Attorney General's Office

Attorney General: Delivering an Excellent Public Prosecution Service

Thank you Vice-Chancellor (Professor Michael Farthing) and Professor Stephen Shute for kindly inviting me to speak to the Law School here at the University of Sussex.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Stephen for the contribution he makes to Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate as a non-executive Board member and to the Advisory Board for Joint Criminal Justice Inspections.

It's wonderful to be here, with so many of the people who ensure that justice is delivered in Sussex and I am pleased to see Mike Fuller, the designate chief inspector for HM Crown Prosecution Inspectorate.

My talk this evening is about delivering an excellent public prosecution service, at this key point in the development of independent prosecution services in England and Wales. I intend to look back briefly to how things started out, in 1986, and the enormous journey of reform we have travelled between 2000 and 2010 to the service we are now, and we'll look forward to the radically different service we will need to provide in order to meet the anticipated changes in crimiogenic patterns by 2020. This is our 2020 vision.

I am sure that many of you have been travelling on this same journey and that you are as committed as I am to meeting the challenges of the future.

Background
Many of you have started on the student journey, so I want to address you as Lawyers of the future. But first a little background and some - even more ancient - history, about my role as Attorney General and how prosecutorial responsibility has changed and developed.

No working day for me passes without being reminded of the history of the Office of Attorney General. Just inside the entrance to the building that houses my office is a picture of Lawrence del Brok who is often regarded as the first King's Attorney. It was in around 1247, over seven hundred years ago, and rather longer ago than 1986, that he was appointed to sue "the King's affairs of his pleas before him".

The first person to be called "Attorney General" was John Herbert who was appointed as the King's principal law officer in 1461. His picture is a little further down the corridor.

Beyond him hang his successors, pictures and latterly photographs of all the Law Officers winding up the stairs, Attorney and Solicitor by Attorney and Solicitor right up to the present day. Fortunately it is a tall building.

Attorneys and Solicitors they may all have been, but just as the pictures and photographs show the dramatic change in fashion over the years, and the male dominance of the role, so history reveals how the role has changed, function adding to function as the times demanded, forging in the piecemeal and unplanned fashion that marks our constitutional settlement the complex office that the Attorney General is today. We do everything extremely quickly in our country and it only took a mere 700 years to have a woman Attorney General.

My departments are a collective, under my superintendence or sponsorship, with a range of different functions They include three statutory prosecuting departments, the Crown Prosecution Service, Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office and the Serious Fraud Office, together with the Treasury Solicitor, my own Office, Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate; and the National Fraud Authority.

As Attorney I also supervise and superintend about 2000 staff, under the umbrella of the Government Legal Service.

The arrangements for my prosecuting departments have, like the Office of Attorney General, developed over time, and in the case of the prosecutors, in response to specific concerns, reviews and reports. More recently the pace and depth of reform has increased, to bring us to where we are in 2010, and the journey we have travelled helps to fill me with a degree of confidence about the further radical changes we can make to deliver the service which we will need in 2020.

CPS
Almost 30 years ago the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure ("the Phillips Report) assessed the prosecution system against the criteria:

1 is it fair?
2 is it open and accountable? and
3 is it efficient?"
Subject to the overriding test of whether the system had the confidence of the public it served.

The answers to those questions led to the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service - a nationally accountable but locally delivered prosecution service.

SFO
The creation of the Serious Fraud Office in 1988 came hard on the heels of the Crown Prosecution Service. The 1986 Roskill Report, which led to its creation, recommended in this instance that investigators and prosecutors should operate as one team on the basis that unified control and direction, together with staff with the necessary skills, were essential features to combat the particular threat that was posed by serious fraud.

The Revenue and Customs Prosecution Office was launched in April 2005, against the background of the termination of several high-profile Customs cases, and two separate reviews.

The Gower/Hammond review in 2000 had identified the need for the prosecutors to be independent of the investigators; and the Butterfield report in 2003 recommended "a complete separation of the prosecuting function for HM Customs and Excise's criminal cases from the organisation itself, through the creation of a separate prosecuting authority."

In the meantime, the Treasury had reviewed HM Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue and concluded that they should be merged, so it was decided that the Inland Revenue prosecutions would join the new independent prosecuting authority, the RCPO.

