Alison Saunders is the worst DPP in living memory
THERE are many wonderful traits that define the British. But in public life one of the most familiar and far from wonderful is our establishment’s willingness to reward failure. And it sometimes seems the greater the failure the greater the reward.
Take Alison Saunders, the soon-but-not-soon-enough-todepart Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). Ms Saunders holds one of the most elevated and important positions in the country with a pivotal role in our criminal justice system.
When she leaves in October – we still have to wait months to be rid of her – she will become a (doubtless hugely well remunerated) partner in a firm of City solicitors, on top of the £1.8 million pension pot she has built up in her £250,000-a-year job as DPP.
And yet to describe her as the most inept DPP in history does not even come close. Her tenure has seen the Crown Prosecution Service’s reputation wrecked.
Ms Saunders has been a catastrophically bad DPP whose leadership of the CPS has caused untold and entirely undeserved misery to many innocent people.
Take the handling of rape prosecutions. As she leaves office every successful prosecution for rape – and serious sex assaults – is having to be reviewed to see if all relevant evidence was disclosed to the defendants facing trial.
AT THE end of last year the prosecution of student Liam Allan was aborted after it emerged that his supposed victim had sent her friends a series of messages about her rape fantasies – messages that had not been disclosed to the defence.
And in January, another student, Oliver Mears, was cleared of rape after spending two years on bail. One leading criminal barrister told me that this non-disclosure of material is “endemic” and this casts doubt on the very basis of our justice system.
Or take Ms Saunders’s obsession with bringing respected surgeons and others to trial over female genital mutilation. In 2014 she said: “We are very keen to make sure that wherever possible we are looking at FGM cases.” The following year a jury decided in less than 30 minutes that the cases