Keir Starmer QC HARDtalk

Welcome that too HARDtalk. I Stephen Sackur. His English justice all it

is cracked up to the? Today, I will put that question to Keir Starmer,

the top barrister who has stepped down after five years as the

Director of Public Prosecutions, in effect of the chief prosecutor in

England and Wales. Are the pillars of this country's judicial system,

the Lord and the courts, really fit for purpose? -- the law and the

courts. Keir Starmer, welcome to our talk.

Thank you. You have just let one of the most important positions inside

the English legal system. Would it be fair to say that you have left

that system in disarray? Identity that would be fair. I think that

there are number of quite difficult issues which I had to confront as

director of public prosecutions. We dealt with them as best we could. I

would not accept disarray. There are always difficulties. There is an

unprecedented strike from criminal lawyers. Talk of cuts to the Crown

Prosecution Service which go beyond what most lawyers seem to regard as

safe. That does suggest that the system itself is creaking. While I

was in the DPP, we did take significant cuts to the Crown

Prosecution Service. 27.5%. More than quarter of the Budget. Another

5.5% to go in 2015 -16. Significant cuts. To some extent, it has been

possible to take those cuts and... I have been clear that there will come

a point when no further cuts can be sustained. We are very close to that

point. That point is already here, isn't it? One senior QC who recently

retired said that the deeper the cuts by the Crown Prosecution

Service, the more tomorrow prosecutors have become and the

faster prosecutors have fled. The system is imploding. He said that

months ago. I do not accept his depiction of the situation. We have

taken significantly cuts. We have managed those. Did you protest to

the government about the scale of those cuts? You say that we are

close to the edge. Did you say to them, David Cameron, Osborne, the

Treasury, did you say that you are running a great risk? I made my

position clear. My position has been that the services taken all the cuts

it can sustain. Anything else puts at risk the service that it is

capable of delivering. Is said to me that there is another 5% to come

after 2015. Those cuts have been planned for. Those cuts were known

and sometime ago. We have reached the point now where I do say that no

further cuts are sustainable to the criminal justice system. Point here

is that this matters. Some will say that lawyers fees may go down a bit

and who would worry? Perhaps we should all worry about that if it

means that the quality of legal representation goes down and if, for

example, it means that solicitors who are no longer pay for the actual

work that they do will be more inclined to advise clients that they

should just plead guilty because it may not be in the client's interest

but it would be in the economic interest of a solicitor. That is

real cause for concern. This is about access to justice. Legal aid

is for those who cannot afford representation to have it. One of

the most fundamental printable of English law. The removal on the

civil side is a cause for concern. On the criminal side, the rate at

which people are... You tell me this is serious but for five years,

especially in the most recent two-year period, had sat there and

are supervised these major changes. I had the responsibility for the

fees paid to the defence which is what the current dispute is about. I

had responsibility for the fees paid on the prosecution side and the

reductions we negotiated were far less than on the defence side. I

made that point to the government. We ought to have basic equality

between the prosecution and defence. If you upset the balance, it is not

good for the criminal justice system. The concern here is not so

much over the pounds and p that earned on a daily basis. It that the

quality is affected if you reduce the fees. People are not coming in

to do criminal law for the future. You all risk in five or ten years

time, is a 2-tiered system. That is a cause for concern. You have also

suggested. It is an important point. You have suggested that sooner or

later in this climate, politicians will have to talk about what you

actually want your criminal justice system to do. I.e., would have to

withdraw or at least downsize what it does in certain areas of law and

law enforcement and prosecution. What can give, in that case? My

position has been this: I readily accept that cuts have been made

across all government departments and you cannot immunise Vikram

justice system. We have now reached the point where no more cuts can be

taken without affecting the quality of the system. -- you cannot

immunise the criminal justice system. How can you reduce the money

that the system costs? I want to look at how the system is run. What

goes into the courts? You assistance in courts? Yes. You would have to

recategorised certain kinds of offences, wouldn't you? Lots of

minor cases going to the magistrates and lower courts which simply do not

need to be there. You do not need to convene a court to decide some of

these issues that are being decided in the country every day. I would

look again at what goes into court. Is what sort of offences you believe

the future should not, need not go through the courts? Whole category

of offences in the lower courts where people plead guilty to minor

offences. They plead guilty by post so they don't even have to turn up

and so the offence is trivial. Yet the court convened. For my part, I

would look again, taking all of those out of the system altogether.

