The Justice Committee...
UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE
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Q5 Steve Brine: Mr Turner is Chair of the Bar Council, for those watching. Do you take, on face value, the Secretary of State's assertions that we need to make significant savings here?
Michael Turner: No. As has already been pointed out, we think in the first place that he has achieved his target figure when he says he wants to reduce the budget to £1.5 billion once it is worked through. The real point here and where the taxpayer is losing out is that there is huge waste in the system, as we have pointed out...
Q6 Steve Brine: Would you just outline two for me? ..
Michael Turner: Let me just give you an example from Friday. One of my members, last Friday, attended court to do three cases. In the first case, the prisoner was not delivered, so the case could not take place. In the second case, the CPS had failed to instruct a prosecutor, so that case could not take place. In the third case, the Punjabi translator, who was meant to be delivered by Capita, did not turn up either. None of those three cases could go ahead. That is a picture that is happening all across the country on a daily basis.
In terms of the Crown Prosecution Service, which has been advertised as saving the taxpayer £27 million, if you look at their internal audit report, you realise, in fact, that they do not deliver those savings at all because that figure is based on counsel's savings rather than taking into account the cost of their employees. Once you do that, that £27 million disappears altogether.
Then you have to take into account again what is happening on a daily basis, which is that cases are not being properly prosecuted. One example from four weeks ago is a case at Southwark. A five-handed kidnap trial collapsed because disclosure was not done properly. There was a £500,000 costs order against the CPS, with a conservative estimate of £3 million to the taxpayer. There will be a retrial. Again, that is a picture that is happening across the country.
If things were done properly, those are the gaps that will produce huge savings. In addition to that, an entire budget can be produced by three very small measures. If you delivered the magistrates court back into the hands of the Magistrates' Association-it was taken into the MoJ in 2005 and was probably the best example of David Cameron's Big Society in action-that would produce a saving of £1.5 billion. We have suggested an insurance scheme, which would mean that the banks contribute to the cost of the fraud prosecutions. At present, when a bank loses any money, the only person who suffers is the taxpayer. The bank is allowed to write the money off against tax; the taxpayer pays for the investigation; the taxpayer pays for the prosecution. If the prosecution is successful, lo and behold, the bank is delivered free of charge all it needs to get its civil recovery..."
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmjust/uc91-i/uc9101.htm
So Gary, it appears that the term 'defend' does not mean much at all.
Ignorance is bliss, bliss is happiness, I am happy...to draw your attention to the possible connectivity in the foregoing.
