UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 57-iHouse of COMMONSMINUTES OF EVIDENCETAKEN BEFOREJUSTICE COMMITTEE
THE WORK OF THE HM CHIEF INSPECTORCROWN PROSECUTION SERVICE INSPECTORATE:aPPOINTMENT OF A NEW CHIEF INSPECTOR
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This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
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Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.
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Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.
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Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.
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Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament: W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, Telephone Number: 020 7233 1935
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the Justice Committee
on
Members present
Sir Alan Beith, in the Chair
Mr David Heath
Alun Michael
Dr Nick Palmer
Mr Andrew Tyrie
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Witness: Stephen Wooler CB, HM Chief Inspector, HMCPSI, gave evidence.
Chairman: Mr Wooler, how very nice to see you; welcome. This will be the last occasion on which we will be pressing you but it is a very personal one as far as we are concerned. Obviously, we want to thank you for the work you have done, which has significantly informed the work we have done as well, and we wanted to give you the opportunity of guiding us on some of the issues which are going to be important when we question your potential successor. We do not yet know who that is but we believe that a person has been identified and will come before us probably at the beginning of January. You have produced for us a very helpful memorandum but unfortunately at a point where we could give it only the briefest attention before seeing you this afternoon, but thank you very much for the memorandum which we will publish as part of the report.
Q1 Alun Michael: And read eventually.
Stephen Wooler: My apologies for the delay. I came back from leave to find the request and there were a number of other commitments at the same time, but I did give it the earliest attention possible.
Q2 Chairman: We, of course, have reported on the Crown Prosecution Service and you have seen the Committee's conclusions on that. The Attorney General's Office has promised a response to that report to various deadlines and has missed all the deadlines. Is that characteristic of your experience of the Attorney General's Office?
Stephen Wooler: I think that the Attorney General's Office is finding its way in a new role at the moment. There is great flexibility and change in the criminal justice system. The Attorney General's role is developing, and indeed this Committee has, I think, looked at it under its predecessor, the Constitutional Affairs Committee. I think the process of working up the response is in hand. I too have an interest in that because there were two recommendations which touched on the work of the inspectorate, one relating to alternative disposals and the other in relation to our own remit as regards other prosecutors, so I am anxious to contribute to that and I do know that work is in hand.
Q3 Alun Michael: I would like to ask about the lessons for an effective inspection regime for the CPS coming out of your work. What do you think are the most important lessons?
Stephen Wooler: I think the most important lesson from our work for the inspection regime is that it should be focused very broadly across the whole service but on the basis of a system which enables us to take stock of what is happening in the service, gather management information from the CPS, intelligence from our own inspection activities, and try and focus our own resources on the developing aspects of the CPS where they are likely to be most beneficial. Breaking that down into two sectors, part of our work is what I would call geographical, focusing on the operation of the CPS in a particular area, whether it is Bedfordshire, Northumberland or whatever, and part of it is on the thematic functional work such as the advocacy, its role in relation to asset recovery and so forth. Some of our resources will obviously be used in building up that intelligence but the important thing is to identify, as it were, where there are likely to be problems and then focus on those, not try and cover the whole of the service on a cyclical basis.
Q4 Alun Michael: I indicated, as the Chairman did, that the document we have not looked at in detail but we have looked at the challenges that you identified towards the end. They seem awfully detailed and bureaucratic. Is not the prime purpose of an inspection regime to make sure that the service delivers on its purpose, what it is really there for?
Stephen Wooler: The prime purpose is to make sure that it delivers and that that level of service is continually improving.
Q5 Alun Michael: Yes, but, sorry, that it delivers on its main purpose. How would you describe the main purpose of the Crown Prosecution Service?
Stephen Wooler: The main purpose of the Crown Prosecution Service is quite clearly to ensure that the right people are prosecuted for the right offences and that they are prosecuted firmly but effectively.
Q6 Alun Michael: And is it the purpose of the inspection regime to ensure that that happens rather than getting possibly bogged down in the detail of specific tasks, what I would describe as the danger of not seeing the wood for the trees?
