The respondents had all been convicted or received cautions or reprimands in respect of relatively minor offending. In each case, the relevant convictions and cautions were “spent” under the legislation designed for the rehabilitation of ex-offenders, but criminal records had to be disclosed if they applied for employment involving contact with children or vulnerable adults. The respondents all challenged two related statutory disclosure schemes as being incompatible with Article 8 of the ECHR.

The CA in England and in Northern Ireland upheld the respondents’ case. It held that the schemes failed the legality test because of the breadth of the categories and found the schemes disproportionate for failing to sufficiently distinguish between convictions and cautions of varying degrees of