The director of public prosecutions has formally described ’as inaccurate’ the suggestion that the Crown Prosecution Service ‘deliberately [shrinks] the font’ in which prosecution evidence is printed to limit the amount claimable by defence solicitors.

Sir Christopher Bellamy QC, who led the independent criminal legal aid review, told the House of Commons justice select committee in January that ‘senior officials at the CPS’ had said that they ‘deliberately shrink the font of the pages served in order to reduce the page count’.

However, Max Hill QC has denied that is the case in a letter published by the committee last week, saying that ‘this is neither CPS policy nor practice’ and noting that Bellamy has since ‘clarified that his comments were driven by anecdotal evidence picked up from his many engagements with the defence community during his review’.

‘Whilst we understand the concerns expressed by some defence practitioners, the approach they describe is inaccurate,’ Hill said. ‘It is not, and has never been, CPS policy to reduce the font size on evidential material to minimise page counts. Whilst remuneration to defence practitioners is based in part on the papers we serve, our approach seeks neither to affect nor influence the basis of those payments.

‘The CPS does produce a range of documents in preparing cases for service, such as indexes, witness and exhibit lists, etc. We are not, however, responsible for the formatting of evidential material produced by investigative bodies, such as the police. Nor are we resourced to reformat material already supplied to us.

‘Reducing font size in the way described would therefore generate additional and unnecessary work – of no benefit to either the CPS or our [criminal justice system] stakeholders, particularly at a time when all parts of the [criminal justice system] must work together to resolve issues, including the caseload which has built up during the pandemic.’

 

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