Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

The question arose in the context of parliamentary sovereignty. What I said to the seminar was what I also said to this House on the previous Thursday, which was that the operation of the European convention on human rights and the jurisdiction of the Court are based on the UK having signed up to the convention in the late 1940s and having ratified it through Parliament, with Parliament thereby accepting the jurisdiction of the Court. It is legally open to Parliament to enact primary legislation or otherwise to withdraw from the convention if it wished to do so and if the Government wished that through Parliament. That was the point that I was making; I was simply trying to explain the legal framework under which parliamentary sovereignty works in this context. I would add that any withdrawal would not come without costs or consequences, and it is not Government policy to withdraw.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to ensure better co-ordination between the Crown Prosecution Service and police forces.

[The Solicitor-General (Mr Edward Garnier)]

The Crown Prosecution Service and the police have a close working relationship. They are working together on returning the charging of some offences to the police, eradicating duplicated work and improving communications, making greater use of information technology through the service and delivery of electronic case files and providing a better service to victims and witnesses.

[Andrew Selous]

In 2010, more than a fifth of abandoned prosecutions were because of the CPS’s failure to review cases before they came to trial, which was extremely upsetting for the victims concerned. What steps can my hon. and learned Friend take to make sure that the police and the CPS work together more collaboratively and share information so that this does not happen so much in future?