The Director of Public Prosecutions on Monday widened his rift with Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley by suggesting that low charging rates are the fault of the police not bringing enough cases to prosecutors.
Max Hill KC said that his organisation brought a charge in “around 78 per cent” of the cases referred to it by police and that officers were only turned down when the legal test for a prosecution was not met. He added that it was “irresponsible” and “simply wrong” to suggest that cases which failed to meet this test should be taken to court regardless, in a thinly veiled swipe at Sir Mark, and that charging decisions were not “a bureaucratic hoop to be jumped through”.