I would also want to step back and look at the way the default system

is set up in the court. I'm trying to be specific about crimes. What

specific, minor, drugs crimes for example? What about theft? The

low-level theft? Are you saying that these sorts of offences in future

perhaps need to be to a certain extent shoved under the carpet

because we can't afford the court time? Not under that carpet but

there are alternatives. We have restorative justice schemes in this

country whereby offenders and victims get together and outcome can

be properly put forward. Those schemes are very good. There is some

suggestion that the victims are far happier with the outcomes in my

accounts is -- minor cases than going to court. It is a matter of

looking at the cases and how we are processing these cases. That is the

future in the context of the economic climate. Putting aside the

economic summit, we should look at how the system since I failed in

recent years in big way. One of the most recent seems to be the way the

has failed to offer the right sort of redress to victims, in particular

victims who are vulnerable. An thinking of victims of sex crimes,

abuse crimes, it doesn't seem to be system which works of those people.

This is a real cause for concern. The concerned -- conclusion I

reached after five years is that the more vulnerable you are as a victim,

the less able the criminal justice system is to protect you. That is a

very significant... That is a shocking indictment. These that is

true today as it was five years ago. What did you do about it? Some

progress was made in those five years. Certainly in issues such as

child sexual abuse. I made it clear that they needed to be a radical

change of position. I worked hard with a number of individuals and

groups including the police to change the approach. Let's be clear.

I think that this is so important. You are saying that on your watch,

the system that let down the most vulnerable victims of terrible

crimes? The problem is that our system was essentially created and

developed over the last 200 years as a straight fight between the state,

the prosecutor, and the defence. Nobody thought about the rights of

victims until very recently, the last 20 years. Since then, we have

had a number of old Tom is fully can bus from a victim perspective, the

system is not fit for purpose. -- a number of bolt-ons. I realise this

is a serious conclusion to reach. But talk about victims, especially

of domestic violence or sexual violence, they don't come forward.

They do not come forward because they do not think that the system is

capable of assisting. If they do come forward, they generally say

that they would never do it again. I have seen quotes from women as

recently as a few years ago saying that they felt crucified by the

system, feeling that they got no support whatsoever from the Crown

Prosecution Service. This is a serious conclusion. It is not

necessarily about individuals but the way the whole system is set up.

The more I can to the view that our system is built on assumptions about

the way that victims will behave and actually those assumptions do not

withstand scrutiny. That is the product of many years of our system

operating as adults. It is not necessarily about individuals. They

did say all this while I was DPP. I tried to do about it. I want to

resist the temptation to say that this is the first time I said these

things. It is an important area and you had to deal, towards the tail

end of your watch, in your job as DPP with the fallout from the Jimmy

Savile scandal and people around the world will remember that Jimmy

Savile, we now know, was responsible for hundreds of crimes, sexual

crimes, against offering young people as young as eight years old.

I know that you launched a review which has now concluded that the

police and the prosecution service could have prosecuted him given the

information available at the time but they did not. It comes back your

point that it is because of victims who were prepared to justify the --

testified were taken not seriously enough and unjustified caution. Can

you say that things would be fundamentally different today? Yes.

We published the report on the Jimmy Savile cases and immediately set

about a series of around people be discussions with all sorts of

individuals including victims and victims of support groups and we

made changes and published the guidelines before I left office. --

round table. Having come to the conclusion that these individuals

are let down, I tried to do something on my watch in relation to

prosecutors by engaging in that process straight up. It is only the

beginning. You say it is only the beginning and now of course you have

signed up with the Labour Party to work on a far-reaching review which

you say will, within a year, produce a putative law for victims. A

victims' law. What would that say to ensure that victims' rights are

never trodden upon? The first thing to recognise is that it is a

victims' law. We have had a criminal justice system from long-time and

have laws covering what the prosecution can do, what defence can

do and the rights and entitlements thereof but never before in

victims' law. With a victims' law, the best consensus should be strive

for. It ought to be an enduring piece of legislation. Although the

Labour Party is the only political party committed to a law, I would

hope that any such law would be passed with the broadest possible

appeal and support, for obvious reasons. It would be in the nature

of a constitutional document. It is interesting that he we are in 2014

talk about a victims' law from the first time in a crippled justice

system. That reinforces my point that victims' rights are only just

catching up in our system. Looking at witnesses and their rights. You

will not be surprised to note, the case of Nigella Lawson, it caused

worldwide interest, as the famous television chef. She was involved in

a case because on trial were two sisters in devolved as house

keepers. -- involved as house keepers. She in fact had been put on

trial. She said, my experience as a witness was deeply disturbing. I did

me civic duty only to be vilified without the right to respond. Do you

think she has a case? I think she does. If you ask most people what

they thought about the way victims and witnesses are treated in the

criminal justice, they would say not properly. The Crown prosecution fail

in the wake it supported or did not support Nigella Lawson as a brick

is? -- a witness. The defence beat the case. The job of the prosecution

is to prosecute. Obviously, the resort role looking and supporting

victims and witnesses. Would you say they failed in that instant? It was

after I'd left. So you are free to comment. At the principal point is

that the prosecution cannot represent the interests of

witnesses. I am not saying they should not put in place protections

and be supportive but it is not as straightforward as saying it failed.

