The Law Society has responded to the Law Commission’s consultation on reform of the SARs regime. It says the proposals, in the main, do no more than “tinker around the edges” of the issues. It says some of the more radical proposals, such as adopting a serious crimes approach instead of an all crimes approach, will not be adopted and would bring its own problems anyway.
The Law Society calls for:
- a “reasonable excuse” defence for failure to report specific offences on a de-scoped list that would contain offences recognised as providing low value intelligence; and
- statutory guidance on reasonable excuses (as proposed by the Law Commission).