Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
23 JANUARY 1998
DAME BARBARA
MILLS, QC, and MR
F MARTIN
20. So where have you got to from now on?
Have you started on this PFI project?
(Dame Barbara Mills) We have not
started doing it, but we have been looking into it and we have
been, there is a technical term, but we are trying to get a project
together. Can I say this: that there is simply no point in us
doing a computer program on our own now because the big change,
and again it is a huge change since 1989-90, which I think is
a very valuable change, is that the criminal justice system now
is working as a tube as opposed to individual slices which is
what it did before. What we all need is a computer program, which
will be on the massive side, where the police when they arrest
someone just put it in at that end and it just pounds through
the tube, if you like, rather than everyone having to put something
in all the way down the line. That is what people are working
towards now.
21. I assume you have a problem in the interim,
do you not? Your resources have been cut back by six per cent
each year, not all of your branches are on the present computer
system, you have got the delay in introducing the new system,
how are you going to cope in the interim?
(Dame Barbara Mills) Because they
have actually got computer systems. I do not want to give the
impression that there are no computer systems in the ones which
have not got SCOPE, they have all got computer systems. They are
not compatible across with SCOPE. They have all got computers.
I think you, Mr Clifton- Brown, have actually visited your nearby
branch so you have seen the way it works there. There is no branch
that has not got a computer system.
22. Well done, you are well informed. Can
I finally ask you about adjournments. In paragraphs 5.1 [7]
and 5.11 it states that in 1996-97 there were 2.6 million adjournments.
(Dame Barbara Mills) Yes, terrible.
23. In magistrates' courts. It goes on to
say nearly 70 per cent were unavoidable. This would suggest that
780,000 were avoidable.
(Dame Barbara Mills) Yes.
24. If that is the case, and paragraph 5.12
states that around three per cent were generated by your Agency,
the CPS, if you join these two statistics together you could perhaps
say that 23,000 cases were avoidably adjourned by the CPS. Is
that in fact the case?
(Dame Barbara Mills) I do not know.
I am always very dubious about who allocates to whom whose responsibility
it was for an adjournment. I actually thought our figures were
quite low to be candid. The real question is how do we get rid
of these adjournments altogether. This is the working together.
I think that we will probably get rid of a number of adjournments
if we go down the Narey line and we have cases being dealt with
the next day because obviously there will not be the opportunity
for adjournments. Again, it is a whole mass of reasons. It is
things like, and indeed you see it in the diagram here, no-one
knows how to allocate it, "we have not got the papers in
on time from the police, therefore we have to ask for an adjournment".
Whose fault is the adjournment? As it is given on the diagram
here it shows either or both of us. I think the thing you have
got to do is just focus on how does the whole system get to work
better together. There are lots of adjournments because Legal
Aid has not been granted to defendants, lots of adjournments because
witnesses have not been warned or they do not show or whatever.
There are stacks of reasons. Having been round the courts loads
and loads of times when I get there I think "How could this
have happened? Why has this case got to be adjourned, surely this
could have been sorted out better beforehand?" I think we
have got to have much better communications which is why I come
back to my computerisation right through the system which will
help a great deal. E-mail is helping at the moment. We have got
some e-mails going with the courts, the police and so on, and
that is helping.
25. Can I just ask you about one other matter
that seems to clog up the criminal justice system. Of the cases
that go to the Crown Court one of the tables mentions that 77
per cent of people plead guilty. Is there any mechanism that you
have suggested to the Government to restrict the number of those
cases going to Crown Court that could legitimately be summarily
dismissed in the magistrates' court?
(Dame Barbara Mills) Yes. I have
been fairly unpopular over the years with certain people by saying
that I personally thought in a lot of the cases which are called
"either way" the defendant should not have the final
right of election because it seems to me that we are talking about
spending public funds, both on the prosecution and on the defence,
and there are certain types of cases-stealing a packet of bacon,
I know it is an allegation of dishonesty but there are certain
ones of dishonesty which work in the magistrates' courts anyhow-why
are we having these in the Crown Court? That is one point. One
thing that is happening at the moment is the question of plea
before venue. That is a new institution, we do not know how well
it is working at the moment but we will get a report in a few
months. There what happens is the defendant on these either ways
has to indicate if he is going to plead guilty or not guilty before
he decides where he is being tried. That is helping on that one.
Another Government initiative, previous Government initiative,
is that in fact there is almost what I might term the sticks and
carrots, the earlier you indicate a plea of guilty or plead guilty
the more discount there is off the sentence. There are some arguments
saying that this is unfair --
26. Plea bargaining.
(Dame Barbara Mills) --because what
you are doing is you are forcing people to plead when they might
actually not want to but they dare not plead not guilty. In a
sense that is a past argument. A lot of things are being done.
Although at the same time the types of case that we are getting
are heavier, weightier and more difficult, more cases are going
to be kept in the magistrates' court which I think is the right
way to do it.