Since 2000 (Auld Review 2001) the role of the prosecution services and the expectations of prosecutors have expanded significantly. Lord Justice Auld explicitly recognised the vital role of strong and independent prosecutors in the delivery of more effective, fair and efficient prosecutions . By proposing an enhanced role for the Crown Prosecution Service at various stages he showed a welcome confidence in the CPS as an integral feature of his cohesive package of recommendations to improve both the quality and operation of criminal justice. The prosecutors have embraced the opportunities afforded to them by the creation of the National and Local Criminal Justice Boards as recommended by Lord Justice Auld. working with partners to agree and implement joint actions to address key criminal justice issues, such as public confidence and victim and witness care

The role of the CPS prosecutor has changed and evolved beyond recognition. It is dramatically different when I came to the Bar. Prosecutors now:

• engage with their communities to inform their work and address their concerns, building confidence in the criminal justice system directly and enhancing the community's understanding of law, citizenship and justice;
• advise the police and other investigating agencies pre-charge, working in partnership with the investigators and barristers in private practice to build the best cases;
• use out-of-court disposals such as conditional cautions where appropriate;
• decide the charge in all but the most routine cases;
• take the views of victims into account;
• ensure that witnesses, particularly the vulnerable and intimidated, are able to give their best evidence;
• recover assets from criminals;
• present their own cases in court; the very first CPS QC, Graham Reeds, was appointed last year
• assist the court in the sentencing process and
• where a sentence is considered too lenient, bring those decisions to the Law Officers' attention so they can be appealed.

Of the many reforms which have helped to shape the role of the modern CPS prosecutor, the introduction of statutory charging in 2004 was a defining moment. Routinely determining the charge in all but the most straightforward of cases put the prosecutor at the epicentre of the criminal justice process as the gatekeeper for cases entering the criminal justice system.

Increasingly, prosecutors are now presenting their own cases in the Crown Court drawing on the experience of charging to build and present the strongest possible case in Court. They are putting the interests of victims and witnesses at the heart of the criminal justice system, providing them with information about decisions and the progress of their case, providing support through what can be a very traumatic experience, and using powers to provide alternatives to attendance at court and the support of intermediaries for the most vulnerable. Joining together with lawyers in private practice to try and ensure the best teams and skills are marshalled to present robust but fair prosecutions.

Prosecutors are becoming more responsive to community concerns: working closely with neighbourhood policing teams, using a range of tools, such as conditional cautions, post-sentencing orders such as Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, and confiscation orders to recover criminal assets, and working with the police, local authorities and others on a multi-Agency approach to tackle local crime concerns.

What is so interesting is the completion of prosecutors has changed - they are more diverse. This means that in 2010 prosecutors are developing a higher profile and standing in their local community and prosecution authorities are being recognised and respected and are gaining public confidence for their contribution in making society a safer place.

When we first started in 2003 we did a survey to see how many knew about the CPS? It was very low. Since then we have worked hard to be more visible and transparent. Since 2008, following an independent and comparative review into the way it undertakes cases the Serious Fraud Office has been pursuing a comprehensive transformation, of the Office and the systems, processes and culture that direct the prosecution of major and complex fraud cases. This enables the public and criminals to take the SFO seriously.

Building on the recommendations of that report, the Serious Fraud Office has introduced a number of structural changes, a range of process and casework quality improvements, such as a system of case regular and peer case reviews to assess the viability and strategic direction and to review investigative strategies to ensure that the actions being taken are robust, legally sound but also appropriate. The SFO has also re-assessed its relationships and how it works with other agencies and investigators, such as City of London Police as the lead force on fraud, the Financial Services Authority and the Serious and Organised Crime Agency

As part of that transformation, in 2010, the SFO is establishing an international reputation as a leader in the field of highly complex criminal investigations and prosecutions and for assisting foreign jurisdictions with fraud investigations. The assistance the SFO can now give their foreign partners has been strengthened.

After its launch in 2005, the RCPO developed into a professional and capable organisation, which has secured increasing confidence on the part of the judiciary and the public that these difficult and complicated customs and tax cases can be successfully prosecuted.

Since 2005, the RCPO has completed more than 5,400 cases, involving more than 7,000 defendants, with a 90% conviction rate and they have enforced confiscation orders of more than £90m from convicted offenders. Quite a feat for an organisation of fewer than 350 people!

And Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, which was established in 1995, and put on the statute book in 2000, is playing an integral part in continuous scrutiny, improvement and assurance of the prosecution authorities, and in working with other inspectorates and audit bodies to report on cross-cutting criminal justice issues.

