inadmissible there are other compelling reasons also. In Lam Chi-ming v The Queen [1991] 2 AC 212, 220, in a judgment delivered by Lord Griffiths, the Privy Council summarised the rationale of the exclusionary rule: “Their Lordships are of the view that the more recent English cases established that the rejection of an improperly obtained confession is not dependent only upon possible unreliability but also upon the principle that a man cannot be compelled to incriminate himself and upon the importance that attaches in a civilised society to proper behaviour by the police towards those in their custody.” Lord Griffiths described the inadmissibility of a confession not proved to be voluntary as perhaps the most fundamental rule of the English criminal law. The rationale explained by Lord Griffiths was recently endorsed by the House in R v Mushtaq [2005] UKHL 25, [2005] 1 WLR 1513, paras 1, 7, 27, 45-46, 71. It is of course true, as counsel for the Secretary of State points out, that in cases such as these the attention of the court was directed to the behaviour of the police in the jurisdiction where the defendant was questioned and the trial was held. This was almost inevitably so. But it is noteworthy that in jurisdictions where the law is in general harmony with the English common law reliability has not been treated as the sole test of admissibility in this context. In Rochin v California 342 US 165 (1952) Frankfurter J, giving the opinion of the United States Supreme Court, held that a conviction had been obtained by “conduct that shocks the conscience” (p 172) and referred to a “general principle” that “States in their prosecutions respect certain decencies of civilized conduct” (p 173). He had earlier (p 169) referred to authority on the due process clause of the United States constitution which called for judgment whether proceedings “offend those canons of decency and fairness which express the notions of justice of Englishspeaking peoples even toward those charged with the most heinous offenses.” In The People (Attorney General) v O’Brien [1965] IR 142, 150, the Supreme Court of Ireland held, per Kingsmill Moore J, that “to countenance the use of evidence extracted or discovered by gross personal violence would, in my opinion, involve the State in moral defilement.” The High Court of Australia, speaking of a discretion to exclude evidence, observed (per Barwick CJ in R v Ireland (1970) 126 CLR 321, 335), that “Convictions obtained by the aid of unlawful or unfair acts may be obtained at too high a price.” In R v Oickle [2000] 2 SCR 3, a large majority of the Supreme Court of Canada cited with approval (para 66) an observation of Lamer J that “What should be -10-