Asked by: Nicholas Brown (Independent - Newcastle upon Tyne East)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what discussions she had with relevant stakeholders prior to implementing the recent changes to the Crown Prosecution Service Director’s Guidance on Charging.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The Director’s Guidance on Charging is issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) under section 37A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The current version of the Director’s Guidance is the sixth version of Guidance that was first published in 2004.
The Director’s Guidance recognises the significant changes in the way that cases are investigated, charged, and prosecuted since the last edition was published in 2013.
Those changes include, in particular, the provisions of the 8th Edition of the Code for Crown Prosecutors published in October 2018, the Attorney General’s Guidelines on Disclosure 2020 and the revised Codes of Practice issued in 2020 under the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996.
The CPS consulted police forces through the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on the contents of the Director’s Guidance before its publication in December 2020. That consultation included the sharing of initial drafts with all police forces via the NPCC, Police and Crime Commissioners and the Senior Presiding Judge. That was followed by the establishment of a joint CPS/police working group to discuss and where appropriate amend the Director’s Guidance. A further period of consultation followed with the police before it was finalised and the DPP also personally addressed all Chief Constables directly about the changes being made in version 6 of the Director’s Guidance at an event held by the NPCC in November 2020.
Asked by: Nicholas Brown (Independent - Newcastle upon Tyne East)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many rape complainants have been prosecuted for (a) perverting the course of justice and (b) wasting police time in each criminal justice area in each year since 2010.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Crown Prosecution Service does not maintain a central record of prosecutions against rape complainants for perverting the course of justice and/or wasting police time. Obtaining this information would therefore require a manual review of individual case files which would incur a disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Nicholas Brown (Independent - Newcastle upon Tyne East)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many private prosecutions have been instigated against rape complainants in the last five years.
Answered by Robert Buckland
Private prosecutions are instigated by private individuals and the Crown Prosecution Service does not maintain a central record of the number or nature of these.