History
PII was previously known as Crown privilege, and derived from the same principle as the immunity of the Crown from prosecution before the Crown Proceedings Act 1947. However, PII is not limited to the Crown (see the NSPCC case mentioned below), and cannot be waived save in exceptional circumstances.
A number of PII certificates were signed in relation to the prosecutions of individuals involved in the Matrix Churchill "Arms to Iraq" case, a subject that was subsequently investigated in the Scott Report.
Read more about this topic: Public-interest Immunity
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)