Chair comments on review of disclosure in criminal justice system

Chair's Comment

Chair of the Justice Committee, Bob Neill MP, says:

"Our major report, published in July, flagged the serious long term failures in disclosure resulting from a system under strain and insufficient focus and leadership at the Crown Prosecution Service.

Such failings compromise fair trials, causing delayed and collapsed trials, unacceptable miscarriages of justice and people being wrongly imprisoned.

Therefore, I welcome the report by the Attorney General today.

Without change we will not restore confidence in our criminal justice system.

Much of the review mirrors our inquiry and it takes into account several of the recommendations we made.

In particular, the important conclusion that current legislation is appropriate although the system is not working in practice.

I am also pleased to see mention of better training and guidance and better working practices, the commitment to greater transparency, performing disclosure obligations earlier in the process and I support the creation of a sensitive disclosure strategy document.

I look forward to seeing better data on disclosure that we can use to hold the Attorney General to account for the performance improvements he anticipates.

The report states that it does not pick up all of our recommendations so we look forward to the Government's full response to our report soon.

We had already arranged to take evidence soon from the new Attorney General and look forward to hearing more about his plans following the publication of this important report.”

Further information

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