National Fraud Authority

The youngest of my Departments is the National Fraud Authority that was established in October 2008 as an Executive Agency of the Attorney General's Office, in line with the recommendation that was made in the Fraud Review for a single organisation to co-ordinate the national counter fraud response.

The National Fraud Authority has already led the publication of the National Fraud Strategy which is being delivered through a combination of strategic and practical initiatives, including a Counter Fraud Strategy Forum whose membership includes investigation and prosecution agencies. That broad church allows us to build a stronger evidence base for counter fraud performance allowing us to identify gaps and, crucially, make proposals for improvement.

The National Fraud Authority is also drawing on significant expertise in the private sector and is promoting stronger collaboration on fraud investigations and recovering the proceeds of fraud - that can only be good news. If we want to attack and deter crimes we had to let criminals know about the burden.

As we learned recently with the publication of the NFA's Annual Fraud Indicator Report, we now have a much improved estimate of the cost of fraud to the UK - over £30 billion. This astounding figure shows the damaging effect that fraud has on the UK economy. Individuals, businesses and public services are all victims. People think fraud is a victimless crime, it is not. Even individuals who are not direct victims of fraud pay through higher charges for goods and services or as a result of lost tax revenue to fund our public services. There is increasing cooperation right across the board - the Serious Fraud Office, the National Fraud Authority, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the police, the Financial Services Authority, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office, with each organisation bringing its particular expertise to bear. The fraud picture is complex and changing and those of us responsible for the fight against fraud need to adapt in order to tackle and target fraudsters. Being real about that, rest assured, the fraudsters themselves are constantly doing the same.

Criminal Justice System

And since 2000 we have also been bringing the component parts of the Criminal Justice System more closely together so that they can work more effectively together, to provide better services to victims and witnesses, reduce crime, make local communities safer and increase public confidence.

An early change for closer working was in 1998 we sought to align CPS with police boundaries into 42 Areas and in 2003 to give the Home Secretary, Justice Secretary and Attorney General joint and shared responsibility for reform of criminal justice system, working through a National Criminal Justice Board; replicating arrangements for joint working locally through Local Criminal Justice Boards; establishing a new Office of Criminal Justice Reform, which became the clearinghouse, and it has really worked.

We have also put in place robust systems to gather evidence to help inform improvements needed in service provision, such as the Witness and Victim Experience Survey (WAVES), which asks victims and witnesses of crime how well they thought the CJS treated them and what support they received. Your local WAVES data up to June 2009 will be available to view online on Directgov from tomorrow. The availability of this data and the sharing of best practice has helped to increase victim and witness satisfaction nationally from 71% in 2005-06 to 79% in 2008-09.

Specifically from the prosecutor perspective, another significant change has been that they now work closely with policy makers in Whitehall, so that criminal justice reform and legislation are properly informed by the experience of those who work at the front line, and prosecution policies are developed through extensive consultation with community groups, the voluntary sector, government agencies, the police, and others so they are best shaped to meet their needs and concerns.

Where are we today

I have been continuing this programme of reform since my appointment as Attorney General in 2007. Over the past couple of years we have made bold strides to ensure that we are fit to face the challenges of the 21st century.

Protocol and Convention
Working with the Directors, whom I supervise, we have developed a new Protocol on the role of the Attorney and the relationship with prosecuting Departments. The Protocol sets out how I and the Directors of the Crown Prosecution Service, Serious Fraud Office and Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office exercise our functions in relation to one another to safeguard their independence, now and for the future and to ensure there is proper accountability to Parliament and the public. A Law Officers' Departments strategic board, under my chairmanship, was set up for the first time in 2008. That Board has given deep consideration to the requirements for fulfilling our aim of developing a modern prosecution service. I was absolutely clar that we had to plot and plan this together.
I have led a strategic review considering likely future demand for prosecution and how the prosecution services can be modernised to better serve the public. The work has been driven by a real determination to ensure that we are equipped to deliver the most effective and efficient prosecution, fraud and legal services now and for the future.
Last year the Strategic Board took key decisions on modernising our services, towards being more open and transparent and towards giving frontline staff the opportunity and the confidence to work in ways which meet local needs. The Board has been working together, and for the first time with investigators, to make critical assessments about future crime trends, investigative priorities and the future demand for prosecution, and at how, with increasing public expenditure pressures, we can achieve better value for money whilst maintaining the drive for professional excellence.

