§ Lord Christopherasked the Attorney-General:
Whether he will make a statement about the process by which decisions are reached within the Crown Prosecution Service in cases of complexity or seriousness. [HL1483]
§ The Attorney-General (Lord Goldsmith)With effect from today there will be a new approach to decision-making to assist the most senior and experienced lawyers in the CPS to make decisions in the most complex and serious cases. In future, where the case papers are particularly voluminous, the decision-maker may be assisted by another experienced lawyer, who will provide the decision-maker with a detailed analysis of the case, drawing attention to the key issues on which the decision must depend. The decision-maker may rely on this analysis, together with the essential evidence in the case papers and supplemented by such other evidence as the decision-maker chooses to consider, in applying the tests set out in the code for crown prosecutors and making his decision.
This approach marks a change from the procedures put in place following the publication in August 1999 of the report of His Honour Gerald Butler QC into CPS decision-making in relation to deaths in custody and related matters. The recommendations in that report referred to the need for the decision-maker to read "the whole of the relevant documentation". The effect has been that the most senior lawyers in the CPS have been precluded by their other commitments from taking decisions in some of the service's most serious and important casework. The new approach will allow a more effective use of their time and will thus enable greater input by senior lawyers into the most critical casework decisions that the service faces.