Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 179)
23 JANUARY 1998
DAME BARBARA
MILLS, QC, and MR
F MARTIN
160. So you would say that the £35,000
per year that it costs for each one that has been set up has been
good value?
(Dame Barbara Mills) Absolutely.
The figure which you may not have got because it is not in the
report for each discontinued case on average-you have got to average
this-is £48 per discontinued case. It has got to be good
value for money. That is to us, that is not to anyone else.
161. Going back to the point that Mr Hope
raised earlier, do you feel that the guidelines on time constraints
on files being delivered and the quality have improved sufficiently
to justify that or do you feel that the experience shows that
you need to develop the management initiative in a certain way?
(Dame Barbara Mills) I am always
open to new suggestions. At the moment I cannot see a better method
of getting police files in on time and of better quality than
working jointly with the police to encourage, to see where the
difficulties are, to chat about the specific types of cases. I
am sorry to keep repeating this but I have no power of direction.
I cannot say to the police "you will get those files in in
seven days, ten days" or whatever it is, I am not able to
do that.
162. But recognising that, do you feel that
action should be taken in order to accomplish a closer working
relationship between the two organisations?
(Dame Barbara Mills) I am sorry,
could you repeat that?
163. Recognising that you have no control
over the police and vice versa, there is a need for action to
be taken in order to bring the two organisations into a closer
working relationship.
(Dame Barbara Mills) Yes, but this
is done not only through joint performance management, it is done
through the things that are now rather inelegantly called "TIGlets",
the spin-off from TIGs locally where everyone works together and
discusses all these sorts of problems. I am sorry, this is not
just governed by committee, it is actually talking about real
cases: how do we stop that sort of thing happening again. I think
that is the best way of dealing with it.
The Committee suspended from 6.00 p.m.
to 6.06 p.m. for a division in the House.
Mr Love: I hope that you will be
adding on, I make a plea for injury time!
Chairman: Injury time will depend
on the quality of the batting!
Mr Love
164. Can I move us on to the issue of fees.
You have already mentioned that your budget is being constrained
by six per cent.
(Dame Barbara Mills) Yes.
165. You have decentralised to a larger
number of offices. I wonder what action you are trying to take
on fees. I am particularly interested in the target of standard
fees being raised to 80 per cent. The report seems to cast a lot
of doubt on that. What hope have you got that you can reach that
figure?
(Dame Barbara Mills) It would be
a lot easier, and I am sorry to go back to this, if all publicly
funded fees were paid at the same sort of rate. That would make
it a great deal easier. There is fee drift, I suppose that is
the way you would describe it, rather than wage drift. This is
quite a difficult thing to deal with because on the one hand we
must have counsel who are of the appropriate calibre for the case
and, on the other hand, if we are being outbid it is quite difficult.
I think that is why it is so hard for the people who are negotiating
the fees to make sure that they keep them within the limits.
166. The reason I raise that is because
the level of standard fees in terms of each particular case is
much lower than either of the other two. Any drift away from standard
fees means an enormous increase in cost.
(Dame Barbara Mills) I do not think
we are going to get that because you see there are some countervailing
features coming in. Plea before venue should help considerably
because we just will not have so many cases going to the Crown
Court-we hope-they will be going there, if they are going at all,
on committals for sentence which is not as expensive and, of course,
dare I mention, rights of audience.
167. Can I move us on to case management
plans because in earlier responses you seemed to be very optimistic
about that.
(Dame Barbara Mills) Yes, I am.
168. But it says quite clearly in the report
that there was a perceived reluctance by barristers to use them.
You mentioned that situation is changing. Can you give us some
reassurance that the CPS will insist that those case management
plans are used? I notice that we do not have any results available
yet on that[11].
(Dame Barbara Mills) No, it is too
early.
169. Perhaps you can give us some indication
of the differences that those case management plans will make?
(Dame Barbara Mills) I would rather
come back to you on those sorts of figures a bit later, if I may,
because I just do not think we have got enough time. Are the Bar
getting used to the idea? Slowly and reluctantly, yes. Sooner
or later you have to use muscle to say "I am sorry, if you
are not interested in doing a case management plan we are not
interested in employing you on this case". That is a big
shock to the system. There has been a tremendous change of attitude.
I take the attitude that we are the biggest employers of the criminal
Bar in the widest sense. We spend £76 million on the criminal
Bar. It is extremely important that we get good value for money.
I think that for far too long, in a sense, we have paid what they
have asked for but we do not do it now. That message is getting
through and I think it should get through in other fields as well.
170. Can I press you on that. My understanding
of it, and again my legal training is minimal, is that the fees
are negotiated between the lawyer for the CPS and, of course,
the barrister's chamber.
(Dame Barbara Mills) Yes.
171. I wondered whether you felt there may
be a need or a wish for some outside involvement outside the legal
profession that may be able to stamp some authority on limiting
those fees?
(Dame Barbara Mills) I think not
because we have got most of them pretty well controlled and the
standard things are pretty well controlled and the other sorts.
