Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
320-339)
KEIR STARMER
QC AND PETER
LEWIS
24 FEBRUARY 2009
Q320 Chairman: How much of a system
do you have to keep you informed of any non-compliance?
Keir Starmer: Well, very often
the conditions are conditions which we have recommended in the
first place and therefore we will follow them through with the
police, who will implement the caution. But they will have come
from us and therefore we have got an interest in ensuring that
they are complied with and obviously it is our decision, if they
are not complied with, to proceed with a charge.
Q321 Chairman: Does that happen in
very many cases?
Keir Starmer: It happens in some.
I do not have the figures before me, but certainly we could try
and put them before the Committee.[3]
Q322 Chairman: We are interested in how
it compared with Magistrates' Court sentences, which have a compliance
element—a suspended sentence, for example, where it is very
open, clear and transparent where compliance has not taken place.
It may be less obvious in your Conditional Caution cases.
Keir Starmer: I accept it is done
in a different way and it is not done in open court and therefore
one does not have that degree of transparency.
Q323 Dr Whitehead: How well do you
think the CPS is doing in delivering its core business, its overall
performance and measurement of its performance, and indeed how
is the progress in delivering its core business actually measured?
Keir Starmer: If I may, I will
answer that in two ways. Since I took up office I have been visiting
each of the areas in turn. There are 42 in total and Peter and
I are visiting them all before April, so we are literally going
to each of the 42 areas to get a hands-on view of what is going
well that we should build on and where there are problems which
have got to be dealt with and how we can deliver a better quality
service. So far as performance itself is concerned, obviously
the performance reviews we undertake have got to be transparent
and they have got to inspire confidence. There are two elements.
There is the internal element. We have quarterly performance,
area performance reviews, so each area has a review and I think
you have been given some documentation relating to that which
I will take you to in just a moment. The broad scheme is that
there is a basket of key performance indicators against which
each area is rated. If there are any red ratings then at the performance
review meeting, which the Chief Executive and the DPP attend,
the area has to explain what action it is going to take to deal
with that rating. We also identify good practice, so there is
the internal aspect. Externally, of course, we have the Inspectorate
who have overall performance assessments. They have done assessments,
I think, in 2005, 2007 and they are due to do another one in 2010,
and we take the two together. So we have got our internal process
and the external process, which we would say is very robust in
identifying poor performance and dealing with it.
Q324 Dr Whitehead: On your internal
measures is the national rating that you set as an outcome the
sum total of your local ratings, or is that an entirely differently
derived measure?
Peter Lewis: May I explain, because
it is something I have had a little bit more experience of? If
I can explain the process, I hope this will answer the question.
We set the national targets at the CPS Board. We then segment
them so that we can have a rating for each target, so red, amber,
going up to green. We look at each area quarterly against each
of those targets to see where they are and if they are making
progress. We then want to know overall, because of course we are
looking at each area and we also want to see if there is a trend,
is there a particular issue overall that we are missing? So, for
example, we would look at proceeds of crime, we would look at
each area and say whether they were doing well or not, but we
would also want to know at board level overall are we getting
enough money in. So we would look down the list and say, "How
much money are we getting in at that stage?" So that may
mean you could have, looking down the issue, quite a few areas
which appear to be under-performing and we would want to tackle
that with them, but because some of our stronger areas are over-performing
and bringing in lots of money they would balance, so that we would
know, looking down this, for example, overall we are bringing
in the right sum of money but if all of our areas pull their socks
up and made some more effort we could bring in even more. So that
is how we approach it. On each area we are looking across all
of them to see if they could improve but we are also seeing if
there are bigger trends. So, for instance, if we did have a problem
on proceeds of crime, as you can see from papers we have shown
you that is something we are keeping a very close eye on at the
moment because although some of our strong areas are doing really
well, there are lots of areas that could do better.
Q325 Chairman: If you look down the
column it is sickness and prosecution costs which seem to exhibit
the most red squares?
Peter Lewis: Yes. Can I say on
the prosecution costs we rate areas, because it is budgetary,
on their predictability as well as the outcome. So say, for instance,
overall in prosecution costs we are under-spending, the areas
have actually got those ratings mostly because they are under-spending
but it is more than their profile because we want predictability.
So even though they are under-spending, we say, "You should
have made a better estimate at the beginning of the year to profile
your spending and therefore even though you are on the right side
of the equation we still think you have not done better -
Chairman: There is more than one way
of dealing with the model!
