LABOUR’S Shadow Attorney General has criticised the Government over a crisis in the criminal justice system caused by staff shortages at the Crown Prosecution Service.
Emily Thornberry told GB News: “They’ve lost 25% of their prosecutors in the last year.
“That means the delays in the courts which are already appalling, are only going to get worse.
“We have too many cases that are cancelled simply because there isn’t a prosecutor – and cases are taking too long to prepare to get to court.
“And the police may do the investigating, but they do it under the auspices of a prosecutor, so we need to do something about this.
In a discussion with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, she added: “Do you know that if you are the victim of a rape today, it will take on average 1,000 days for your case to come to court?
“For victims or witnesses, the delays that are happening within our court system are appalling. And the stress that people go through as a result is just something which is unconscionable, in my view.
“Justice delayed is justice denied and the Government just seems to be completely complacent about it.”
Ms Thornberry continued: “I do have a solution which we can offer to the Government today, which is that we should have things called associate prosecutors and they’re specialists in criminal law.
“We think that they should be able to step up to being full prosecutors and that will actually increase the number of prosecutors that we have by 50% and I do think that you know, now is the time when we should be putting all hands to the pump.
“We should be doing something serious about the crisis within our criminal justice system.
“The crisis runs all the way through. We don’t have enough police officers, we have too much crime, not enough people are getting caught but even those that aren’t getting caught are taking too long for their cases to be processed and get through the court system.
“So we offer this today as part of the solution to the crisis in the criminal justice system.”
Asked if the public are being put at risk, she said: “The people who prosecute these cases need to be valued and need to be supported and that’s simply not happening at the moment.
“In all the independent reviews of the Crown Prosecution Service say that they are overworked so their casework is simply far too big for them to be able to do it properly.
“The idea that we’ve lost 25% of them over the last year will just make the situation worse.
“I don’t want to be alarmist but I want to tell you the truth, which is that we have a criminal justice system which is in crisis and we have a Government that is not dealing with it seriously.”
