ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the importation of human rights norms, specifically the rights to respect for private life and to freedom of expression, guaranteed respectively by Arts 8 2 and 10 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), into an area of private law concerned with a particular obligation – that of confidentiality. The two areas of law have come together because it is the action for breach of confidence that has been used as the tool by the court to afford greater protection for privacy both prior to, and with increasing momentum following the advent of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA).
