‘Technology is there to sift through evidence, but the right attitude is lacking’

for the mistakes of the past, Ms Saunders insisted that the introduction of safeguards meant similar mistakes would no longer occur.

But legal experts said it was inevitable some innocent people would have been wrongly convicted.

Tana Adkin QC, a member of the Criminal Bar Association’s executive committee, said police and prosecutors were more focused on believing the complainant than on obtaining justice.

She said: “We believe there may well be people in custody who should not be there. If you assume the figures in the review are accurate, then out of 3,637 cases that were examined in six weeks, 47 had disclosure issues and of those 14 people were in custody when the cases were dropped. If you extrapolate that figure over time then you have to say in all likelihood there will be people who should never have been convicted because evidence existed that would have cleared them.”

Ms Adkin dismissed the suggestion that the problem was down to the large amounts of digital evidence. She said: Liam Allan was cleared after it emerged that his accuser had sent messages detailing her rape fantasies “The technology is there. What is lacking is the right attitude and perspective.”

Liam Allan, 22, a student who was accused of six counts of rape, was cleared by a judge in December, after it emerged that his accuser had bombarded friends with hundreds of messages setting out her rape fantasies.

Days later, Isaac Itiary, 25, who was accused of raping an underage girl, walked free from court when phone messages emerged supporting his claim that the girl had claimed to be 19.

Emily Bolton, legal director of the Centre for Criminal Appeals, said: “Hundreds of individuals may be victims of disclosure failings. But the scary truth is we cannot know exactly how many because of the secrecy that surrounds police and CPS files.”

A CPS spokesman said: “There are substantive checks and balances throughout the prosecution process to ensure miscarriages of justice do not occur. All cases are kept under review but we have implemented changes to ensure disclosure is considered as early as possible so if cases need to be halted, this happens as soon as possible.”