Spousal privilege
Communications privilege

The provision made in the 1853 Act was limited – it did not extend to third-party disclosure, nor prevent voluntary disclosure – and was asymmetric, as it did not prevent the utterer from being compelled to disclose communications, only the listener (i.e. it acted only as a modified form of the rule against hearsay). As a result, in the Report on Privilege in Civil Proceedings published in December 1967 (partly influenced by the reasoning in Shenton v Tyler, where the Court of Appeal had refused to apply it) the English Law Reform Committee recommended its abolition in civil cases, which was done in the Civil Evidence Act 1968, and in criminal cases, which was eventually done in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.
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