Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Home Affairs CommitteePublisher: The Stationery Office
ISBN: 0215087925
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 65
Book Description
An allegation of rape was made against Lord Brittan to South Yorkshire Police in November 2012. The incident was alleged to have occurred in 1967 in London. A police investigation then took place, involving a process of advice being sought at relevant points from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and a file of evidence first being submitted to the CPS in June 2014. However the CPS decided that the file submitted by the MPS did not meet the appropriate evidential criteria. Lord Brittan was suffering from cancer at the time of the investigation. He died in January 2015 without being informed the he had been cleared of any wrongdoing in regard to this case. Although the MPS had concluded that "there was not a strong case" against Lord Brittan, it had requested that the CPS review its decision and to consider changing the Director's Guidance to allow "significant public interest" to be taken into account when coming to decisions about whether a case should be referred to the CPS, where the evidential threshold is not satisfied or the case is borderline. The DPP expressed reluctance to consider making any change to the current criteria, because she believed that the requirement to meet the evidence threshold had to remain the first criterion for coming to a decision. The Committee agreed with this. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has requested that another police force review its investigation into the Lord Brittan case to ensure that it was "thorough, properly conducted and to identify good practice". This report explores the implications of the Commissioner's action points in detail.
