Starmer sets out 21st century agenda for CPS
Keir Starmer QC, the new Director of Public Prosecutions, has pledged to engage with communities, deliver “more robust and dependable” charging decisions, and create a more transparent CPS.
Starmer, in his inaugural speech at London Metropolitan University in January, said he wanted the CPS in the 21st century to be like its latest new office in Barrow-in-Furness—“very contemporary, full of light, and everyone working in it can be seen by those outside”.
He stressed the importance of the prosecutor’s discretion when deciding whether to bring charges, citing his decision that, even though there was a realistic prospect of conviction, it was not in the public interest to prosecute in the case of Daniel James, the 23 year-old rugby player paralysed from the waist down whose parents assisted his suicide at a clinic in Switzerland.
The CPS is improving its in-house advocacy and is now finding it easy to recruit high quality candidates, he said.
See Counsel’s interview with Keir Starmer on page 10.
