## Facts

- Graham Gaskin, a British citizen, was taken into public care by Liverpool City Council after his mother’s death and remained in care, largely with foster parents, until age 18.
- The local authority maintained a detailed case file about him, including information supplied by multiple third-party contributors on the understanding of confidentiality.
- As an adult, Gaskin sought access to the file to understand his childhood and to prepare a negligence claim alleging ill-treatment while in care.
- Under the local authority’s policy, disclosure of any portion of the file depended on the consent of the relevant third-party contributor; non-consent resulted in refusal of access to that material.
- Domestic courts upheld the refusal of full access, citing public-interest concerns in preserving confidential reporting essential to child-care services.
- Gaskin brought proceedings under the European human-rights system challenging the denial of access.

## Issues

1. Whether denial of access to care records, under a scheme giving determinative weight to third-party confidentiality and lacking independent review, violated Article 8’s protection of private and family life.
2. Whether the refusal also violated Article 10’s protection of receiving information.

## Decision

- The European Court of Human Rights held, by a majority, that there was a violation of Article 8.
- The Court treated the complaint principally under Article 8 and did not find it necessary to determine a separate Article 10 violation.
- The Court awarded just satisfaction.

## Legal Principles

- Information about a person’s childhood, development, and personal history may fall within “private life” under Article 8, especially where official records function as the primary substitute for family memory for a child raised in public care.
- State reliance on confidentiality in social-service recordkeeping can pursue legitimate aims, including protecting the rights of others and maintaining effective child-protection systems.
- Proportionality under Article 8 requires a procedure enabling interests in access to be balanced against interests in confidentiality.
- A system that gives an “automatic” or unreviewable preference to third-party contributors’ confidentiality—without an independent authority to weigh competing interests—fails the “necessary in a democratic society” requirement and breaches Article 8.

## Conclusion

The Court concluded that the United Kingdom violated Article 8 by operating a care-record access scheme that allowed third-party contributors to block disclosure without independent balancing of confidentiality against the individual’s strong interest in learning and verifying their personal history.


Gaskin v. United Kingdom, 12 Eur. Ct. H.R. 36 (1989)