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Two convicted sex offenders have won the right to challenge their inclusion on the UK's sex offenders register. The UK Supreme Court ruling paves the way for other offenders to seek to have their details removed.
The two offenders are a teenager who was convicted of rape aged 11 and a man in his 50s guilty of indecent assault.
They argued the register breached their human rights because they could not have their inclusion reviewed, even if they had evidence they had reformed.
Both had been included on the register indefinitely because of the severity of their offences.
'Unjustified'
But they had argued that permanent inclusion with no chance of a review was a disproportionate interference in their family lives.
Lord Phillips, president of the Supreme Court, said: "It is obvious that there must be some circumstances in which an appropriate tribunal could reliably conclude that the risk of an individual carrying out a further sexual offence can be discounted to the extent that continuance of notification requirements is unjustified."
The justices upheld a decision by the Court of Appeal that the lack of a review was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, the strongest judgement that they can give against a piece of legislation.
In effect, it means that the incoming government will need to ask Parliament to rethink how this part of the sex offenders register works. It does not mean that the principle of a register itself has been declared illegal.
The judges said that there was no evidence before the court that showed it was impossible to identify which paedophiles had reformed. Other countries had introduced registers with a review mechanism to remove those offenders who no longer posed a a risk.This article is from the BBC News website. ? British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.