Q326 Dr Whitehead: I was observing
these dashboards—it is more like a sort of aircraft control
centre than a dashboard—and the appearance systematically
of the national rating, at the bottom of the list is not just
significantly but very substantially more rosy than appears to
be the case by the aggregation of areas. Whilst I take, of course,
what you are saying about the fact that some areas are over-performing,
in some instances some areas would have to be over-performing
very astonishingly in order to achieve the outcome at the bottom.
I cannot help thinking that either that ought to be better unpacked
or there does appear to be a rather rosier picture emerging at
the national level than is evidenced by what is happening up and
down the localities.
Peter Lewis: Can I say to begin
with this is the tool that the Director and I use to drive up
performance so it is not in our interests for it to be rosy at
all. What we want to do is identify problems and intervene because,
as you have already heard, part of our object is to drive up the
performance of the core business, but we do want an overall feel
particularly, say, on the money. Is this that we have got a real
crisis or is this about driving up the individual performance?
So we are constantly revising and looking at this, but the object
is that we spend most of our time looking at the individual areas
and this is just our overview. What the detail is, we get each
area in and we go through each of these issues, not just looking
at this rating here but we have some detailed analysis from our
people about what the performance is that lies behind it, and
also an explanation from the area on each of these detailed issues.
So our whole focus is driving up the performance of each individual
area. This is just to give us a brief picture on, say, proceeds,
whether we have got a big underlying problem. But to go back to
where I started from, it is absolutely not in our interests to
present a rosy picture, not least because we know the inspection
regime is going to look at it completely from the outside and
if we have given ourselves a false picture they will very soon
put us right.
Q327 Dr Whitehead: How within that
arrangement do you make sure that new initiatives actually do
not crown out what is longer term practice, that new work essentially
becomes embodied in a contract. I know, for example, that indeed
your sickness indicator has been replaced between two quarters
by people measures. I am not sure whether that is a new initiative
or whether that is a different way of defining an indicator.
Peter Lewis: We get reviewed quite
a lot and we have obviously got the inspection looking at us.
We have also got a capability review process and when we were
looked at by the capability review one of the things they said
to us is, "Of course it is right to look at your sickness
level, that is important and we will continue to look at it,"
but they said to us—and we accepted this advice—"The
real important things are, have you got really engaged staff who
are well-led, properly inducted and well-trained? That is actually
what you really ought to be focusing on, not just the very narrow
issue about who is sick, important though that is." So in
response to that we are refining these all the time and we have
taken the advice that basically we need to focus on those issues
which are better indicators of the overall strength of the organisation,
and that seems sensible to us.
Q328 Dr Whitehead: This picture then
provides us with a substantial snapshot of what is happening with
the localities and what is happening nationally and what you have
said in your strategy and business plan is that one of your aims
will be to clearly define what is a national service locally delivered
means to the CPS, and then you have gone on to say it is about
"articulating the roles of different parts of the organisation
and how they work together to achieve our strategy, strengthening
our partnership, working in our financial capabilities."
What does that actually mean?
Keir Starmer: Can I answer this?
A national service locally delivered. The way we see it is this,
focusing for the first part on the national. At the national level
there must be common priorities, common standards, common targets
and common policies. So that runs right through the organisation
nationally. There is also, obviously, a central focus through
the DPP and through the Chief Executive. It is delivered locally
and local is that you have the area as the principal unit with
the Chief Crown Prosecutor and that is important because of the
engagement with the local criminal justice boards. You have got
to have an appropriate leader at the appropriate place to plug
into the criminal justice system as a whole. Because that Chief
Crown Prosecutor is working with other agencies in that area there
is going then to be local variation. It is not like Tesco where
there is one product which is simply being sold in different areas.
The area has to operate in accordance with other agencies and
in the area, so you will get variation and you will have discretion
and you have to have that to make that effective at the local
level. There will then be questions of best practice which are
not within the central core targets or standards. We encourage
best practice and to that extent would see consistent best practice
across areas, but the difference between this model and a model
for any other national organisation is the fact of local discretion,
the reasons for it and so long as one stays with the areas as
the principal units, for good reason, that is probably the best
way the system could be set up.
Q329 Dr Whitehead: So how does the
rationale of restructuring the CPS into 15 areas fit with that
description?
Keir Starmer: The principal unit
is still the area, so you have still got 42 areas and each area
will have a Chief Crown Prosecutor for the reasons I have given.