It is clear from this examination that prosecutors face substantial challenges:

• Crime is more complex than ever, in part because of the rapid pace of development in technology and communications
• More and more frequently there is an international dimension in everything that we do.
• The effect of economic turbulence emphasises the need to be vigilant and excellent in the protection we provide for the public.
• And there is an increased focus on crimes of most concern to local communities, such as gang crime, knife crime, domestic violence, hate crime, sexual assaults, rape and anti-social behaviour

It is also clear that the expectations of prosecution services have, rightly, never been higher.

The Directors of my prosecuting authorities and I agree that, in the face of these challenges, we should be clear about the role of a prosecution in a modern enforcement environment and should be looking to extend the expectations of us now, and in the future.

We are clear that the public's right to live in safety and to be protected from criminal conduct lies right at the heart of the criminal justice system.

Within that, the duty or public prosecutors is to serve their communities, protect the public and secure justice, by prosecuting firmly and fairly, in an open, transparent and independent way.

So, what have we done so far to meet those challenges and to put ourselves in the best possible place to carry on doing so?

Merger of RCPO and CPS

We have - collectively - decided to merge the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office with the Crown Prosecution Service. It is because of the strong leadership and increasing professionalism of the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office - as well as significant developments in the capability and strength of the Crown Prosecution Service - that we are now in a better position to address such challenges.

The merger was brought into effect on 1 January of this year, when I appointed Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions, to the statutory post of Director of Revenue and Customs Prosecutions.

That merger of the RCPO and the CPS is bringing together two successful organisations creating a modern public prosecution service which will deliver an enhanced service to the public. The new service will provide excellence in specialist expert prosecution services built on the specialist expertise that already existed in both organisations, and will bring additional resilience to respond to new challenges in the future. It will be an organisation better placed to provide specialist advice and prosecution services for the cases investigated by the police, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the new UK Border Agency and HM Revenue and Customs.

The RCPO has significant expertise in prosecuting tax offences, and the merged service contains a specialist tax prosecution division under the leadership of David Green QC, working closely with the Fraud Prosecution Division and the rest of the organisation and allowing for co-ordinated prosecutions where a criminal has engaged in drugs crime, gun crime and tax crime at once. We know that criminals' activities are often very complex - they do not operate in strict silos, and therefore our prosecution response needs to be increasingly joined up.

By building on the existing strengths of the RCPO and CPS in prosecuting serious, complex frauds, and in closer working with the Serious Fraud Office and the National Fraud Authority, prosecutors will have a greater capability to identify and develop effective interventions to tackle pervasive, new and emerging trends in fraud.

A significant contribution to public confidence is the knowledge that criminals will not be able to enjoy their ill-gotten gains, and the merger of the RCPO and CPS brings together much expertise in using the legislation provided by Parliament to recover the proceeds of crime.

Just as the RCPO has developed an expert and effective service for prosecuting complex cases, working across international borders, and confiscating the assets of criminals, the CPS has shown it is possible to run a locally-facing service across England and Wales which is increasingly effective and efficient, and which also includes highly effective specialist divisions - Specialist Crime, Counter Terrorism and Organised Crime Divisions - and an International Division that works with other Whitehall partners to improve the capability of overseas jurisdictions to deal with crime before it gets to the UK.

Bringing the two prosecutors together provides a comprehensive and resilient organisation, able to tackle offending and to reduce crime through effective interventions.
In these straitened times it also provides excellent value for money for the taxpayer, enabling us to make annual savings in excess of £8m.

Europol, Eurojust, Interpol

Of course, the modern prosecutor must increasingly respond at an international level. Criminals know no borders and so our criminal justice system must be able to respond - not only in helping other nations to intervene in crime before it gets to the UK, but also to tackle international crime when it impacts on the UK. I am pleased that the Crown Prosecution Service has played a leading role in establishing the Global Prosecutors E-Crime Network which brings together prosecutors across the world to share good practice and training material.

The work that our law enforcement bodies and prosecutors carry out in partnership with Europol, Eurojust and Interpol is of increasing importance. By working in partnership with these bodies we are able to track down and prosecute international criminals.

