Examination of witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
TUESDAY 11 APRIL 2000
SIR FREDERICK
CRAWFORD and MRS
GLENYS STACEY
Chairman: Good morning, Sir Frederick, Mrs Stacey,
ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our hearing. You know that we
take a special interest (not just because of the West Midlands
representation on this Committee, I hasten to add,) in the work
of your Commission which is extremely important. We are very pleased
to see you here. Mr Linton will open the bowling.
Mr Linton
1. Sir Frederick, we seem to be your lucky charm.
Last year you received your funding for an extra 12 case review
managers in the week before the Home Secretary appeared here,
and this year you seem to have received funding for 50 a couple
of weeks before this session. I hope we have had something to
do with it but I cannot guarantee that.
(Sir Frederick Crawford) We would certainly like to
appear more often.
2. Can we start with your memorandum on the
number of case review managers? They have now set 50 for the current
financial year. Did you read it as a guarantee or an assumption
that you would then progress to 55 and 60 in the next two years?
(Sir Frederick Crawford) We have got to await the
outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review to know what is going
to happen between 2001 and 2004. The 50 I think we can count on
comfortably but we have simply been told that it is without prejudice
to the 55 or 60 scenarios that we put in our original bid. So,
some time during this calendar year, I imagine we will get round
to that. We will know more about the 55 or 60.
3. It would be very helpful to the Committee
if you could give us an estimate of how long it will take with
this increase in number of case review managers to eradicate the
current backlog.
(Sir Frederick Crawford) Would you mind if I referred
to the table that is in the memorandum? That was designed to make
a forward estimate of how much case work we had to do to eliminate
the cases that are already in the Commission, plus a reasonable
assumption about the cases that might come in next year. Can I
ask you to look on that far right hand column, and I have given
you the updated figure now for the year-end, 31 March, this morning,
so if we both work off the same sheet it would help.
Chairman
4. Is this table 3.1?
(Sir Frederick Crawford) That is right.
5. Can you help with the wiring diagram there?
(Sir Frederick Crawford) We will do that as well.
The 31 March on the right hand side: there are two columns there,
the caseworker effort required, the number of cases to be taken
care of, and the number of working days that are needed. If you
look at Stage 1, this year at Stage 1 we have done 956 cases in
250 days, and all we have got outstanding is eight days' work
represented by 33 cases, 20 in the tray waiting to be looked at,
and half of 25, as we count them as being half-finished if they
are already under review. Stage 1 is completely under control.
We are starting off with only eight days' worth of work at Stage
1, and if we make a reasonable assumption about the 750 cases
coming in (and we can come back to why I suggest that as a good
number) for that little team that operates on Stage 1 it is only
196 days' work so they will comfortably cover everything at Stage
1. They will be able to check the eligibility of every case that
comes to us next year without any extra effort. This year we have
made a process modification and we now have what we have called
the Stage 2 Screen. You know about that but under a different
title. We have used two or three names and it has evolved, but
it is not quite the same. Now we screen cases and if they take
only a modest amount of caseworker time, five days or less, we
do them straight away. If not, they go on to Stage 2. We have
been very successful this year. We have managed to do 749 of those
cases and we did not start the Screen until May so that has been
done in 231 working days. Unfortunately, however, as you will
see on the extreme left, we have got 742 waiting that have not
even started yet. What that translates to effectively is that
we have got 274 days of work to get rid of at the Screen. It is
a small team and we will possibly increase it slightly, so the
chances are that we can get rid of most of that accumulation but
during the year we will have another 159 days of work. One of
our intentions is to try and get the Stage 2 Screen completely
under control in 2000-01 and that will mean a small increase in
a small team. Where the real problems lie is at Stage 2 because
that is where cases on average probably take 30-35 days per case.
There we are looking at something like 606 cases in the system
which will reach Stage 2, and that is 664 days of work. 664 days
of work is two and a half years. In other words, if all the people
that we have got at the moment working at Stage 2 work on those
before they touch any new cases, they have two and a half years'
work to do. If we add another 750 cases, that will take them about
202 days, so we have got 866 days. That is where the new people
will come in. If we increase that team by, say, 50 per cent, you
will get another 125 days of work. That would mean having 50 case
review managers, and 125 will draw down 866 in about five years.
If you had 60 tomorrow you have got three to five years to remove
that and catch up with Stage 2. That is where the projections
come from. We have got a smaller intake this year but the accumulation
still represents an enormous amount of work, two and a half years
waiting in the tray, another year's intake, and to draw it down
with 50 will probably knock out a hundred days a year. If you
go to 60 you will knock out another 100, so three to five years.
