Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

2. What priorities the Crown Prosecution Service has set during the comprehensive spending review period.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. What priorities the Crown Prosecution Service has set during the comprehensive spending review period.

[The Solicitor-General (Mr Edward Garnier)]

The priorities are to provide a prosecution service of the highest quality, informed by its core quality standards, published in April 2010, which set the measures by which the CPS is judged by itself and others; to provide a more streamlined and efficient service, for example by making good use of all available technology; and, by working with the police and the courts, to eliminate unnecessarily bureaucratic systems, while at all times promoting justice.

[The Solicitor-General]

I do not know whether that is a direct result of cost pressures, but I, too, have raised this very matter with the CPS, and we are looking into it with some care.

[Gavin Shuker]

The cost pressures on the CPS over the coming period are leading it to prioritise cases such as those involving serious domestic or sexual offences. What cases will it have to de-prioritise to achieve those aims?

[The Solicitor-General]

In all prosecuting decisions, the CPS will look at the prosecutors code to see whether there is sufficient evidence and whether it is in the public interest to prosecute. It is not a question of picking one type of crime and not picking another.