17 February 2006
The Crown Prosecution Service needs to modernise its systems urgently, a senior MP said this week after government auditors revealed the waste of £24m through poor case management.
A National Audit Office report published on February 15 calculated that £173m was spent on trials and hearings that did not go ahead last year.
A total of 784,000, or 28%, of all pre-trial hearings in magistrates' courts are adjourned to a later date. Of these, half were the fault of defence lawyers but almost 10% (71,000) were directly attributable to the CPS.
The report cited examples of cases reaching court with incomplete evidence, lost files, delays and mistakenly dropped charges.
Public Accounts Committee chair Edward Leigh said: 'Individual prosecutors do a difficult job under serious pressure. The real problem is within the Crown Prosecution Service's systems, which need to be sharpened up.
'The cost of the ineptitude goes beyond wasted cash. The innocent suffer avoidable duress, they are even kept in custody longer than necessary. And, to put it bluntly, some guilty people must be getting away with their crimes scot-free.'
The NAO noted that the CPS is seeking to improve its performance through witness support schemes and the Charging Initiative, which passes responsibility for determining the correct charge from the police to the CPS. It recommended that the service improves joint working with other criminal justice agencies.
A CPS spokeswoman said: 'The CPS will be introducing better arrangements for handling magistrates' court cases.'
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