What a concerned about in this bait is the greatest temptation that

whenever there is a problem to point the finger at an individual, group,

a body. Sometimes that is legitimate that it lets us of the book about

the bigger problem which is a criminal justice system does not

work well for victims. One simple question, should witnesses be

allowed their legal representatives in court? I do not think it would be

the way forward but there needs to be a shift in the way we deal with

wit this is a big terms. I want to go to a slightly different theme,

the way the law fails to keep up with social attitudes of the time.

The instant I want to look at is drugs. Reflections from view on the

way you did your child in the way the law worked in terms of the use

of cannabis. It is illegal to possess cannabis. It was redefined

as a place be drug in 2009 when you were in office, against the advice

of Council on the misuse of drugs. I wonder if you think it is time to

make a fundamental reassessment of how we treat use of possession of

cannabis in this country. This is a question that comes back from time

to time. I am not short now is the better time... You can look in South

America, Colorado, Holland. Ferrari temples which suggest that we all

know can people in particular but frankly, millions of people in this

country, at technically committing a criminal offence and there is a

sense in which because of the way it works, the law has been brought into

disrepute. Broadly speaking, in our system, the more serious offences

are the one prosecuted. Simple possession of drugs is sometimes

prosecuted but very often people... It depends on where you live and the

mood of the police officer - is that appropriate? It is important to have

discussions. One of the issues that I tried to tackle is how that

discretion is exercise. Make sure everybody understood the way in

which the police and prosecution approach it. You are still talking

about the prosecution is handled. I am wondering, in the longer to, the

direction is towards the controlled legalisation of some drugs? It may

be. There is a place for debate about it. Conclusions will follow

that debate. Yes or no? Is that the way you see it in terms of direction

of travel? It is in sensible to prosecute everybody in possession of

drugs. And that is why people are diverted every day in our system. We

want to talk to about Edward Snowden and his reservations about mass

electronic surveillance undertaken by the US and the UK. Do you see

Edward Snowden as a whistleblower? Yes, I think he hasn't brought to

the attention of the world information and practices that were

not otherwise known so in that sense, he is a whistleblower. You do

not see him in any way as a criminal because on your watch, there were

Tory MPs calling for him to be prosecuted, also suggesting that the

Guardian newspaper, here in the UK, had aided and abetted terrorism,

committed eight terrorism offence according to Julian Smith and people

's I have to tread very carefully because the reason a criminal

investigation ongoing and that started last I was a DPP. I do not

think that while one is a whistleblower one has not done

anything wrong. Usually they have. The question is what they have

achieved. Is that the greater good than what they have done wrong. It

usually involves leaked information. So it is maybe not germane to

discuss whether he will face any prosecution in this country because

he is eight US citizen. But the role of the government and journalists.

You think the Guardian should also face trial on anti- terror charges?

I am not in a position to answer that question. I have not seen

anything the Guardian has published that will bring it to that. On the

face of it, looking at what has been published, do not think anybody

would be suggesting that the Guardian should be prosecuted for

offences. A final dig thought, there are powerful voices inside the

Conservative party right now who wants the British government of

Britain to withdraw from the European Court of human rights and

all it brings with it in terms of its power to intercede in British

law. Would that be wise? No, it would not be wise. It would be a big

mistake. The right set out in the Human Rights Act universally

accepted around the world as minimum standards. Almost every country

subscribes to them. The idea that we cannot live with them is

far-fetched. But this is politics as well as the law. Minister Damian

Green said British law must be made in Britain that is way to restore

respectability to human rights. He has a powerful elliptical point. It

is made in Britain. It is a piece of legislation passed by our

Parliament. It could just as easily be decided not to be bound by the

European Convention of human rights. But it is not want to be bound by

universal standards that the rest of the world respects and bytes? That

is a pretty proposition. We have a Supreme Court, why should not the

British Supreme Court decide fundamental matters of British and?

It does not make sense to British people. It does. It is out Supreme

Court. It take into account what the European Court has said that art --

they are the words, take into account. That is at the settlement

into the legislation passed into Parliament. It is straightforward

and legitimate. Before we rush to an end or repeal the Human Rights Act,

I would ask the simple question, what all which group has benefited

most from human right act? It is the terms, not criminals. It is

important we do not overlook the real achievements of this act. We

have to end there. Keir Starmer, thank you for being on HARDtalk.

Thank you. The risk of flooding continues to

diminish across the UK. Inland could see further land and river flooding.

Further heavy rain to come. There will be fewer showers and lighter