6. I must admit I am not a mathematician or
a scientist like you and I have difficulty following this flow
chart. If I could ask the question in a different way, the extra
case review managers you now have compared with this time last
year, 40 as opposed to about 28, I hoped that I would be able
to see in the figures the effect that that increase in case review
managers has had.
(Sir Frederick Crawford) Let me do it in a slightly
easier way. At the moment at Stage 2 we have got nearly 30 case
workers and they have managed to get rid of 228 cases in a year.
If you had 40, 10 more, then you would move another 50 to 60 cases,
plus any improvements in efficiency. If you had got 60 you would
move 120 cases, so that is how it comes in, and you are starting
with a backlog of 606.
7. I am looking at the large table in your appendix
that you sent to us which shows the total number of cases in trays.
The tray has been the main way to measure backlog in the past
and it is certainly one that I can visualise, especially the Stage
2 tray piled up with pending cases. According to this table, the
number of cases in trays, if I read it aright, was somewhere between
a thousand and 1,100 continuously from round about the middle
of 1998 until the end of 1999. What I do not quite understand
is, if the number of case managers has increased substantially
during this period, why we have not seen a more rapid reduction
in the number of cases in the trays.
(Sir Frederick Crawford) It is rather unfortunate
that I had to prepare all those tables for 29 February. There
has been quite an improvement since then. We have finished quite
a lot of cases in the last month. In fact, at 31 March last year
there were 1,176 cases in trays. We have reduced that by 275 this
year and at the close of play on the 31 March it was 902. We have
reduced those in trays by 275 roughly. Those that we are working
on have gone up somewhat from 440 to 480, but the big thing is
the completions. In the first two years we completed 805 cases.
We have produced 1,009 completions this year.
8. I appreciate that but for me the acid test
is what month's applications are we now referring to case review
managers?
(Sir Frederick Crawford) The case review managers
today would be 36. We have not quite got the 40; we were up to
37 and we dropped back. During the year they have probably increased
by about eight or nine. Thirteen have come and five have gone.
9. As I understand it the backlog meant that
people who applied in 1997 were only now being referred to case
review managers.
(Sir Frederick Crawford) There are two sorts of cases.
There are those where people are in custody.
10. Stage 2 cases?
(Sir Frederick Crawford) Yes. There are those where
they are in custody and those where they are at liberty. Of those
where they are at liberty, at the moment there are 423. In custody
there are 459. Those in custody are waiting on average one year
for their case to be picked up.
Mr Winnick
11. Are we sure about that?
(Sir Frederick Crawford) We have reached January 1998,
but new cases that come in should not be waiting more than a year
on average.
Mr Linton
12. January 1998 is two years.
(Sir Frederick Crawford) Yes.
13. So people who are Stage 2 "in custody"
cases, who applied in January 1998, are now being allocated to
case review managers?
(Sir Frederick Crawford) That is right. We are creeping
through 1998.
14. That in itself is 26 months, is it not?
I am just trying to get a yardstick that I can understand for
how well we are doing on the backlog. Obviously, great strides
have been made but it is important for us to know exactly where
we stand now. The last time you came here you said that in order
to catch up with the backlog you would need 75 case review managers.
What you have been given is a promise of 60.
(Sir Frederick Crawford) Fifty.
15. Fifty this year and rising, we hope, to
60, but you have also had some reduction in the number of cases
coming in. Do you now accept that you can deal with the backlog
without going up to 75 case review managers?
(Sir Frederick Crawford) It all depends on how fast
you want to deal with the backlog. With 60 you can draw down the
people waiting at Stage 2, which will total 606 cases approximately,
when they have worked their way through, plus whatever comes in
next year which should be about 184 according to our thinking.
You have to do 866 days of work. Two hundred and fifty will come
from the present complement of case review managers. If you doubled
it you would get 500, so if the intake stays down at 750 the queue
is not growing now. We are just holding our own. It would have
continued to grow if we had got a thousand as last year but we
are just holding our own and beginning to reduce it very slightly
by about 50 cases a year. It will take us 13 years to reduce the
backlog if we stay with the current number. You really want to
get rid of it in about three or four years, and 60 is about right
for that, taking into account additional efficiency improvements
as time goes by.
16. So making all those assumptions, with 60
you would deal with the backlog in three or four years?
