Legal professional privilege is a longstanding and fundamental principle of English law, and yet it finds itself before the Courts with such frequency that it is also one that is continually evolving.
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As previous client alerts have set out, momentum is building across a range of jurisdictions toward legalizing companies’ obligations to respect human rights and promote ESG issues generally. While in Europe, this has centered on mandatory human rights due diligence proposals (as set out in our previous update, available here), in the UK attention has focused on adapting the ‘failure to prevent’ structure as set out in the UK Bribery Act 2010.
This attention continues to build. Most recently, the large retailer ASOS has recently called for the UK Government to specifically adopt the failure to prevent model as set out in a report by the British Institute for International and Comparative Law (
The European Union (
ESG) measures.
Two areas of development in particular are likely to have widespread repercussions for businesses: newly implemented obligations for ESG disclosures and likely forthcoming mandatory human rights, environmental and governance due diligence. These measures involve both new obligations of disclosure as well as, potentially, substantive obligations to address ESG issues connected to companies’ businesses. Their implementation is likely to have significant effects for both companies domiciled in the EU as well as companies operating within the EU. Importantly, as well as compliance concerns, businesses will need to consider the attendant legal risks of publicly sharing human rights and environmental risks in their business operations and supply chain more widely.