In R (on the application of P) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Supreme Court ruled that the statutory schemes for the disclosure of convictions to employers were disproportionate in two circumstances where people were applying for employment involving contact with children or vulnerable adults. The first is the multiple convictions rule, which does not achieve its purpose of indicating tendency to crime as it applies irrespective of the nature, similarity, number or time intervals of offences. The second concerns warnings and reprimands for younger offenders, the purpose of which is instructive and specifically designed to avoid damaging effects later in life through disclosure. In such circumstances the schemes are incompatible with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to private life and incompatible in Ga’s case for 6 motoring offences, in P’s case for two minor thefts and G’s case for two police reprimands when he was 13 relating to consensual sexual activity with two other boys which police viewed as sexual curiosity. 

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