There are now 15 groups where areas are grouped together. The
driving force behind that—and this is probably the best
explanation—was as follows: firstly, it was appreciated
that for complex cases it was better to have an arrangement which
went beyond a single area because very often crime will go beyond
the area and the capacity will go beyond the area, and the policing
of the offence will go beyond the area. So there was good reason
to have some more serious cases dealt with on a group basis so
complex case units were set up. Secondly, some functions were
better carried out across a number of areas. Communications would
be an example. Equality and diversity is another example, so some
functions across the groups. Also, there were some resource implications,
some efficiencies if certain activities were dealt with on a group
basis. So it was not, as it were, a simple restructuring as such,
it was, "How do we deal with those three issues and accommodate
them whilst retaining the 42?" and that led to the group
structure. It obviously means that we now have a group chair,
who is, as it were, the senior Chief Crown Prosecutor within the
group and the senior Area Business Manager, who do have oversight
of what is going on in the group but it is not, as it were, a
return to the 13 areas that used to be the position back in, I
think, 1992. So it is a structure that is built on the 42 areas
with the groups having been constructed to perform particular
functions and it is pretty new but I think they are performing
them well.
Q330 Dr Whitehead: Does that facilitate
the sharing of good practice between areas or is it not designed
for that purpose, and if it is not designed for that purpose is
there any method of making sure that happens?
Keir Starmer: No, it is designed
for that purpose. There is a Group Strategy Board which meets,
so all of the Chief Crown Prosecutors and the Area Business Managers
meet the Strategic Board, which would look at good practice across
the areas within the group so that what was good practice in one
area could be transferred across to another area. What the 15
groups have given us as well is the opportunity for all of the
groups to get together, as it were, groups of 15, to also share
best practice. That is very much part of it.
Q331 Mr Heath: Just on one aspect
of that, if I may, because I can see there may well be merits
in having these groups for all sorts of purposes, but the one
thing it does not seem to me to do from my knowledge of policing
is to follow functional policing. As an example, Avon and Somerset,
which I happen to know rather well, the crime area for Avon and
Somerset does not extend down to Cornwall. In that group a Crown
Prosecutor working in Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire would be actually
nearer to Scotland than he would be to one working down in Penzance.
So the crime area, the policing area that is logical is actually
Avon and Somerset and South Wales and West Midlands because that
is where the interlinks are between the serious crime.
Keir Starmer: That is why it is
important to appreciate why the group structure was put in place.
It was not just to mirror regional policing. Partly that is the
situation with complex cases but, for example, when it comes to
courts and servicing the courts, they do not correlate with the
policing but we have to service the courts. For example, advocacy
can be dealt with on a group basis because the courts can be serviced
better. So this was not a model designed only to suit or to fit
with the pattern and structures of policing. Although there is
an element of that in complex cases, it is also designed for other
purposes and as soon as you look at the courts and the arrangement
of the courts you will appreciate that a lot of thought had to
go into the particular groupings. But it is not a restructuring
for the sake of restructuring, it is to fulfil these particular
functions in the best way that they can be fulfilled that it was
done.
Q332 Dr Whitehead: Does this structure
facilitate good mechanisms for handling complaints against the
CPS, and if it does are there mechanisms, for example, of peer
review of complaint systems or do you think perhaps there is room
for improvement in how complaints might be best handled?
Peter Lewis: May I respond on
this? We acknowledge that we have got to do more on complaints.
Our complaints system at the moment is too old, too defensive,
it is not open and transparent enough and we know we have got
to do something about that. The inspectorate are doing some work
now. They have been sharing their early findings and they have
made that very clear to us, if we had not worked it out for ourselves
already, and we are going to respond very promptly to that. So
we know that what we have got there is old-fashioned and defensive.
In terms of having some external scrutiny of it, we have been
looking very closely at what has been taking place in Northern
Ireland, where there is a degree of external scrutiny so that
somebody is permanently looking at the complaints, the way people
are responding to complaints and then giving feedback to the Director.
We are going to take a hard look at that because we can see there
are some benefits to it, but we are very clear that this is something
we have got to attend to. It is not right now and we have got
to deal with it quickly.
Q333 Julie Morgan: I just want to
ask you about your work in relation to victims and first of all
if you could generally say what the CPS's role is in relation
to victims?