Mr Leslie
27. Dame Barbara, just looking at some of
the cases that have come to me as a new Member of Parliament recently
and also reading through the report and looking at the CPS, I
sometimes wonder whether you operate on a different planet actually
on your own in isolation. A lot of people regard your organisation
as highly bureaucratic and absolutely subject to inertia and immovable,
it does not look at what is going on in the outside world. First
of all with regard to liaising with victims, there is the allegation
that you do not take victims seriously enough, that victims of
crime after they hear from the police, because they only hear
things third hand through the police, they really do not know
what progress is being made about prosecution of their case and
only really know at the last minute how things are going. How
are you going to improve that pretty atrocious situation?
(Dame Barbara Mills) First of all,
can I just make this clear: I am sorry if we are viewed as being
bureaucratic. We have got a very important role to play in the
criminal justice system of independence from everyone and making
decisions in accordance with the code on the two-code criteria,
which I am sure you know about. As far as victims and witnesses
are concerned, if you had said that ten years ago I would have
said yes. I have said this time and time again, the victims were
the forgotten people in a system that should have been there to
look after them. I think that what then happened, if I can just
come up with a little bit of background, was quite a lot was done
on what I call the nuts and bolts, telling victims where the court
is, basic things like that, how close is the nearest station,
all this sort of stuff. That has got much, much better. Victim
Support has done a fantastic job over the years. You must remember
that the role we have allocated to us is not to have direct contact
with the victims. You may well say that is wrong, I quite understand
that as an argument, but our situation as it is presently set
up, and this is being looked at by Sir Iain Glidewell as well,
is that we inform the police as to what has happened, why decisions
have been taken-you have seen it in the discontinuance figures-and
it is their responsibility to inform the victims. You may say
that is too long a chain, and there is a strong argument for that,
but that is the way it is set up at the moment, that is the way
we are funded. There are exceptions to this. For example, if there
is a case involving a death then we will always see the victims,
always see anyone who wants to come and see us. The second thing
that is going on at the moment, which I think is very important,
is a project called the One-Stop Shop. I do not know if it exasperates
you but it certainly exasperates me if I am pushed from pillar
to post when I am trying to find out an answer to what seems to
me to be a fairly simple question, like "when is my case
coming up?" What we are doing is piloting with the police
the One-Stop Shop so that all the information feeds into them
and you have only got to ring one person. One of the many things
we are doing on victims, which I think is tremendously important,
is this: when victims come to court if they have been injured,
the physical injury will be dealt with quite well by the court,
they will have a report that a broken leg is mended, but what
they do not have at the moment is the impact on the person. We
are now piloting, and I do not know how well it will work, we
always pilot things to make sure they do work before we put them
in place, what an impact statement will do. So the lady who is
out late at night, she is mugged, not physically injured but never
feels she can go out again, that is the sort of thing we are bringing
to the fore. I think that is very important.
28. I am glad to hear that some progress
is going to be made on that because for the victim of a crime,
often they feel as though their case is being pursued as a matter
of Chinese whispers.
(Dame Barbara Mills) I agree.
29. Certain things get passed up the chain
and then get passed back down and often the victims of the crime
are the most knowledgeable about what happened in that case itself.
I hope that there will be more liaison with the victim.
(Dame Barbara Mills) Absolutely.
Can I --
30. In terms of the next point, which is
liaison with the police themselves in the case, because that is
another area of criticism, should you not really have more dedicated
liaison officers visiting the police officers themselves to discuss
the cases before they actually reach the court? I am very worried
that things get dished out the day that cases are turning up for
court without sufficient liaison with the police officers and
the officers in charge.
(Dame Barbara Mills) Can I go back
to Mr Clifton-Brown and his asking me about the question of team
working. One of the things about team working is that in our own
branches we have stopped the dishing out of cases because I absolutely
agree with you. What we have is we have teams who are allied to
police teams, so everyone knows who is working with everyone,
which works much better and there should not be that pushing around.
Secondly, as far as the police are concerned, we have been again
piloting, and I am sorry it sounds like we are piloting just about
everything, but I am because I am determined to improve things,
we are piloting having our lawyers in police stations, and that
is referred to in this report, so we can give advice at the earliest
possible stage. That will, on the one hand, help if a case needs
some bolstering really early on because often if you need some
more evidence, you can get it in the first two or three days and
after that it is gone, but it will also stop some of the cases
which have to be discontinued later. The problem is that it is
very intensive of our lawyers' time and so for every lawyer we
put into the police station to do that, we have got to get either
another lawyer or an agent to go around the magistrates' courts,
so I absolutely agree with you, I would love to have some more
people, but that means more money and I am not going to get more
money, so this is the problem that we are facing. If, after Sir
Iain Glidewell reports and the Narey recommendations are put into
place, it turns out that some of the responsibilities are shifted
our way, which they may do, we will have to have some resources
to go with them because this is very time-intensive work and I
am sure you realise that in your surgeries.
31. The whole system does look very inadequate
to me and quite threadbare, to be honest. A lot of the actual
consultation and liaison with the victims is done by the police
themselves and a lot of times I have been speaking to some of
my local police to try and discover their feelings on the ground
and they say that they have no case and the charges are dropped
without consulting the officer in charge and so on. I have been
told of occasions when quite frequently police officers are told
to turn up at the court, for example, and present themselves because
their name is actually on the file and then they are told when
they get there that they were not actually needed in the first
place and that wastes a lot of their time and effort. It just
seems to be a very inefficient system.
