In a recent House of Lords decision, R v Special Commissioner and Another, ex parte Morgan Grenfell & Co Ltd [2002], the Inland Revenue’s statutory powers to see certain documents belonging to a taxpayer were pitted against the taxpayer’s right to claim that those documents were protected by legal professional privilege.
Legal professional privilege protects certain communications between a lawyer and his client from scrutiny by third parties and is regarded as crucial if the client is to be allowed to have unfettered access to legal advice. The outcome of the case – that the Revenue’s powers were not sufficiently clearly set out in the legislation to undermine the privilege – shows that this right has come of age. With the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into English law via the Human Rights Act 1998, the privilege has now been confirmed as a fundamental human right that can only be overridden in exceptional circumstances.