Stephen Wooler: We started on the basis that we focused purely on the performance of individual CPS areas on a very cyclical and what some would have called a rather wooden basis, a one-size-fits-all approach to inspection. That, I think, is an approach to inspection which no longer accords with what is expected of modern-day inspectorates because where a public service is thought to be functioning well and efficiently then it can be a distraction to those undertaking the public service if they are subject to inspection and it can also be a poor use of resources. What we have tried to do is develop an inspection regime which does purely assessments across the whole of the whole of the service on what is called an overall performance assessment basis and use that to populate a risk model and then refocus in depth on those parts of the service where the performance is not what it should be.
Q7 Alun Michael: My problem with the way that you are responding, as with the way that this is written, is that it seems to give a lot of description of trees and no description of wood. Another thing in the challenges facing the new inspector is that I am rather surprised that there is nothing there to suggest how complaints dealt with by the Crown Prosecution Service should be a challenge that the new chief inspector should step up to. Are you satisfied with the way that complaints are dealt with through the service? Are you satisfied that the inspection regime deals with the way in which complaints are dealt with?
Stephen Wooler: We published a report about nine months to a year ago which made it clear that we were not so satisfied, and I am sorry if the lateness of the submission has not given a very full picture of our work. It is a mix of focusing on the individual CPS areas, where we look in a very routine way at the basics, the casework of its volume crime, on a day-to-day basis, and we also look at specific issues such as that, and the programme that before I came here I was discussing with the Attorney General for the coming year, subject to my successor, will include a follow-up review of the way that they are handling complaints.
Q8 Alun Michael: Would you agree with me therefore that firstly the issue of how complaints are handled ought to be seen as one of the major challenges for your successor, and, secondly, that he or she will also have to face the challenge of how to integrate any such complaints system so that the complainant, very often the victim, does not have to know their way around the system, including the Crown Prosecution Service, the police and the courts, in order to know where to register a complaint?
Stephen Wooler: I could not agree more with those sentiments. We found that the approach of the CPS was quite defensive to the handling of complaints. We said that the information given, particularly on the website, about the arrangements for handling complaints was not adequate and we urged that there should be much more objectivity in the handling of complaints, in the investigation of them, and also clarity in the explanations that were given. The nature of the business is such that we will not always be able to satisfy complainants but sometimes explaining a decision properly is as much as can be done. Certainly that report is continuing to be taken forward. I have seen some documentation that suggests that a new complaints scheme will be launched by the CPS early next year and that is why a follow-up review is in the draft -----
Q9 Alun Michael: So you take it implicitly that, given that you have identified four major challenges to your successor, it actually should be five?
Stephen Wooler: Yes. I think I would regard that as a particular topic and the challenges that I articulated were the more generic challenges.
Q10 Mr Heath: Just going back to the challenges section, what I understand from what you have said, Mr Wooler, is that we have this changing architecture of the criminal justice system and the inspectorate, to which we have added our fourpennyworth in terms of expansion of the role. Do I read correctly that you are sounding a warning here that actually a widening role, which is something I understand you to support, nevertheless will propose challenges for your successor in the context of the work that has to carry on in terms of the periodic overall performance assessments which you feel it would be wrong at this stage to forgo if the Crown Prosecution Service is to make progress?
Stephen Wooler: I think the inspectorate is very capable of absorbing additional work. I would hope that as the CPS strengthens its performance management system there may be some aspects of the inspection regime which can become more lighter touch, as it were.
Q11 Mr Heath: But not yet?
Stephen Wooler: That is certainly the direction that I know the DPP and the Chief Executive would like it to move in, and I think the Attorney General. You obviously will not have had the opportunity to read the peer review that was conducted very recently on the -----
Q12 Mr Heath: By the Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice on that?
Stephen Wooler: That is right.
Q13 Mr Heath: I have.
Stephen Wooler: That is the direction of travel that is suggested. My own feeling is that there is still a gap between what the CPS aspires to and what it is able to deliver in certainly the vast majority of routine crime. That is where the new DPP is focusing - he has been there a year - with his proposals for core quality standards. That is an initiative which will begin to cut in next year and we will be supporting it, but I think it will take a significant time in order for that to have full effect and to see the universally improved standards that he will aspire to and that I would aspire to.
Q14 Mr Heath: Do you anticipate your office taking on a bigger responsibility or total responsibility for HM Inspector of Courts Administration?
Stephen Wooler: With regard to the Inspector of Courts Administration, of course the announcement was made yesterday that it would be -----
Q15 Mr Heath: On a little list.