Last year I went to the Hague visiting Eurojust and Europol where I was very impressed by the progress we are making working together across Europe. There is a first-class British team there. Eurojust brings prosecutors from each member state of the European Union plus representatives from other countries working together with Europol and national police forces to address cross border crime. I want to tell you about one of the cases we explored when I was there

A Belgian investigation, now at the prosecution stage, concerned credit card skimming fraud on a European wide scale running to tens of millions of Euros, with wider involvement in Australia and Canada. Present at the co-ordination meeting for this case were teams of police and prosecutors from Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Romania, the United Kingdom and Canada. Europol officers were also in attendance to offer analytical support. Belgium had previously issued a Letter of Request to the UK (and an identical request to the Republic of Ireland) to trace and interview "Gerry" who may live in Northern Ireland or the Republic, who may or may not drive a black BMW, and who might use one of two unsubscribed pay-as-you-go mobile telephone numbers. The UK Police officers present advised the meeting that, despite best efforts, Gerry had not been found! At that point the Spanish delegation interrupted to say, "We know Gerry. His full name is Gerry X and his parents live at address Y. His full passport number is Z. And if I remember rightly, they said His mother's maiden name is B". The value for money and efficiency in bringing together the right people at the right time are obvious. If they had not got together, they would never have discovered the need for this information - and I am reliably informed that it is not just the Spanish helping us - we have helped them too!

The Quintet

None of us know the importance of information until we bring it together. I thought there was more we could do, so together with the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Justice, we are also working to strengthen our alliances against international crime at a strategic level. Last year I held the inaugural meeting of the Quintet - a meeting with my four counterparts in the United States of America, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. We recognised the value of sharing lessons learned across common law countries and working together on the challenges that we all face in tackling international crime. We agreed to meet annually, to work together more closely to promote cooperation on legal frameworks at the international level, and to coordinate action across relevant agencies against organised crime, cybercrime, terrorism and perpetrators of genocide. But we are also going to do work on domestic violence and of youth crime.

The future

We've come a long way since 1986, and, indeed, since 2000 - but what of the future? Looking ahead, prosecutors are clear about their role and purpose in the 21st Century, right at the heart of the fight against crime.

Crime reduction

In leading the fight against crime, by

• providing increased prosecution involvement in the development of crime reduction strategies and policies,
• providing unique insight for cutting edge innovation such as "design against crime" - for example,
• chip and pin to reduce credit card fraud
• immobilising cars
• reducing the ability to use stolen mobiles phones by disabling SIM cards
• changing the lighting in civic spaces and making other environmental changes together with town and country planners so we design out crime from our areas
• identifying hot spots
• Professor Shepherd's work in Cardiff on reducing glass available in pubs to reduce anti-social behaviour incidences, as well as his work on post-traumatic stress disorder and domestic violence means we can save lives and reduce injuries.
• early intervention work and Family Intervention Programmes - I just visited the FIP in Brighton, where they are working with some of the most vulnerable families and early intervention is working - Anti social behaviour levels are down by 89%
• setting the framework for decisions on whether it is in the public interest to commence a criminal investigation with a view to prosecution or some other outcomes falling short of prosecution to solve crime problems.where investigators or regulators have powers to use a range of civil sanctions,
• Setting the strategic direction for prosecuting fraud. The merger of RCPO and the CPS has enabled the prosecution of tax and other types of fraud to be brought together for the first time - after all, criminals do not draw such nice distinctions.

The National Fraud Authority has recently launched Action Fraud, the National Fraud Reporting Centre which gives victims of fraud the most up-to-date information and advice that is available. Action Fraud has been operational for 12 weeks and is crucial to the success of the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) .

The profile of Action Fraud is increasing and the public and small businesses are becoming more aware of how to report fraud. The consequent increase in frauds being reported will enable enhanced analysis by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau leading to stronger enforcement, prevention and detection, which will be a greater deterrent to fraudsters. The NFIB is now collecting and analysing a lot of important data which will have a big impact on the investigation of fraud.

The NFIB is already making a difference in the analysis and dissemination of intelligence data which will help us combat fraud.
What initially seemed to be a series of low level frauds across the country is revealed to be a highly organised network. The bureau can help identify where it is being organised from and give the local police force the means to take swift and effective action.

Criminals often target those that are vulnerable. This work now enables us to better protect them. It is a great example of the counter fraud community working in partnership to make the UK a more hostile environment for fraudsters.

