley,84 one of Lord Ackner’s reasons for excluding evidence of the telephone calls was that evidence of that kind could be easily invented by the police. It would, of course, be equally open to a defendant to manufacture hearsay statements with a view to creating a reasonable doubt about the prosecution case. The risk of manufacture does increase if the original source of information is unavailable for cross-examination. However, the Law Commission has suggested that this risk could be reduced by limiting new exceptions to the rule to first hand hearsay, by imposing requirements for admissibility such as giving advance notice of any hearsay evidence, and by the exclusion of the hearsay evidence of unidentified witnesses. ‘First hand’ hearsay evidence is hearsay at one remove from the original speaker. For example, A makes an assertion to B, who then wishes to repeat it in court to establish the truth of what A asserted. ‘Multiple’ hearsay occurs when the evidence is at more than one remove from the original speaker. For example, A makes an assertion to B, who reports it to C. C then wishes to repeat it in court to establish the truth of what A originally asserted. (Multiple hearsay is sometimes referred to by the number of removes from the original speaker: second hand hearsay, third hand hearsay, and so on.)
Someone who reports the words of another person may have misheard or misinterpreted them. But the existing hearsay rule can exclude statements, such as those in letters or tape-recordings, where there may be no doubt about what was said. The Law Commission’s view is that this is an objection to multiple hearsay only.