Stephen Wooler: ----- abolished, on page 41 of the White Paper. It came as a surprise. We are still considering the implications of that because the feedback that we get suggests that some of the most valuable work that the inspectorates do is when we work together as criminal justice inspectorates on issues such as the experiences of victims or witnesses in the criminal justice system on asset recovery at the moment where all of the angles need to mesh in together, the treatment at the outset of investigation, by the prosecution at court and so forth, and I think that there will undoubtedly be a little bit of a gap in our ability to provide that comprehensive form of inspection in the future.
Q16 Mr Heath: I take it there was no prior consultation with you or with your colleague inspectors?
Stephen Wooler: It came as a bolt out of the blue.
Q17 Mr Heath: That is par for the course. Can I ask you one specific thing which certainly sounds like a criticism of the law officers' department but I just want to be sure I understand exactly what you mean by the phrase? In 31(2) you say, "The more managerial approach by Government to the criminal justice system linked with the increasing role of the Attorney General as a criminal justice minister has aligned the business interest of CPS and the AGO to such an extent that the accountability processes are on occasion at risk of compromise." Can I just be clear what your concern is there and how you think it could be overcome?
Stephen Wooler: I think the inspectorate is, as far as the Attorney General's Office is concerned, an arm's length body, and so too should the CPS be an arm's length body. The relationship between the Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions is one of superintendence rather than the conventional role of minister to permanent secretary. It is important that those two arm's length relationships should both be maintained in order that the right checks and balances are in place. We report to the Attorney General, the Attorney General is calling to account the DPP and senior managers for the service. I think that as the role of criminal justice minister has expanded so the relationship between the Attorney General's Office and the CPS has probably become rather closer with the result that that balance is not quite as it should be at the moment in terms of that accountability process.
Q18 Mr Heath: Am I understanding you? There is a danger that you are reporting to the Attorney General effectively on the performance of the Attorney General because she is too closely managing the affairs of the Crown Prosecution Service?
Stephen Wooler: I would not go so far as to say that the Attorney General is managing their affairs too closely, but where you have two bodies very closely aligned criticism can be very difficult not to deliver but to make effective, and that is why I think we perhaps need to look again at those relationships in order to ensure - and I think we could do more ourselves in terms of speedier follow-up to the inspection work that we have done - that there is a proper calling to account and that the work that we do then has the fullest effect.
Q19 Chairman: Are you saying that criticism of one, when the two are so closely aligned, is in effect criticism of the other and that that might be inhibiting the work of the inspectorate?
Stephen Wooler: I do not think it would inhibit the inspectorate; I hope it has not inhibited us, but I think there is a risk that if the Attorney General's Office and the CPS were very closely aligned then when we are finding shortcomings they are shortcomings for which there is a much more direct responsibility, and therefore there is implied criticism.
Q20 Mr Tyrie: What would be the harm with that implied criticism?
Stephen Wooler: The harm in the implied criticism?
Mr Tyrie: You said there would be that implied criticism where the roles are aligned. What would be the harm?
Q21 Chairman: Would it matter?
Stephen Wooler: I think the risk is that it can make a minister who is both responsible for the service being delivered and for the inspectorate less receptive to the bad news. I do not confine that principle to the Attorney General's Office. One of the characteristics of the criminal justice system over the last decade or so has been the move from local management to central management. For example, you have a probation service now which used to be locally based which is now a national service. You have a court service, and magistrates courts certainly used to be locally based, which is now nationally managed, and therefore one could think of it almost as a conflict of interest on the part of a minister who is receiving reports which may suggest that the quality of service is not what it should be in relation to something for which that minister is also responsible.
Q22 Mr Tyrie: Your memorandum in several places emphasises the need for better, more robust, as you put it, performance management within the CPS as a prerequisite (although you do not use that word) for getting a lighter touch inspection regime.
Stephen Wooler: Yes.
Q23 Mr Tyrie: This seems to be the heart of the matter, does it not? You are saying that the CPS are not doing a very good internal management job themselves.
Stephen Wooler: I think that sometimes the CPS, in delivering what are very good and sound policies, do not ensure that they are as fully embedded at the operational level as they should be. Part of the issue, as I have said in successive reports, is the number of initiatives which those who at the operational level have had to cope with.
Q24 Mr Tyrie: What is your advice to your successor on how to make sure his recommendations are acted upon in that case?
