My Lords, I have no doubt that the judiciary should accept this responsibility in the field of criminal law. . . .” Counsel for the Secretary of State points out that the members of the majority attached particular significance to the involvement of the British authorities in the unlawful conduct complained of, and this is certainly so: see the opinion of Lord Griffiths at p 62F, Lord Bridge of Harwich at pp 64G and 67G and Lord Lowry at pp 73G, 76F and 77D. But the appellants point to the germ of a wider principle. Thus Lord Lowry (p 74G) understood the court’s discretion to stay proceedings as an abuse of process to be exercisable where either a fair trial is impossible or “it offends the court’s sense of justice and propriety to be asked to try the accused in the circumstances of a particular case.” He opined (p 76C): “that the court, in order to protect its own process from being degraded and misused, must have the power to stay proceedings which have come before it and have only been made possible by acts which offend the court’s conscience as being contrary to the rule of law. Those acts by providing a morally unacceptable foundation for the exercise of jurisdiction over the suspect taint the proposed trial and, if tolerated, will mean that the court’s process has been abused.” Lord Lowry’s opinion did not earn the concurrence of any other member of the House, but the appellants contend that this wider principle is applicable in the extreme case of evidence procured by torture. In United States v Toscanino 500 F 2d 267 (1974) the US Court of Appeals reached a decision very similar to Bennett. 20. In R v Latif [1996] 1 WLR 104 the executive misconduct complained of was much less gross than in Bennett, and the outcome was different. Speaking for the House, Lord Steyn (at pp 112-113) acknowledged a judicial discretion to stay proceedings as an abuse if they would “amount to an affront to the public conscience” and where “it would be contrary to the public interest in the integrity of the criminal justice system that a trial should take place.” In that case the conduct complained of was not so unworthy or shameful that it was an affront to the public conscience to allow the prosecution to proceed. -12-