Written question asked by Vera Baird (Labour) on Tuesday, 18 April 2006, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 24 April 2006. It was answered by Mike O'Brien (Labour) on Monday, 24 April 2006 on behalf of the Solicitor General.

Crown Prosecution Service

Question: To ask the Solicitor-General what steps he plans to take to improve the way in which the Crown Prosecution Service prepares and brings cases to court in order to achieve better value for money from magistrates court hearings.

Answer: The Crown Prosecution Service welcomed the recommendations contained in the recent National Audit Office report on the effective use of magistrates court hearings by the CPS. The CPS is already taking forward work on the recommendations, which focus on improving joint working with other criminal justice agencies, maintaining proper oversight of cases, and making more prosecutor time available for review and preparation. By their nature, each of the NAO recommendations is aimed at improving value for money.Many of the recommendations go with the grain of performance improvement activity already in train, both internally within the CPS and externally with other criminal justice partners. Chief Crown Prosecutors continue to take the lead at a local area level in setting up arrangements with the police and courts to improve the efficiency of prosecution of magistrates court cases—for example, optimising the deployment of designated caseworkers at the magistrates court, a more focused approach to case progression, and an internal CPS structural exercise seeking to get the best match between the size of police divisions and magistrates court catchment areas in order to develop a more efficient model of CPS administration for standard application across all operational units and provide proper oversight of cases.

Secondary information