IA & Ors, R. v

An intermediary may explain questions and answers as necessary to enable a vulnerable witness and the court to understand each other. Intervention to secure understanding does not itself make the process unfair. A witness is competent if, viewed broadly and fairly with special measures, the witness can understand questions and give understandable answers; perfection on every question is unnecessary.

Where a juror makes a racist remark, the judge must conduct a fact-specific investigation and ensure objective guarantees of impartiality. Evidence falls outside bad-character rules where it directly relates to the offence, is reasonably contemporaneous and closely associated with it. In trafficking for exploitation, participation in another's travel arrangements may be inferred from the surrounding evidence and need not involve personally making every arrangement.

IA and TA, who were married, and their daughter FA appealed convictions following a six-month trial at Manchester Crown Court. IA and TA were convicted of trafficking RB into the United Kingdom for exploitation, contrary to Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004, and all three were convicted of benefit offences.

The prosecution alleged that RB, a profoundly deaf woman without speech, had been compelled to work as an unpaid domestic servant and that false benefit claims were made in her name. Her evidence was obtained through video-recorded interviews and, at trial, with assistance from Mr Flynn as intermediary.

The appeals raised the intermediary's independence and performance, the admissibility and competence of RB's evidence, the response to racist remarks by a juror, the absence of video recording of cross-examination, the sufficiency of evidence on trafficking and benefit counts, bad-character evidence, and severance.

1. Appeals dismissed. None of the grounds rendered the convictions unsafe.

2. Mr Flynn performed the statutory function of an intermediary under Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. He was entitled to intervene where necessary to make questions understandable to RB. The trial judge addressed challenges to his independence and accuracy, and the defence had expert assistance to monitor the communications. His later inability to act at a proposed retrial did not show that he had previously breached his intermediary oath.

3. The judge was entitled not to reopen the ruling admitting RB's video-recorded evidence. There was no material new circumstance and no basis on which the evidence should have been excluded. RB was competent under sections 53 and 54 of the 1999 Act. A witness need not understand every question or give an immediately intelligible answer on every issue. The assessment was properly witness-, trial- and issue-specific, and the judge was best placed to make it.

4. The judge dealt appropriately with the racist juror. He investigated the incident, discharged that juror, examined the others individually, and obtained confirmations that they would decide only on the evidence. Those steps provided the objective guarantees of impartiality required by Sander v UK [2001] 31 EHRR 44.

5. There was ample evidence from which the jury could infer that IA was a party to the arrangements facilitating RB's return to the United Kingdom. Such arrangement or facilitation had to precede, or be very close to, her arrival, but IA need not personally have made every travel arrangement.

6. The tenancy and address documents were admissible as business documents and, independently, by agreement. IA's failure to identify a disputed factual matter in his defence statement also permitted appropriate inferences, though not a conviction based solely on such an inference.

7. Evidence of violence towards RB directly related to the alleged exploitation. It formed part of a continuing course of forced labour and was sufficiently connected to the charged trafficking. The judge correctly admitted it outside the bad-character regime. The remaining complaints, including the refusal to sever FA's case and the sufficiency of evidence of her dishonesty, disclosed no arguable unfairness.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): dismissed the appeals against conviction: [2013] EWCA Crim 1308.
• Manchester Crown Court: IA and TA were convicted of trafficking for exploitation and all three applicants were convicted of benefit offences following a six-month trial.