The ones that we have really had to have a go at are this two
per cent that take up so much at the moment and I think we have
now got that under control. I think if we had outsiders coming
in, dare I say it, the bureaucracy would increase and so would
costs. I am not quite sure how the outsiders could come in to
help because this is very much a negotiation. The other thing
which is very important which I introduced at the Serious Fraud
Office was to have a bit of competition here. You do not just
say, "I want Mr X who is so marvellous", but you say,
"I am going to ask Mr X, Mr Y and Mr Z and see what they
are prepared to do", a very novel proposition for the Bar.
172. I understand what you say about it
is only two per cent, and yet it takes up 33 per cent of the expenditure
under that heading and, as I have worked it out, it is something
approaching 10 per cent of the whole CPS budget. It is such an
enormous area that it appears to this Committee to be unconstrained.
I think that it would give us reassurance if you could say something
about how you feel that you can in the future constrain the level
of those fees.
(Dame Barbara Mills) Well, case
management plans. I am not the only one who runs an unconstrained
budget in paying lawyers, you know, and I think it is high time
that we stopped doing this. I think it is subject to the same
economic forces as everyone else. You decide how long it is going
to take you to do the case, subject to unexpected things, it is
a bit like building a house when you get unexpected subsoil problems,
you have to be sensible about it, and then what you do is you
rigorously enforce that. There are always going to be expensive
cases, let us make no bones about that.
173. That is understood.
(Dame Barbara Mills) But what we
want to do is to make sure when we go into them that we know what
they are going to cost and that we stay with that and we do not
have drift, which you can get, or if there is going to be some
change, you know about it so you can do proper budgeting, whereas
hitherto if we had finished a case and it was a great result and
it was a very important case, we are not in a very strong position
to argue about the fees.
Maria Eagle
174. Can I just tell you that I used to
be a prosecutor myself in a previous life, but not a Crown prosecutor.
(Dame Barbara Mills) I know.
175. My experience in the magistrates' court
was in private prosecution, so I know a little about the courts
and the way in which things can go wrong and problems can occur.
I just want to ask you, first of all, whether you accept, and
I have heard your robust defence of the Service which is as one
would expect, but I wonder if you can tell me whether you accept
that there are still problems in the system as a whole in the
sense that there still are inefficiencies and delays?
(Dame Barbara Mills) Yes.
176. You do accept that?
(Dame Barbara Mills) Absolutely,
but they are not to be laid at the door exclusively of the CPS.
177. Yes, I would accept that. In fact I
would probably say that just as strongly as you would, having
had some experience of the system. I wonder whether or not you
would like to identify what you think are the main causes particularly
of delay because when most people come across the criminal justice
system, as witnesses, as defendants, this is the thing that they
complain most about that they have a lack of understanding of.
Where do you think the main problems occur?
(Dame Barbara Mills) Are we talking
about the magistrates' courts?
178. I am talking about the magistrates'
courts to start with.
(Dame Barbara Mills) I think the
main problems occur simply because people at the moment are rather
inured to the idea that it takes a while. Now, I do not see why
you should be inured to the idea that it takes a while. I think
that that then percolates through the whole of the system so that
you do not get the police giving us the material when it should
come through, very reasonably because they are worked off their
feet, they cannot get it, they cannot find the witnesses and all
these sorts of reasons. I do not call them excuses; they are reasons.
The fact is that it starts there. The other side of it is that
most defendants are eligible for legal aid and there is usually
quite a lot of delay in the granting of legal aid and I can understand
why legal aid-funded solicitors do not want to start work until
they have got a legal aid certificate and I think that is a really
sensible precaution, quite frankly. I think then, as I said, a
sort of built-in inertia in a sense has got into the system, so
you then expect that the first occasion you are called is actually
going to be an adjournment, and that is the sort of anticipation,
whereas in fact it should be exactly the other way round and you
should expect a case to be dealt with on the first remand hearing
unless there is some reason why it should not be. Now, all this
will mean that if we are going to follow the Narey recommendations,
it is all going to have to be compressed down and be much more
efficient and then down the line once a case gets stale and old,
witnesses lose interest, they do not want to come, everyone loses
interest, and in fact it then becomes worse the further down the
line you get. Then you get into the Crown Court and then you get
even bigger delays where cases do not come up for a year or something
and everyone has lost interest. Having said all that, a lot has
been done to improve it, such as with plea and directions hearings
in the magistrates' courts and so on and a tremendous amount has
been done.
179. Thank you. That is helpful. I wonder
whether or not, and I detected criticisms there of the court system
which I would share to a very, very large degree, and we have
already heard criticisms of certain aspects of the legal profession,
not only related to charging, which I wish to come back to later,
but if you are going to put your hands up and accept some fault,
as the head of the CPS, if you will accept that the CPS has some
problems, where do you think your biggest area of improvement
which would help this whole system could be?
(Dame Barbara Mills) I have already
said computerisation and I really think --
11 Note: See Evidence, Appendix 1, page 30 (PAC 203). Back
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