Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-177)
CROWN PROSECUTION
SERVICE
8 MARCH 2006
Q160 Greg Clark: Are you on track
to meet that?
Mr Foster: Yes. It is £20,
£27 and £34 million and we shall hit those targets.
Q161 Greg Clark: Are you going to
exceed them or are you going to come in at or about that?
Mr Foster: We shall certainly
hit them.
Q162 Greg Clark: What is your best
guess now? We look at these things as a Committee, and it is helpful
if you are giving evidence to know whether you are going to go
beyond that or not?
Mr Foster: We shall certainly
be looking to go beyond that if we can.
Q163 Greg Clark: Is it your expectation
that you will do better?
Mr Foster: Yes
Q164 Greg Clark: In terms of the
proportion which is cashable . . . Do you understand the distinction
between cashable and non-cashable?
Mr Foster: Yes; efficiency and
effectiveness.
Q165 Greg Clark: How would it split
in the CPS?
Mr Foster: About half of the savings
which are scored are savings which we intend to reinvest in the
business, so they will be cashable. Roughly the other half will
be effectiveness gains. May I just add a point to what Ken was
saying a moment ago which is around accountability? If you worked
in the CPS you would be under no doubt as to the extent of the
cultural change which has taken place and is being driven forward.
One of the biggest changes we are making is that we are expecting
all of our staff and particularly the lawyers not just to account
upwards to Ken and I—and I have performance reviews with
all of the CCPs on a regular basis—but also to account outwards.
Getting our lawyers to understand that is a very big shift indeed.
Whatever the outcome of a case, win, lose, draw, attrition, whatever
it is, we now expect them to account publicly to the victims,
to the community, whatever, for what they have done. That is an
enormous shift and that is changing behaviour very radically indeed.
Q166 Mr Mitchell: First of all I
want to observe, in this argument about whether you should have
VCR, VHS or DVD equipment, that I can get you the very latest
equipment for about £20 in a pub in Grimsby, if you are interested.
We can talk about it afterwards. The questions are these. You
mentioned cases where the defendant suddenly pleads guilty on
the day. Is there research to tell us why that happens? Is it
that he sees that you produce a witness he had not expected? Is
it that CPS actually gets there with the case and they thought
they might mess it up and not appear? What do we know about why
these sudden pleas of guilty come?
Mr Macdonald: There is no research
that I am aware of. We cannot ask defendants. It will certainly
be those.
Q167 Mr Mitchell: What is your impression?
Mr Macdonald: It is both of those.
It is hope for the best, that the case might collapse, which would
be encouraged if they do regularly or hope that the witnesses
do not turn up, which would be encouraged if they regularly do
not. There is another issue which is that if people are in custody,
when they plead guilty they lose their remand privileges and they
are convicted prisoners, so they do not get their visits and so
on and so forth. If you are in custody on a not-guilty plea, you
are serving your sentence but you have remand privileges. I have
long thought that something ought to be done about that because
if people who plead guilty were able to keep their remand privileges
until the date they were actually sentenced, we might encourage
earlier pleas. We have been round the houses on that one repeatedly
and I do not know of any proposals to make that change.
Q168 Mr Mitchell: The other point
was that from the figures 28% of pre-trial hearings are delayed.
The prosecution only causes about 21% of these, but 60% of these
are produced by the defence presumably using the kind of manoeuvres
our Chairman illustrated. Your act is getting better and we can
expect it to get better still, so that proportion can be reduced
and it is subject to improvement. Are we just to assume that the
defence's proportion will remain as high, that nothing can be
done about that? What could be done about that?
Mr Macdonald: If we get better
at keeping our cases on the road so that we do it more than nine
times out of ten and if we are better at discounts for pleas of
guilty reducing the closer you get to trial, that will encourage
people to plead guilty earlier. There is another very important
component here that we have not mentioned, and Lord Carter has
been looking at this, and that is the fee structure. If you have
a fee structure which encourages early pleas, that could change
behaviour. They have done this in Scotland, where they have a
fixed fee for a magistrates' court case, whether it is a trial
or a guilty plea. I am not suggesting for one moment that lawyers
delay pleas for financial reasons—I really am not suggesting
that—but it is noticeable in Scotland that when they introduced
this reform, the number of early guilty pleas increased quite
dramatically. Lord Carter is looking at this, but we shall see.
