‘We must believe the applicant’

The Criminal Cases Review Commission has been criticised for rejecting too many applications, including some from people who were later shown to be innocent. Its new Chair, Dame Vera Baird, tells Inside Time she will take a different approach

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. It was criticised for its failures in the case of Andrew Malkinson, in prison for 17 years for a crime he did not commit, and its poor record of referring cases to the appeal courts. Chair Helen Pitcher resigned in January, then Chief Executive Karen Kneller followed her out of the door.

Dame Vera Baird began work in June as the new Interim Chair of the miscarriages of justice watchdog, appointed for an 18-month term. Last month Inside Time interviewed her about her aims.

She describes herself as “a defence barrister by training. That is my approach to this task. I hope to inspire the organisation to have the same attitude as me, looking at every case with the same question: is this a miscarriage of justice? And not stop investigating until we are sure it is not.”

Dame Vera’s distinguished career as a barrister included representing striking miners, peace campaigners, and battered women. For a time she worked in the Chambers of Michael Mansfield, who represented the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four. “The only time I prosecuted was on behalf of Greenpeace,” she says. 

In 2001 she was elected as a Labour MP, and in 2007 became Solicitor General, a post she held until 2010 when Labour was defeated and she lost her seat. After Parliament, she served two terms as the Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner. In 2017 she was awarded a DBE for services to women and equality. In 2019 she was made Victims’ Commissioner, resigning in September 2022 saying that then-justice secretary Dominic Raab wanted a “puppet on a string”. Is there a conflict between being Victims’ Commissioner and her role at the CCRC? “On the contrary. Both involve getting justice.”

We discuss “working from home”. Ms Kneller had astonished MPs on the all-party Justice Select Committee by saying she only attended the CCRC head office in Birmingham once or twice a month. “I was taken aback by that,” says Dame Vera. “It is better for staff to get into the office. As a barrister I found that if you were puzzling over a case, you could turn and talk to colleagues and get somebody else’s thoughts. During COVID, seeing people in stressful work such as rape support, holding sensitive conversations via Teams with children running around, was unsatisfactory.

“Everybody is on contracts permitting working from home and I am not going to re-employ them on different terms. I have spoken to case review managers, the senior exec team, all commissioners and senior non execs, half the group leaders. Nearly all want to attend the office more, meet others, and get training. Not just staff days and the Christmas party.

“Case review managers are in groups of six; we need to get them in together. We have people from all over Britain who cannot come in regularly but will encourage a method that gets the best out of working from home and office.

“I believe that it helps I am a criminal lawyer and intend to do casework. They know I will be looking at their work and they must do it positively. I am there to give advice. I believe morale is improving. I am reasonably confident we have very good people raring to press on.”

The CCRC issued a statement saying it was reviewing historic applications to challenge endless IPP or DPP sentences imposed on people who were, at the time, young adults or juveniles. Why just young people?

“The Court of Appeal is sympathetic to young people who got IPPs,” Dame Vera explains. “The principle is the same for all, but appeals from young people have been approved. These are on the basis the sentence is disproportionate, not just it doesn’t exist any more. The Court of Appeal has opened up a chink and we must use that opening. We have created a team for this.”

What about Joint Enterprise? “On this, the Court of Appeal is in a sort of impasse and isn’t opening the doors it should,” says Dame Vera. “There seems to be a line that the court has taken and cannot get themselves off. We will look to find the best case that shows the folly of that line and hope that opens the doors to others.”

The CCRC has not yet created a team for joint enterprise cases as it has done with IPP, but Dame Vera points to how verdicts appear inconsistent – “There are people prosecuted because they were on the scene, or share interests in music or clothes, yet some are acquitted, others not.”

I ask about the CCRC’s remit, ‘the test’, which says cases should only be referred to the Court of Appeal if the court’s judges are likely to quash the conviction or change the sentence. Should the test be altered? “I don’t like the test, but that is not the problem,” says Dame Vera. “If you have a miscarriage of justice, you send it [to the appeal court]. Most people work through it. 

“I have been assured there is no miscarriage of justice in the files they couldn’t refer to or on because of the test, so I have an open mind.”

I ask whether people who have had cases rejected by the CCRC can come back, and Dame Vera emphatically says “Yes”. I ask if she would be allocated additional resources, and just as emphatically she replies: “I have certainly asked for that!” 

Dame Vera was adamant about the approach needed by her team: “When I was a barrister, I would not read the defence statement at all, but study the prosecution case carefully and look for points that perhaps had been embellished, then narrow my focus. I want our case workers to look at each application believing it is a miscarriage of justice, and look for flaws, statements invented or added to, leaving the applicant’s statement to one side as the person who completed the form is not a lawyer. We must believe the applicant, look at the whole case and see it through until we know it is invalid. Defence barristers do not assume the police are telling the whole truth or being accurate. They may not be inaccurate on purpose, but you call them into question. I want my caseworkers to do that. Of course not all cases will go forward. 

“Some people get ‘case hardened’ because so many cases come in where there is nothing that you can do, so people look at a case and just think ‘Here is another hopeless one.’ But you have to go through them all. We are not there to tick a box and say ‘He looks like he was rightly convicted.’ Study each case.” 

I ask if caseworkers meet applicants. “Case review managers meet legal teams; I don’t know of them speaking directly with applicants. It seems a good thing to do. I am setting up a group with our Outreach workers to go into prisons to explain our work.

“The Commissioners and I are going to look at letters we send to those whose cases we cannot pursue, to give a full explanation letting people know we certainly looked. If the snippy letters we now send out are reflective of how we think about rejections, that needs to change.

“The CCRC should be seen as acting positively. I think sometimes we get blamed for the Court of Appeal when they get things wrong. Juries and Lord Justices do get things wrong; people deserve we get it right. We have two purposes, one to put things right when they go wrong and the other to say, does this law need changing? I am keen on both. The reason the CCRC exists is that the system will never be infallible. Nor will we, but we must make it as good as we can.”

Dame Vera ended saying: “My best contribution is leadership and a positive approach, plus my experience as a defence barrister fighting for justice. We have some good commissioners with a similar approach, and will be running the operation for the casework and no other reason.”