ABSTRACT
As was stated in Chapter 1, the law of evidence concerns the use of material to prove the existence or non-existence of any elements of the substantive law. In order for a party to do so, however, the evidence in question needs to be disclosed. The meaning of disclosure in criminal and civil proceedings will be discussed later in this chapter. For the moment, however, it is important to note that the parties to the proceedings should observe ‘the golden rule of full disclosure’,1 which states that the parties should disclose to one another any and all relevant material to the proceedings. In criminal proceedings, the test for disclosure has been placed on a statutory footing by the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996, in particular section 3(1)(a) which states that the prosecutor must disclose to the accused any prosecution material which has not previously been disclosed to the accused and which ‘might reasonably be considered capable of undermining the case for the prosecution against the accused or of assisting the case for the accused’. Likewise in civil proceedings, the test for ‘standard disclosure’ can be found in Rule 31.6 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 which provides that a party is required to disclose the documents on which they rely; and the documents which adversely affect their own case; adversely affect another party’s case; or support another party’s case.2 However, as with many general rules in law, the criminal and civil ‘golden rules’ of disclosure are not absolute.
