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Crown Prosecution Service
12.30 pm
Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con) (urgent question): To ask the Home Secretary if he will make a statement on his role in relation to the Crown Prosecution Service and on its renaming to delete reference to the Crown.
The Solicitor-General (Ms Harriet Harman): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall answer this question.
As Minister responsible for the Crown Prosecution Service, the Attorney-General has initiated and is leading a substantial programme of development and reform of the CPS. The Home Secretary fully supports that programme, particularly the closer working between the CPS and the police that it involves. Some months ago, the Attorney-General first raised the question of whether, to reflect that programme of change and reform, the name of the Crown Prosecution Service should be changed. Further discussions are under way. The Attorney-General is making a statement on that in another place this afternoon.
Mr. Grieve: I thank the Solicitor-General for that extremely brief statement, but frankly, I am sorry to see her at the Dispatch Box. The question was specifically put to the Home Secretary, because it is what he said yesterday that requires scrutiny by, and an answer to be given to, this House. It was the Home Secretary who made the comment on the Crown Prosecution Service. In the same speech, he referred to ensuring that magistrates and district judges hold public meetings to be influenced in their decisions as judges.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Blunkett) indicated assent.
Mr. Grieve: I note that the Home Secretary nods with approval.
Will the Solicitor-General confirm that neither matter to which I have referred is the Home Secretary's departmental responsibility? Or are we to understand, from yesterday's comments, that there has in fact been a substantial change of policy on this matter? Were the Home Secretary's remarks approved by the Attorney-General and, for that matter—in relation to the judiciary—by the Lord Chancellor prior to being made?
Does the Solicitor-General agree with me that the Home Secretary and the Home Office should have no departmental role in the operation of the Crown Prosecution Service or the judiciary because of the risk of political interference? Is it not for the Attorney-General, through his oversight, to protect the independence of the CPS and for the Lord Chancellor to do so in relation to the judiciary? If so, what are the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General doing about that, in relation to what they have said to the Home Secretary on this matter?
What is the background to the proposal on the CPS? The principle in this country is that the Crown is the font of all justice, independent of politics. Prosecutions are brought in the name of the Crown precisely to emphasise that point. A prosecutor, as I well remember, is reminded at the outset that his role is not partisan, but
is that of a minister of justice. How does that square with the Home Secretary's comments that he wants the prosecutors to be on the side of the public? The Solicitor-General might have no difficulty agreeing with me that the public interest and the interest of a neighbourhood might not be one and the same.Why has there been neither an announcement nor any consultation whatever with Parliament on the proposals? Why was the Queen not informed of what the Government have proposed on such an important change?
We learn today that, in response, the Government's spokesman to the Lobby gave the impression that the Government were now retreating on their proposal on the Crown Prosecution Service, emphasising that it was only an idea at the earliest stages of consultation. Will the Solicitor-General please tell the House who is right: the Home Secretary in his utterances yesterday or the Government's spokesman this morning? The House is entitled to know how the matter stands.
The diminution of the role of the Crown is all of a piece with other Government proposals relating to the Prison Service, where officers who derive from the Crown their power to detain are going to lose their—
Mr. Blunkett: No they are not. The hon. Gentleman should not read the Express.
Mr. Grieve: The Home Secretary intervenes from a sedentary position. If he were answering this question—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. The Home Secretary will have to be quiet. The shadow Solicitor-General is asking a question.
Mr. Grieve: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry that the Home Secretary has not taken the opportunity to answer this question. We shall not have the benefit of his words.
Does the Solicitor-General agree that the problem with all these proposals is that they risk undermining the independence of the judicial system and the administration of justice? They will also undermine the Crown in its central role of ensuring the non-politicisation of the system of justice and, in the process, they will undermine our freedoms. Is it not significant that these comments come at a time when the Home Secretary is seeking vastly to extend his powers into the judicial system by a number of means? They include the removal of judicial scrutiny of asylum cases and the substitution of an administrative system, the desire that judges should conform to his ideas, and the removal of the ability of the Lords of Appeal and the Lord Chief Justice to speak in Parliament. Is it not the case that what is now happening—
Mr. Grieve: I am asking a question.
Mr. Speaker: I know that the hon. Gentleman is asking a question, and I am listening. What I am trying to say is that the question is too long—[Interruption.] Order. An urgent question should be an extension of
Question Time. The hon. Gentleman is putting such a long series of questions that I must now stop him. I call the Solicitor-General.
The Solicitor-General: I have sought to answer this question because the hon. Gentleman asked about the Crown Prosecution Service. I therefore thought that it would be helpful to him and to the House for me to answer it, as the Attorney-General is responsible for superintending the Crown Prosecution Service. That is why I am here at the Dispatch Box.
I should like to make it clear that there is no risk of politicisation of the Crown Prosecution Service. I would say to the hon. Gentleman that he is no more committed than the Attorney-General or me to the independence of the Crown Prosecution Service or to its carrying out its work in the public interest according to the code of Crown prosecutors. We stand by that and defend it, as the hon. Gentleman would expect us to. I think he knows that. The question then is whether it is right for Ministers responsible for the police to work together with Ministers responsible for the Crown Prosecution Service, and for them in turn to work together with the Ministers responsible for the courts. Of course it makes sense for there to be a partnership. We have argued, as has the hon. Gentleman, for good partnership at local level between the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts, in the public interest and the interest of justice. The hon. Gentleman has been a supporter of that principle, which I welcome.
It is right, too, that this principle should be embodied at area level, through the local criminal justice boards, which we have often discussed in the House. That involves a partnership between chief constables, chief Crown prosecutors and those responsible for the magistrates courts and Crown courts. That, too, is part of the partnership in the public interest and the interest of justice. Of course, people have their own independent responsibilities within that. Nothing changes that, but it is right that they should work in partnership. Just as we are asking people to work in partnership at local and area level, so it must be right that the Ministers responsible for those different agencies work together. That is what has happened.
The hon. Gentleman made a great many other points. He asked why the Home Secretary said what he did. The answer is that he was asked a question. If the Home Secretary is asked a question, it is right that he should answer it. I would point out—[Interruption.] He was asked a question when he was engaged in a consultation. He was making a wide-ranging speech and he was asked a question that relates to an issue on which the Attorney-General has the lead. He was quite right to answer; it would have been very odd if he had not done so, so he answered.
Conservative Members are in danger of getting ahead of themselves, so perhaps I might remind them that there has been discussion of this matter for some time. There is a broad-ranging programme of reform, with which the House has been involved, such as proposals for the criminal justice system under which the Crown Prosecution Service should take over from the police the responsibility of charging. That involves prosecutors working with the police in police stations. That was in the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
The House was involved in discussing that as well as in discussing the opportunity for prosecutors to be able to appeal against terminal rulings. [Interruption.] Conservative Members wonder why I am raising these points, but I am trying to explain that those are the building blocks of a programme of improvement and change in the Crown Prosecution Service that will make it a self-confident prosecutor in the public interest in all areas. [Hon. Members: "Make a statement about it."] Conservative Members say that we should make a statement, but this has been discussed at Solicitor-General's questions. Such issues have been discussed in Committee and in the House.
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