Stephen Wooler: I think my advice would be to carry out swifter follow-ups than perhaps I have been responsible for and perhaps to be more assertive in calling the CPS to account for progress in relation to recommendations that are made.
Q25 Mr Tyrie: Publicly to account?
Stephen Wooler: Yes, if necessary.
Q26 Mr Tyrie: Do you think that they are responsive to that sort of criticism? How sensitive are they in the spectrum from very thin-skinned all the way through to rhinoceros? Where do you put them on the spectrum?
Stephen Wooler: I think that the relationships with the CPS have been good. I think they do listen. I think they are very sensitive to public criticism, and understandably so, and the result of that is that they do react but quite slowly, and part of that is again the pace of change and the number of ------
Q27 Mr Tyrie: So they feel the pain but they do not react quickly?
Stephen Wooler: They do not react quickly, no.
Q28 Mr Tyrie: I am trying to think what creature has that particular characteristic. I am told on my right by a palaeontologist that it must be a dinosaur, but I am afraid I certainly could not speak from personal experience to confirm that. Could I just ask about the terms and conditions of your successor, which I am not sure I fully understood, and you may not know this, given the way you were appointed? This is a five-year fixed term of appointment. Is it renewable?
Stephen Wooler: There is nothing that says it has to be a five-year fixed term. The advert that I saw was, I think, silent on that.
Q29 Mr Tyrie: Who has been doing your annual appraisals?
Stephen Wooler: I have not had an annual appraisal for some time.
Q30 Mr Tyrie: "Annual" by definition is --- how many years have gone by since you last had an appraisal?
Stephen Wooler: Probably two or three years.
Q31 Mr Tyrie: So we are putting in an annual appraisal. Who would be doing that for your successor?
Stephen Wooler: I think the last time I had an annual appraisal it was done by what was then called the Legal Secretary to the Law Officers, now the Director General. It is a change of title with the change of office.
Q32 Mr Tyrie: It is very unusual for people to be in a job where they are not even quite sure who is monitoring their work. Most people keep quite alert to that. I am sure most politicians know who the Chief Whip is in their party.
Stephen Wooler: I report to the Attorney General and the Attorney General is the person who monitors the work. Again, it is not uncommon, I think, to have a statutory office holder who does not have a reporting officer.
Q33 Mr Tyrie: I am just wondering whether you would have any advice to offer on whether this should be a fixed term and non-renewable contract in order to secure full independence, a long, fixed, non-renewable term.
Stephen Wooler: I think the advice that I
would offer there is that I think it should be fixed term. I think possibly that it should be renewable
once, but once only. I know from
experience in
Q34 Mr Tyrie: Can I just persist a little with the structure that you think is appropriate to secure the level of independence and outspokenness required to do your job? Are we agreed that it would be prudent at the very least to have a long fixed term, possibly non-renewable contract? That is something you are not sure about. You said a moment ago that maybe it should be renewable.
Stephen Wooler: Yes.
Q35 Mr Tyrie: Who do you think should be doing the appraisal?
Stephen Wooler: I would also suggest, in terms of salary, that it should either be a fixed salary with a formula for increase, if any increase in the present climate were thought appropriate, or linked to another position. There are precedents. For example, I think the DPP and the Director of the SFO are linked to particular judicial posts in terms of salary. In terms of who should appraise the Chief Inspector, I think that is more difficult. I personally have not found any problem in not having an annual report. I think regular discussions with the Attorney General provide clear feedback as to whether one is delivering an inspection programme that meets the ministerial needs, and I think also the Chief Inspector has to have regard to the fact that there are other accountabilities, accountabilities to the public, to Parliament and perhaps -----
Q36 Mr Tyrie: That is what we are interested in.
Stephen Wooler: ----- there are occasions when one would - and I have had to do it; I have had to press on and say I am going to inspect a particular topic even though it has been clear that that has not been welcome, and so I think that, although I have had a form of appraisal from the Legal Secretary in the past, it always started off by saying, "I am not this person's line manager but I am filling out this form". It was an artificial exercise and it fell into disuse. Not having an appraisal was not a problem because there was plenty of feedback from other stakeholders as to how well the job was being done.
Q37 Mr Tyrie: And who can sack you?
Stephen Wooler: The Attorney General could terminate the appointment.
