New miscarriage of justice watchdog chair calls leadership 'unimpressive'

The watchdog that examines imaginable miscarriages of justness has "unimpressive" enactment and is "incompetent", said its caller seat arsenic she takes up her role.

Dame Vera Baird has been appointed to caput up the Criminal Case Review Commission (CCRC), which presently has serial kid slayer Lucy Letby's appeal successful its inbox.

The CCRC is an autarkic nationalist assemblage that reviews imaginable miscarriages of justness successful the transgression courts of England, Wales and Northern Ireland and refers cases to the entreaty courts.

The committee has had 4 captious reviews successful the past 10 years, which Dame Vera said "all find the aforesaid thing".

Speaking to Sky News aft her assignment was announced, she said: "They don't pass with applicants, are reluctant to situation the Court of Appeal, they look for reasons not to notation alternatively than to notation and are rather often incompetent."

Dame Vera is present charged with turning things around. She cites the illustration of Andrew Malkinson who was wrongly convicted of rape and spent 17 years successful jail, erstwhile for astir of that clip DNA grounds had emerged that could person cleared his name.

He had applied 3 times to the CCRC but was rejected doubly connected cost-benefit grounds.

It's 1 of respective cases starring to calls for "root and branch" betterment of the CCRC from the Justice Committee, which said the watchdog "has shown a singular inability to larn from its ain mistakes".

An enquiry by Chris Henley KC besides recovered that lawsuit workers missed aggregate opportunities to assistance Malkinson.

The erstwhile chair, Helen Pitcher, was forced to resign successful January and main enforcement Karen Kneller told the committee of MPs they needed a beardown replacement.

Ms Kneller said successful April: "We don't person that figurehead and without that figurehead I deliberation it is hard for the organisation."

But that replacement did not deliberation overmuch of her grounds to MPs.

"I didn't find her impressive," said Dame Vera, who volition beryllium gathering her caller workfellow adjacent week.

"I was truly rather acrophobic about, archetypal of all, the benignant of reasonably sketchy mode successful which she adjacent allowed that they got it incorrect successful Malkinson, and these assertions that she was atrocious that radical lone judged them by the mistakes, and they each took them precise seriously, but really they were different doing a precise bully job.

"My fearfulness is that the cognition successful the lawsuit of Malkinson and others, points to determination being an cognition that's not positive, that's not mission-driven, that is not go-getter successful different cases. So, are they getting it done properly?"

A period later, a committee of MPs said Ms Kneller's presumption was nary longer tenable.

Committee president Andy Slaughter said: "As a effect of our concerns regarding the show of the CCRC and the unpersuasive grounds Karen Kneller provided to the committee, we nary longer consciousness that it is tenable for her to proceed arsenic main enforcement of the CCRC."

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In February, the CCRC received an exertion from Lucy Letby, the erstwhile caregiver convicted of murdering 7 babies and attempting to execution 7 others. It's a high-profile, analyzable case, arriving astatine a important infinitesimal of flux.

Asked if she thought the CCRC could woody with it, Dame Vera said: "Remember I'm rather caller to it. It volition request complexity. It volition request a team. It volition request the readiness to committee reports, I would conjecture from what's been said astir the deficiency of technological worth successful immoderate of the things that were asserted.

"So it's going to beryllium a precise analyzable task."

In the Baird Inquiry into Greater Manchester Police past year, Dame Vera strongly criticised the force. She has a estimation for exposing hard truths to institutions, but present she is the institution. She volition request to thrust the changes.