A report on the performance of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in presenting cases in court has found that a third of all its prosecution advocates are either "lacklustre" or "less than competent".
Inspectors from the CPS inspectorate assessed CPS internal and external prosecuting advocates in the crown court. They found that two-thirds were fully competent, including some very good, but a quarter of advocates were lacklustre and none were outstanding.
The CPS has significantly increased the quantity of court work undertaken by in-house advocates, rather than by self-employed barristers, but the chief inspector, Stephen Wooler, said the CPS now needed to change its emphasis "from quantity to quality".
Wooler said the CPS must eliminate any advocacy that is less than competent or very poor, and needed to raise its "significant proportion" of lacklustre advocacy to "the level the courts and public expect".
The increase of in-house presentation of cases by the CPS has been controversial; the report acknowledges that it was "inherently unlikely" that self-employed barristers would welcome the move. The inspectorate has sought, it said, to "get behind the various interests that have existing on all sides into the bedrock of objective assessment".
Its report comes hard on the heels of the Cabinet Office's own review of CPS capabilities, which said the department has made good progress on developing leadership andmanagement at all levels since its original review in 2007, and said the new director of public prosecutions has "set a strong direction for CPS, emphasising the importance of quality in everything the department does".
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