Legal aid fees generally do not encourage early preparation and
early resolution of issues and we ought to have a structure which
does both of those things.
Q169 Mr Mitchell: Work is going on
to reduce that proportion as well as the work that you have been
telling us about today.
Mr Macdonald: As we improve, that
proportion should reduce. New fee structures would help. Finally,
as I said earlier and the Chairman was implying this, the defendant
does not want to be there and often he has no interest in seeing
the system works smoothly. This is not like selling something
or manufacturing something: this is an essential party to the
engagement who does not want to be there and does not want to
help it run smoothly. That is always going to be a feature of
adversarial trial and it is just something we have to live with
I am afraid. We cannot force defendants to do things; that would
not be consistent with due process and we should not want to do
it.
Chairman: That is a very interesting
comment about the fee structure. As you mentioned it in the testimony
we might return to it in our Report.
Q170 Mr Khan: Is not one of the common
complaints made by defence lawyers as the reason for requesting
adjournments, the inability or failure of the CPS to provide disclosure?
Mr Macdonald: Yes; disclosure.
Q171 Mr Khan: Is it not open to magistrates'
court to refuse requests for adjournments if they are unreasonable?
Mr Macdonald: Yes.
Q172 Mr Khan: Thirdly, is there any
incentive for the CPS to make changes to reduce, for example,
the £173 million that is wasted by delay and aborted trials
similar to defence lawyers being incentivised by Lord Carter's
proposals?
Mr Macdonald: We get a sum from
the Treasury which we have to manage within. We do not have a
fee structure because our people, apart from the agents we use,
are employed by us. We just have to get the processes right. Change
in the fee structure would not have any effect on us because this
is the structure of fees for defence lawyers.
Q173 Mr Khan: Maybe you could reduce
your budget next year if you do what you are doing to defence
lawyers.
Mr Macdonald: That is a very controversial
proposal.
Mr Khan: It is something we can look
into when we look at Lord Carter's proposals; now we have your
testimony we can look at it.
Q174 Chairman: I am a great enthusiast
for stipendiary magistrates, who I think are far quicker, particularly
in the city areas. I have always wondered why we could not have
one-stop shops: if you are a small-time defendant, you could be
arrested, brought in, plead guilty and be dealt with immediately
by 24-hour courts. If you are not, you are actually remanded not
for days or weeks, but dealt with by an in-house lawyer, defended,
prosecuted within hours. If you get fined, you can produce the
money straightaway; if not, seven days in prison, whatever you
like. Why do we not move down this route in the inner city areas
of more "stipes", more full-time courts?
Mr Macdonald: I do not want to
get into trouble with the magistracy. What you are suggesting
has obvious merits and it sounds quite rational.
Mr Foster: It is interesting just
to note that in some places, like Kent for example or Surrey,
there are no DJs and in other places of a similar size there might
be four or five.
Q175 Chairman: Why is that?
Mr Foster: I do not know.
Q176 Chairman: Good answer. We do
not often get that answer. Mr Bacon has passed me a note. "I
hope you will congratulate Mr Macdonald on being one of the best,
clearest and frankest witnesses we have had in a long time".
Mr Macdonald: Thank you very much.
He is only saying that because I live in Norfolk.
Q177 Chairman: I suppose it shows
that if you want to have a good witness, hire a good lawyer, does
it not? Seriously Sir John, we might pass, or you might with your
contacts with permanent secretaries, this testimony around Whitehall.
It does no harm for permanent secretaries to be honest with us
and frank and not view this as just a device to try to say as
little as possible, but try to exchange useful information, do
you not agree?
Sir John Bourn: I do and I agree
entirely with the way in which Mr Macdonald responded to the Report
that we had done with great care. It had been designed to put
forward proposals for improvement and I was encouraged by the
way in which he and his colleagues had recognised the contribution
that we had made. So I take your point and shall discuss it further.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Having
said that, in this Committee we cannot finish on a happy note.
The fact is that £24 million is wasted thanks to poor case
management and, as my colleague Mr Clark said, the innocent suffer
and the guilty get away scot-free, so we expect you to do better.
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