ABSTRACT
The law of England and Wales pertaining to the obligation on the prosecution to provide information to the defence before trial evolved at a significant pace in the decade of the 1990s. The changes made were the culmination of a long period of study and consideration1 and a response to the miscarriages of justice2
in the now infamous cases of the Guildford Four,3 Birmingham Six,4 Maguire Seven,5 Judith Ward6 and the M25 Three.7 The changes led to a re-examination of the rules governing advance notice to the defence of the evidence to be used by the prosecution at trial and the disclosure to the defence of information or evidence that might be relevant to the case, but which was not to be used at trial. The Court of Appeal and the House of Lords stated that fair disclosure to the defence in the pre-trial stage was an inseparable part of the right of the accused to a fair trial.8 Simply stated, the key features of the development of the common law of disclosure in the last decade were the decision of the appellate courts to declare their power of review of prosecution disclosure decisions9 and the declaration of the breadth of the information that had to be disclosed by the prosecutor.10 Ironically, just as practitioners and the police came to understand the changes to the common law,11 and appropriate adjustments had been made to the National Operations Manual of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS),12
the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act (CPIA) 1996 was enacted.
