Dr Callender Smith had his article published by Inforrm on his FOIA request to test the constitutional question of whether the Queen can be compelled to give evidence in her own courts.
Dr Callender Smith had his article published by Inforrm on the long-running saga of his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to test the constitutional question of whether the Queen can be compelled to give evidence in her own courts. He says:
‘The Regina v Regina issue, and the abrupt halting of the trial of Paul Burrell at the Old Bailey when it seemed that the Queen might be called to give evidence by the Defence, is something that came out of my PhD studies in 2014. The R v R convention is that a monarch cannot give evidence in her/his own courts. I believe this had been superseded by the Human Rights Act 1998.
Paul Burrell, the late Princess Diana's aide, was accused in 2002 of stealing items from her home after she died. After the prosecution case closed, the Queen ‘remembered’ that Paul Burrell had told her about putting things safely aside ‘for the boys’, the young Princes William and Harry. The prosecution then formally offered no evidence. The trial cost us as taxpayers in the region of £1.5m.
Because I was sitting as an Information Rights Judge from 2007 onwards, I felt I should wait until I retired from judicial work in 2017 before making this FOIA request asking for the disclosure of the Treasury Counsel's Opinion that caused the Burrell trial suddenly to evaporate. The Information Commissioner decided that it was in the public interest for the information to be disclosed to me. The CPS appealed and won that appeal. My request to appeal to the next level up, the Upper Tribunal, has been granted on the basis that there is a realistic and not just a fanciful prospect of success....but only time will tell and time has been running a long time already in this case.’
The link to the article can be found here.