Keir Starmer: Although we prosecute
on behalf of the public, we do acknowledge that victims and witnesses
are central to what we do. Can I provide some context? The landscape,
as you know, has changed enormously over the last ten years. There
have been various pieces of legislation that have dealt with victims
and witnesses and there has been a whole host of initiatives by
the criminal justice agencies, including the CPS, to put victims
and witnesses at the heart of the criminal justice system. So
we have got various policies. As you know, there is a Prosecutor's
Pledge, et cetera. What we have focused on recently
is really trying to bring this together and therefore we have
got a strategy for 2008 onwards which is trying to pull together
all the initiatives of the last few years into one place and then
to focus on the delivery side, and so we have got a delivery unit
specifically for victims and witnesses. So we do see it as central
to our core business and it will continue to be so. Our focus
has got to be on delivery.
Q334 Julie Morgan: Do you think the
witnesses and victims are at the heart of the criminal justice
system?
Keir Starmer: Yes, that is how
we view it and that is how we operate and therefore we are part
of the service which is offered to a victim or a witness from,
as it were, point of charge onwards, as it were, walking through
the system, taking into account their views and acting on that
insofar as we are able to do so through any number of different
measures, obviously the question of whether special measures should
be put in place for a witness and/or whether arrangements can
be made for them to be at court, telling them where they have
got to be at court, et cetera, and ensuring that when they do
get to court they are told appropriately by the Prosecutor what
is going on. So we do see them as part of the criminal justice
system and we accept and acknowledge that we have a particular
responsibility to them.
Q335 Chairman: Is the victim in any
sense a client of the CPS or not?
Keir Starmer: No, the client of
the CPS is the public, but the victim or the witness is central
to what we do.
Q336 Julie Morgan: Do victims understand
that, because I know you are supposed to take into account the
victim's views when you decide whether you are going to prosecute
or not, but they do not have a determining role in that? It is
quite difficult, I would have thought, for them to understand
their role.
Keir Starmer: Well, we do try
to explain the arrangement to them. We do undertake to take their
views into account. The Code that we operate to requires us to
take their views into account and we do do so. I am not saying
it is a perfect system, but that is the basis on which we approach
it. We act on behalf of the public but we take into account, for
obvious reasons, the views of a victim in any particular case.
That is explained and we try to operate to that standard.
Q337 Julie Morgan: So if a particular
course of action was not acceptable to a victim, would you then
change that course of action?
Keir Starmer: Their views are
listened to and taken into account. In some cases that may well
lead to a particular course of action, but not necessarily. It
is a factor that we take into account in the decisions we make.
It is a very weighty factor, but it cannot be on our constitutional
arrangements the determining factor in every case.
Q338 Julie Morgan: What feedback
do you get from the witnesses and victims about, for example,
their views being taken into consideration? Have you any method
of getting the feedback?
Keir Starmer: Recently the OCJR
did carry out a satisfaction survey of witnesses and there was
81% satisfaction. Obviously that could be improved upon, but it
is not insignificant. We also ourselves have a number of mechanisms
by which we try to capture the views of victims and witnesses
and we have, for example, scrutiny panels looking at particular
decisions after the event to learn any lessons that are there
to be learnt about the way in which we have handled them, and
the focus of that is very much on victims and witnesses. So there
is a number of mechanisms and this is something that we are determined
to get right.
Q339 Julie Morgan: You also mentioned
the special measures. We were told by Victim Support and MIND
that they felt there was sometimes quite a delay in recognising
that special measures were needed and this meant that the courts
were not able to respond. Do you have any evidence of that?
Keir Starmer: I did read that
evidence and obviously that was of concern to us and we have done
what work we can on it. Can I just give you these figures? In
2008 30,449 applications were made for special measures, of which
28,858 were granted. That gives you a sense that there is some
really significant work being done here on behalf of victims and
witnesses, and on those figures it would appear that we are identifying
the right cases for special measures because the vast majority
are being granted by the court. It is very difficult to gauge
those cases that we have missed and we do not suggest the system
is foolproof by any stretch of the imagination. There is no evidence,
I think is the reality about cases which may have been missed,
but we take seriously what previous witnesses have said to you
as a cause for concern. To some extent it is a multi-agency problem
because in the first instance the police are responsible for identifying
cases where special measures might be needed, but it is also our
responsibility and we accept that. We are actively considering
some research to see if we can capture better some data about
possible missed cases. But you do not know what you do not know.
It is very difficult. As I have been able to demonstrate, I hope,
there is a large number of cases in which measures have been put
in place and we are doing all we can and take very seriously the
challenge of ensuring that any that have got through the net should
not get through the net in future.
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