Leading improvement in the Criminal Justice System
Prosecutors will draw on their increasing status and confidence to influence and lead improvements to the criminal justice system as a whole, so it operates more as a service, and so that together they respond swiftly, efficiently and effectively to new challenges ahead.

Some of those challenges are already clear:

• the need for out-of-court disposals to be consistently applied and publicly transparent;
• the need for effective listing of cases in court so that all our time and energy - and that of victims and witnesses - are effectively used; and
• the need to recognise that the Crown Court is predominantly a sentencing court and therefore to ensure that its procedures are designed to deal effectively and quickly with those who plead guilty.

But the focus cannot - and is not - all on the big strategic issues. As I said at the beginning, the Crown Prosecution Service is a nationally accountable but locally delivered service.

Community Prosecutors
Prosecutors also have a critical role to play in engaging with communities and the public and securing confidence. The Crown Prosecution Service is already a beacon in Whitehall for its approach to equality and diversity, recognised for prosecution decisions free from bias, increased public confidence and workforce diversity at all levels.

Prosecutors continue to have a pivotal role to play in ensuring that their decisions and those of others in the criminal justice service are taken without bias.
Last year we announced that we would be rolling out community prosecutors, who will engage with their local communities so that they know the types of crime that cause most local concern and are able to take the public's views into account in their decisions and in the information they place before the courts.

Community prosecutors will learn lessons in the way they handle cases, including from local Hate Crime Panels, who comprise members of local communities and who have experience of supporting victims and witnesses of hate crime. And the community prosecutor approach will allow the public prosecution service to ensure that our criminal laws and procedures are relevant, practical and effective - and based on the real experiences of those who work in the criminal justice service and, just as importantly, to identify which offences are no longer relevant in today's society.

Above all, Community Prosecutors will be an integral part of what a modern public prosecution service does. The public rightly expect a public prosecution service which is visible, accountable and responsive to community concerns. Community Prosecutors - as a natural evolution in the development of the prosecutor's role - are key to delivering that. But this isn't about creating new roles or extra burdens, its about re-defining the ethos which underpins what prosecutors do. Prosecutors are adapting to meet the demands of a changing landscape, and I am confident that they will continue to do so in the future.

CPS Derbyshire Schools Project

This CPS Derbyshire project is a genuine example of how something which starts off small - and importantly, with those who work in a local setting - can develop. That the CPS now have an ambitious national schools project is testament to our ability to identify what works, to hone it, and to give it the opportunity to take root on a bigger scale.

This project had small beginnings: in 2007, CPS Derbyshire in conjunction with Derbyshire County Council Local Authority developed 2 interactive lessons to deliver to Key Stage 3 & 4 (11-16) year pupils and has grown so much since. We are now in a position to roll this out on a national basis.

This interactive session forms part of the mandatory national Citizenship Curriculum the purpose of which is to equip pupils with the knowledge and skills needed for effective and democratic participation. It helps pupils become informed, active citizens. How does it do it?:

• Teaching pupils about their rights, responsibilities, duties and freedoms and about laws, justice and democracy.
• Encouraging respect for different national, religious and ethnic identities.
• Enabling pupils to learn how society has changed and how it continues to change in the UK, Europe and the wider world.
• Helping young people to develop their decision-making and critical skills.
• Developing the ability to argue a case.
• We were able to give 13 year olds argue and act out a case of a recent visit. The first tst if evidential and second is the public interest. It taught them an important lesson. They came alive with what justice does.

Core quality standards

We have learned that transparency is key to building public confidence. The statutory prosecutors are accountable through me to Parliament for the service they provide. The other side of the coin is that the public must know what quality of service they should expect.

Conclusion

The criminal justice system is underpinned by the rule of law and respect for human rights is right at the heart of modern democracy and who we are as a country. A modern public prosecution service - focused on protecting the public by reducing crime, delivering justice and supporting victims and witnesses - is at the centre of everything we do.

The service I aspire us to be at 2020 will also need to be cosmopolitan. It must build alliances and work in partnership across the globe. Just as criminals and their networks know no borders, so must prosecutors build even more effective networks, collaborate with their counterparts and using our collective knowledge and skill to out-manoeuvre the criminals who are conspiring all the time.

Fair, fearless and effective; open, honest and transparent; protective, supportive, networked but, above all, independent: these are the qualities that the public has a right to expect of its public prosecution service.

Public prosecutors are determined to meet those expectations.

Thank you.