This article titled “CPS should have closer oversight of police in child sex abuse cases, ex-DPP says” was written by Owen Bowcott Legal affairs correspondent, for theguardian.com on Wednesday 24th February 2016 17.26 UTCJohn Fawcett has joined the firm as Partner
The Crown Prosecution Service should have had closer oversight of the police to control the “disgrace” of some historical child sexual abuse investigations, a former director of public prosecutions has said.
Lord Macdonald QC has called for the CPS to be given more resources and for prosecutors’ powers to be boosted in order for the service to command greater public respect.
In a debate organised by the thinktank Politeia on whether or not the CPS is working, Macdonald and other lawyers said radical reform is needed of the organisation, which was founded 30 years ago and is under “enormous strain”.
Last year the CPS’s official inspectorate said that the CPS had been forced to shed nearly a third of its staff over the previous five years and that the agency “is no longer able to provide the service expected of it”.
Addressing the Politeia debate, Oliver Sells QC, who is a part-time Old Bailey judge and an expert in complex fraud cases, criticised the way recent controversial child sexual abuse inquiries had been run by police.
“I would like the CPS to have fundamental oversight of police investigations as they go along. I know that is controversial,” Sells said. “Ted Heath, Leon Brittan, Lord Janner and Lord Bramall are all examples where the police would have done much better if they had had the advice of a really experienced prosecutor.”
In such high-profile cases, he said, the police had been left too much on their own. Heath, Brittan and Janner have all died; Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan police commissioner, this week refused to apologise for his force’s abandoned investigation into sexual abuse allegations against the former army chief Lord Bramall.
Agreeing with Sells, Macdonald said: “Some of those cases have been in no small measure a disgrace. Some supervision [by the CPS] might help.”
The former DPP also questioned whether too much emphasis had been placed on victims’ rights. “There’s been a lot of political rhetoric about putting victims at the heart of the system, but a lot of that is rhetoric,” he said.
“To talk about victims being at the heart of the process seems to me to be a little misleading. Very few people are going to come out of [their court experience] saying it was a good time or satisfying.”
Macdonald, who also sits as a recorder at the Old Bailey, said he wanted CPS prosecutors to carry out more advocacy as well as merely preparing cases in order to give them greater ability to make decisions in court.
Too many prosecutors are working on each case, he added, and there was rarely continuity of an individual lawyer. Ensuring CPS staff presented their own prosecutions in court would attract more able lawyers.
“Economic pressures have made it very difficult” for the CPS, he acknowledged. “It’s not tenable to have a criminal justice system that doesn’t command respect.”
Although Macdonald and Sells agreed on some reforms, the former DPP opposed Sells’ proposals for the private sector – independent barristers and solicitors’ firms – to become more involved in prosecuting.
Privatisation would undermine uniformity of national standards and recreate an “over-powerful police” as it was before 1986 when the CPS was established. “Criminal justice is a matter for the state,” Macdonald said.
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