(Sir Frederick Crawford) That is right, but if we
had stayed at 1,000 intake, then the 70 that I mentioned last
time would have been necessary to cope with the intake.
17. Obviously it is dependent on the level of
intake which you cannot control, but one of the things that you
do have some control over, which featured in our report, was the
recommendation that there should be efficiency savings and also
that you should, depending on circumstances, deal with cases in
less depth in order to get greater numbers dealt with. What I
am unable to judge from your report is to what extent you have
been able to deal with more cases, not as a result of the increase
in case managers but as a result of (a) efficiency savings and
(b) where possible dealing with cases in less depth than you have
done in the past.
(Sir Frederick Crawford) Let us take the question
of depth. What we are trying to do is treat cases sufficiently
thoroughly to get a result which will stand up. What I mean by
"stand up" is that if it goes to the Court of Appeal
there is a reasonable percentage that will cause the conviction
to be quashed, that we will not be sending a lot of cases to the
Court of Appeal which will be thrown out because we did not check
them thoroughly enough. Where we are learning is how to do that
thorough job but to do it better by not following false tracks
and going off in possibly unprofitable directions. You learn that
through experience and I think we discussed that when some of
the Committee visited Birmingham. Our approach, the sorts of templates
we work to, the ways in which the case review managers interact
with Commission members, the way we tackle cases, are getting
more and more efficient, but we have not in any sense reduced
the thoroughness with which we tackle the issues. What we think
are the criteria, the performance indicators if you like, that
suggest that we are getting it right are that of the 79 cases
that we have sent to the Court of Appeal 35 have been heard and
three-quarters of those have resulted in a quashing of the verdict
or change in the sentence, and only eight of those, under 25 per
cent, have been where the convictions have been upheld. We think
we are getting that right. A second issue would be if we had not
sent cases that we ought to have sent then we would be judicially
reviewed. (We might conceivably be judicially reviewed on something
we had sent but that seems highly unlikely.) We have only had
three judicial reviews. Two of those were found in our favour
and on one we made a suggestion which settled the matter and we
are working on it at the moment. There have been 13 attempts to
have judicial review and 10 of them have been dismissed so far.
The other criterion perhaps would be whether there are a large
number of complaints from the people whose cases we are looking
at. This year, for example, we have had 34 complaints. We categorise
them according to whether they are complaints about our process
(that we have not lived up to what we said we would do); whether
they are communication problems (we have not informed people of
something or other); whether they are objecting to some decision
or step we took along the way in the review of their cases. In
fact only 13 of the objections are to do with our review process
itself. We have a two-stage process for looking at those complaints.
Only six have stood up at Stage 1 and a couple at Stage 2 of our
review process. I think nine altogether out of 34 have held up.
We are sustaining a reasonably good position on complaints, judicial
review and the judges themselves who have heard our cases have
generally made favourable comments on our behalf.
18. Precisely, Sir Frederick, very few complaints,
very few judicial reviews and a good record in the Court of Appeal.
The suggestion that has really been coming at you from the other
side, made by Gareth Pierce, is that you are too thorough and
that this is slowing the process down. The other point is, as
you know, my constituent who has been waiting 23 months in jail
without his case being referred to a case review manager. In the
end it was police evidence which got him out of jail a couple
of months before his case would have come up. Clearly we are all
trying to deal with the backlog. Are you sure that there are not
any savings that can be made in the amount of time that is spent
on each case so that cases can be reached more quickly?
(Sir Frederick Crawford) We certainly work on that
all the time. In fact Glenys might like to make a comment or two
on some of the many things we have done. We have no evidence that
we are not thorough enough.
19. Sorry: the suggestion was that you might
be too thorough.
(Sir Frederick Crawford) That is right. As I say,
I have no reason to believe we are not thorough enough or that
we are in any sense too thorough. I do not quite know what the
evidence would be. Gareth Pierce said we were "meticulous
to a fault". Those were her words. It is not unusual for
lawyers to feel that we are filing off some of the sharp angularities
of their facts, and that they look a little smoother and softer
after we have worked on them. In fact, some of them turn out not
to be facts at all and there may be even a substituted set of
totally different facts that we uncover. There is strong encouragement
from lawyers to get on with it and just submit any case that they
have sent to us to the Court of Appeal. So there is a very small
discount factor that has to be applied to that particular comment
coming from lawyers. We believe we are getting it about right
and we are getting better at doing the job simply through experience.
We have got rid of, or have dealt with in one way or another,
1,800 cases now. When I came here last year we had done about
800.
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