Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an assessment of the adequacy of the training required of investigators employed by statutory bodies with the authority to undertake prosecutions external to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Private prosecutions, which are started by a private individual or an entity who is not acting on behalf of the police or other prosecuting authority, are an important and necessary part of the justice system. There is value in victims of crime being able to bring their own prosecutions and not every offence worth prosecuting can be prosecuted by the CPS, SFO or other public authority.

Any private prosecutor must comply with the Criminal Procedure Rules 2020 which sets out the rules for bringing a prosecution. All legal duties on prosecutors regarding their conduct of a case apply regardless of whether it is a public or a private prosecution, including the rules on disclosure and the law of evidence. As outlined in the Private Prosecutors’ Association voluntary Code for Private Prosecutors, investigators who are tasked with obtaining evidence should seek, where possible, to comply with the same codes of practice and guidance as apply to law enforcement investigators.

Whilst the Government believes that private prosecutions are an important and necessary part of the judicial system, we are examining the wider question of private prosecutions and have committed to looking again at the Justice Select Committee’s recommendations in their 2020 report as part of this work, including the recommendation to introduce an inspection regime for organisations which bring significant numbers of private prosecutions to ensure investigations and prosecutions are subject to the same standards as their public counterparts.