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Justice Committee Oral evidence: Pre-appointment hearing for the role of HM Chief Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, HC 955 Thursday 14 January 2021 Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 14 January 2021. Watch the meeting Members present: Sir Robert Neill (Chair); Rob Butler; James Daly; Miss Sarah Dines; Maria Eagle; Kenny MacAskill; Dr Kieran Mullan; Andy Slaughter. Questions 1 - 38 Witness I: Andrew Cayley QC, Government’s preferred candidate to be Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service. Examination of witness Witness: Andrew Cayley QC. Chair: Welcome to everybody, particularly Mr Cayley, our witness today. It is good to see you. Shortly, we will move into the formal proceedings, but at the beginning, as Members will be aware, all members of the Committee have to make a declaration of their interests on each occasion. As usual, I will start. I am a non-practising barrister and a consultant to a law firm. Miss Dines: I am a practising barrister, but I have not taken any cases since my election. Rob Butler: Prior to my election I was the magistrate member of the Sentencing Council and a non-executive director of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. Maria Eagle: I am a non-practising solicitor. Kenny MacAskill: I have nothing to declare. Q1 Chair: Kenny, you are a non-practising solicitor. Andy Slaughter, who I hope will be with us shortly, is a non-practising barrister. To save waiting, I will get that in for him. Mr Cayley, welcome, and thank you for coming to give evidence to us. You are here as the Government’s preferred candidate for the post of chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service. We have read your very detailed CV and application; we have that in front of us. I wonder if you could just help us with this, to start with. You have had a long career as a prosecutor. That is self-evident; you have been involved in the field. Why, having held a number of quite important public posts, did you then decide, “Well, let’s go for yet another one,” and move into the field of being an inspector rather than running organisations, as you have indicated to us? Andrew Cayley: Good afternoon, Sir Robert, and members of the Committee. Thank you very much indeed for hearing me this afternoon. Directly in answer to your question, one of the areas that has always interested me, both in the work that I did overseas—you have seen from my curriculum vitae what I did—and at the Service Prosecuting Authority where I was the chief prosecutor, is the improvement of how organisations work. I will not go through it because it is evident from my CV, but I spent a lot of time reforming the SPA in various areas. We can go through that if you want. I found that very rewarding. I saw the outcomes of things that often took several years to come to fruition, but at the end of it you see a better organisation. Obviously, I had some dealings with the CPS and the Director of Public Prosecutions because we had a jurisdiction that overlapped. I was interested in that organisation as well. I now have nearly 25 years’ experience of prosecuting both internationally and domestically. As a prosecutor, one has a level of insight into these matters that perhaps people who have not prosecuted do not. I am not saying that I have a monopoly of wisdom but that having actually done it myself I know what the challenges are. Does that answer your question? Q2 Chair: Yes. What do you think you can bring to the inspectorate’s role that is different? What particular skillsets would you say that you want to bring to being an inspector, perhaps on the basis of that experience? Andrew Cayley: One of my great strengths is dealing with people. I think a lot of this job is about dealing with people and talking to staff on the frontline of the organisation. In the SPA and the international organisations where I worked, I always tried to consult people and to consult all of the stakeholders to improve things. I have done that at the SPA. I involved the judiciary—the military, the service judiciary—in reform. I involved the military courts services in reform. Obviously, I involved the prosecutors in my own organisation, the military police. I found that that way of doing things, bringing people together, actually leads to the best results because then you bring everybody along with you. I think that is a particular strength that I have. It is vital in this work. A lot of the inspectorate’s reports are based on statistics, but they are also based on speaking with people and finding out their experiences of working in the system. That is predominantly what I would like to bring to the role. It is difficult in the current circumstances, but we have all this technology that can make it a little bit easier. Q3 Chair: How would you draw the distinction between inspection and performance management, for example, having managed performance in your various roles in the past? Andrew Cayley: As you know—I am probably stating the obvious—the inspectorate is not a regulating body. You cannot enforce your recommendations. All the inspectorate can do is recommend, but make recommendations that are credible enough, concrete enough and clear enough that they can be utilised by the individuals who are running the systems, by yourselves as the legislature, and obviously the Executive, the Attorney General, to improve performance management. Q4 Miss Dines: Mr Cayley, can you tell us a little more about how you were recruited? Were you put forward by somebody who suggested you apply, or did you find the advertisement yourself? Tell us a little bit more about the process, please. Andrew Cayley: The Director of Service Prosecutions, which is the position that I was in prior to applying for this position, is, like the Director of Public Prosecutions, a term-limited appointment. It was for a period of five years. In the end, actually, it was extended by two years because of the service justice review that the Government wanted me to see through. As you come to the end of a term and you know that you are not going to be able to continue in that job—frankly, at the end of seven years, they really needed somebody else and not me; it needed new blood—one starts looking around for other appointments. Without going into detail, I applied for a number of appointments for which I thought I was qualified, including this public appointment. There was another public appointment I applied for, for which I was not even interviewed. I applied for the job because I was coming to the end of my term as Director of Service Prosecutions. I got this one interview. I was not interviewed for any of the other jobs. I was interviewed by an independent panel of five individuals. I knew one individual on that panel only professionally. That was the acting secretary of the Attorney General’s Office, who was the chairperson of the panel. I did not know anybody else on that panel. I can give you the names, but I do not have them to hand. Chair: We have them. Andrew Cayley: I did not know any of those individuals. I was interviewed, and I think a number of other people were interviewed as well; I do not know how many. I was notified that I was the Government’s preferred candidate after about two weeks. Q5 Chair: Did you happen to know the Attorney at all, professionally? Andrew Cayley: The current Attorney General, personally or professionally? Q6 Chair: Either. Andrew Cayley: Professionally, yes. I have met her twice because that is the individual I report to. I knew all of the Attorneys General. Q7 Chair: As you do in this type of work. Andrew Cayley: In fact, to be clear about it, there is not a legal requirement for the Director of Service Prosecutions to report to the Attorney, but a convention was established when the post was established to report to the Attorney. I think I have reported to five Attorneys General over seven years. Q8 Maria Eagle: Good afternoon, Mr Cayley. Could you tell the Committee whether you currently, or potentially, have any business, financial or other non-pecuniary interests or commitments that might give rise to a perception of a conflict of interest if you are appointed to the post? Andrew Cayley: Do I know individuals who may make it appear that I have a conflict of interest and who work within the CPS or the HMCPSI? Well, I know the Director of Public Prosecutions, but only professionally. In my prior job, I regularly met the Director of Public Prosecutions because, as I said earlier, I had an overlapping jurisdiction. I met most with Alison Saunders. I would meet her about three times a year. With the current director, yes, I knew him as a member of the Bar, but he is not a friend of mine. If I saw him in the street, I would say hello to him, but I did not know him personally. I have met him once since he was appointed, simply because of Covid. I was not having regular meetings in 2020 with the DPP. I think I spoke to him twice on the telephone, once about an interview that I was giving on BBC Radio 4 that might have affected the CPS and, the second time, to ask him to be on the panel that would select my successor.