Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
297-299)
KEIR STARMER
QC AND PETER
LEWIS
24 FEBRUARY 2009
Q297 Chairman: Mr Starmer and Mr Lewis,
welcome. Welcome particularly, Mr Starmer, in your new post. We
welcome you to that and wish you well in it. We enjoyed more than
one exchange with your predecessor and we look forward to the
same with you. If you would like just to start by giving in a
nutshell your view of the constitutional role of the prosecutor
and the purpose of the prosecutor within the criminal justice
system.
Keir Starmer: The constitutional
role of the prosecutor is much more sophisticated now than it
was several years ago. I think it has fundamentally changed and
I think this is a good time to articulate that change because
when the CPS was first set up it was envisaged that it would occupy
a space between an investigation by the police and proceedings
in court. It would take the charge from the police and the evidence
from the police, process it and parcel it out to the self-employed
Bar in most instances for the serious cases for prosecution. It
has now changed. It occupies the same sort of space but it is
a much more sophisticated exercise of function because it is involved
pre-charge in giving advice at the investigative stage in serious
cases. It now charges in all the serious cases, considers diversion
if that is appropriate, prepares cases in a completely different
and more sophisticated way and now prosecutes in many instances
its own cases in court. So it still sits in that space but it
is a much expanded, much more sophisticated role.
Q298 Chairman: Baroness Scotland's
foreword to your strategy and business plan talks about the CPS's
role in reducing re-offending. Given the description you have
just given about the constitutional position, how do you think
the prosecutor can contribute to reducing re-offending?
Keir Starmer: I do think it is
an essential function of the prosecutor to tackle crime and re-offending.
That can be done in a number of ways, first and foremost by engaging
with the communities the Prosecution serves. The Prosecution obviously
exercises public functions on behalf of the public and in order
to inform itself about the decisions it makes it needs to squarely
face that public and engage with communities. That will involve
working on crime reduction in a number of different ways, as it
were, in a general sense. There is then obviously the gateway
function when an individual crime is identified and detected and
at that point crime reduction enters the equation when the decision
is made whether to charge or not charge, when the public interest
is taken into account, and when things like diversion are considered.
Chairman: I am going to come back to
some of those issues shortly, but I am going to ask Mr Tyrie to
continue questioning.
Q299 Mr Tyrie: Do you have a rough
idea, Mr Lewis, how many agencies have prosecuting powers in the
UK?
Peter Lewis: Yes. It would be
something like about 20. There are the main prosecutors you will
be familiar with, RCPO, SFO, other government departments have
prosecution functions, local authorities have prosecution functions
as well and there is the odd organisation like the RSPCA which
can launch prosecutions. It is quite a broad category.
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