Q38 Mr Tyrie: Do you think there should be some extra hoops through which the Attorney General has to pass before he or she can do that in order to give you some protection should your successor want to operate in that area where by criticising the service he ends up criticising the Attorney General, the point to which the Chairman alluded earlier?
Stephen Wooler: I think that would complicate it unduly. I think if a minister feels it right to dispense with the services of a public office holder the scrutiny that will inevitably be brought to bear through the media, through Parliament, is quite a powerful safeguard.
Q39 Chairman: In your memorandum there is a very interesting point, that in the early days of your work it would have been dangerous but a possible outcome to become a kind of surrogate management for the CPS because the CPS had not really developed its own management effectively at that time. Is that a danger that has passed?
Stephen Wooler: I think that has largely passed. The CPS is developing its management structures much more strongly now than it did. I think the relationship is changing and it is becoming much more one of dialogue and I think we would want to influence its development through that dialogue, but the time when we were sometimes regarded as the eyes and ears of the senior managers in the area is now largely past.
Q40 Alun Michael: There has been some description of the CPS as a victim's champion. That was criticised by this Committee. Is that something that has concerned you or do you think the CPS is or should be the champion for victims?
Stephen Wooler: I am not sure that the CPS itself uses the term "victims' champion". It is not the way that I think it should be regarded. The CPS is there to prosecute cases fairly and firmly and that means that they must take very full account of the impact of their decisions on the victims and public confidence, but to see them as the champion of the victims I think is overstating the position, and I think the CPS does suffer from that tag from time to time because -----
Q41 Alun Michael: Can I put it to you rather differently? What we heard from representatives of victims during the course of some evidence sessions was that what victims want more than anything else, other than not to become a victim in the first place, is not to become a victim again, or indeed for others to become victims of the experience that they have gone through. Should the Crown Prosecution Service, in pursuing its role, not see that as a priority, in other words, the prevention and reduction of crime and reoffending?
Stephen Wooler: The Crown Prosecution Service I think does see that as its objective. As one of the criminal justice agencies it has its own crime reduction strategy. Crime reduction is largely a police matter but there are within the armoury of the prosecutors many preventive orders that can be sought from the court - anti-social behaviour, banning particular types of conduct, to make sure that they use those effectively to prevent further offending. The point that I am making, I think, is that the term "victims' champion" can imply that that is almost the exclusive concern of the CPS whereas the proper concern is to prosecute cases fairly and effectively and sometimes the interests of the victim and what the victim wants will not necessarily prevail.
Q42 Alun Michael: In the sense that I put it to you I inferred that you would not have the same difficulty, but is it not the role of the Crown Prosecution Service also to make sure that the victim, particularly victim as witness, is treated appropriately as the prosecution proceeds?
Stephen Wooler: Absolutely, and they must be kept fully informed of the key decisions that are taken by the police at the outset of the investigative stage, by the prosecution, and of the outcome of cases, and they are, of course, entitled to the fullest consideration that the prosecution can bring to bear in terms of the convenience of the listing of cases and the treatment they get at court, the way that they are kept informed at court of what is happening, if decisions are taken about the acceptability of pleas which the victim will obviously have an interest in. They need to be spoken to, consulted and their views taken into account. At the end of the day sometimes the prosecution will have to take decisions which they know are not the decisions the victim would like taken, but when that happens it is important that they be explained.
Q43 Alun Michael: In relation to the thematic inspections that you have undertaken, have you recently undertaken one on the way in which victim liaison officers or representatives do their work and are you satisfied with it?
Stephen Wooler: We published a report, I think, in May of this year on the experience of victims and witnesses in the criminal justice system. It was conducted as a joint exercise with two other inspectorates; we led it, and it certainly looked at all of those issues. In addition, my own inspectorate has done two pieces of work auditing the CPS compliance with its own Direct Communication with Victims scheme, and we have been quite critical there of the level of compliance. As a result of the follow-up audit that we published about six weeks ago, the CPS has now abandoned the target that we criticised in the first report, which we thought gave a very over-favourable impression of its success.
Q44 Chairman: Mr Wooler, can I thank you very much for your evidence this afternoon. Thank you also for all the work that you have done to improve the Crown Prosecution Service. We wish you well for the future and share with you an air of anticipation about your potential successor.
Stephen Wooler: Thank you very much indeed and thank you for the consideration before this Committee.