(Dame Barbara Mills) I would agree
with you about that and that is why we are trying to get it to
work as a smoother pipeline. Can I just deal with two of the three
points that you have picked up? First of all, on the question
of police officers coming to court and wasting time, I absolutely
agree with you there, there are some dreadful statistics on this,
but the problem is that if the defence say they want them, we
have got to get them there. If when they get there the defence
say, "Well, actually, after all, having questioned so and
so, we do not need you", off they go again and that is a
terrible waste of time.
32. So you are only bringing them in when
the defence requests them?
(Dame Barbara Mills) We only bring
them in when they are essential to the case or the defence requests
it and will not accept their evidence being given from a written
statement. It is a very oral tradition still. The other point
about discontinuance, I am sure you have seen the figures, but
I can only speak nationally and I cannot speak for your particular
areas, but the situation there is that we have consulted in 74
per cent of the cases. We are always in a time-bind here between,
on the one hand, if we are going to discontinue, not just discontinue
too late because this is one of the issues which was picked up
by the previous report and we have now actually changed the time-frame,
but, on the other hand, giving proper time for consultation and
it really is a bit of a cleft stick that we are in there.
33. Is your team working philosophy likely
to extend to the way in which you deal with cases on the day when
they get to court because again there is this impression that
they are dished out on a daily basis? For example, are barristers
going to continue to be tasked on the morning that they turn up
in court?
(Dame Barbara Mills) Which courts
are we talking about-magistrates' courts or Crown Courts? Which
are we talking about because there is a big difference?
34. The Crown Courts for the moment.
(Dame Barbara Mills)
35. The Crown Court, you are absolutely
right about the police officers. We are much more in the hands
of the defence there. Are we going to dish briefs out to barristers
the night before? Not if I can avoid it. It was the issue I was
dealing with with your Chairman before. The problem is that while
we are getting a 75 per cent or thereabouts return rate from the
Bar, they are going to be dished out the night before even though
I do not like it at all, and that is why we are putting in this
quite tough monitoring which is a big change of attitude for the
Bar to accept that this even needs looking at, and not only needs
looking at, but they will produce the figures because we cannot
produce the figures and the reasons, so I am very much hopeful
that we will not because I agree with you. May I say though that
members of the Bar do not like it very much either. It is not
much fun if you are a barrister to be told at six o'clock in the
evening that you are doing this case tomorrow, so it is an inefficient
system altogether. The argument on listing is, well, if we do
not get the court sitting all the time, we are going to have worse
backlogs, so you can see the sort of competing difficulties that
there are.
36. I am glad you see that there is a major
problem there, but tell me also about the speed and the way in
which you prepare and present your cases in terms of the average
time. From an offence to completion in the magistrates' court,
for example, averages 20 weeks. What measures are you going to
take to reduce this to the 13-week guideline issued by this Trials
Issues Group?
(Dame Barbara Mills) I cannot do
it all on my own and when I say "I cannot", I mean the
CPS cannot do it all on their own. I am sorry if I sound a bit
repetitive about this. If we do not get the papers in on time,
in good shape, we cannot serve them on the defence which builds
in a delay there because they should have advance information
on virtually all these sorts of cases, then the defendant has
not got legal aid and so on and so on, it is down the line, it
is a train. What we have got to do is to work with the others
to make sure that every part of this works more efficiently. Then
you will get your cuts in the time it takes, plus if there is
going to be a completely different approach where people are going
to be put in court the next day, it is going to be quite a shock
to the system, and a good shock, in my view.
37. There are other concerns about the speed
of the processing of cases as well, but I wonder sometimes, and
also the local police inform me that they have got concerns, about
the bureaucracy involved in the CPS. Why do you still use your
own CPS reference numbers and have not moved to this unique reference
numbering-I think the Inter-Agency Efficiency Scrutiny Team were
asking that-when you look at better co-operating between the police
and the CPS? Why do you not start co-ordinating your paperwork
and instead of having paperwork, as you say, ripped up --
(Dame Barbara Mills) I am sorry,
but that is a different point altogether.
38. Well, it just gives the impression of
a lack of organisation. Why do you not start using the same code
numbers for a start?
(Dame Barbara Mills) I think the
answer is that we all use the same code numbers right the way
through the system. If you have a computer, that is what you do.
When I was running the Serious Fraud Office, that is exactly what
we did. We had a computer back-up, we had unique numbers for each
sheet of paper and it was very simple. Do not forget, at the moment
the police cannot speak to us in most cases either, it is a two-
way traffic, because the difficulty is that because of the slowness
over the years of developing a computer system to run right the
way through, everyone has got fed up and devised their own ones.
39. So you will be moving to this unique
referencing?
(Dame Barbara Mills) Yes, of course.
It will be the obvious thing. We just get the name of the defendant,
his address, his age, his previous convictions and the other things
that we need which will be transferred straight through. It is
a very obvious way to run the system.
7 Note: The figure should, in fact, be 5.10. Back
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