Last week Keir Starmer QC held a press briefing to announce the publication of a colourful little pamphlet designed to inform the public about the future of the service he leads.

The role of the prosecutor, he says, has changed since the creation of the Crown Prosecution Service in 1986 and ‘radical rethinking’ is required to deal effectively with the challenges of the 21st century.

According to the leaflet, the first challenge is to clarify the role and purpose of the prosecutor. And a ‘fundamental shift in ethos and approach’ is needed to deliver the highest possible standards in the modern environment.

This modern environment requires the introduction of ‘publicly facing core quality standards’. That means the introduction of a set of published minimum standards and time limits to which the public can expect prosecutors to conform to.

Perhaps to underline the above-mentioned change, the leaflet is called The Public Prosecution Service – Setting the Standard. Starmer said he wasn’t about to announce a name change, as David Blunkett did in 2004. But there are few references in the booklet to the CPS – it is the phrase ‘public prosecution service’ (PPS) that is repeated.

Shifting the emphasis to underline the fact that the organisation prosecutes on behalf of the public is not the only change Starmer wants to see. He wants his proactive, effective, transparent public prosecution service to be part of a criminal justice service, not a criminal justice system.

But what is the evolutionary process required to transform a system into a service, or is it just semantics? And does it really matter whether it’s the CPS or the PPS that prosecutes people, so long as the Queen doesn’t mind and they do a decent job?