Baird teeth
New interim chair gets to grips with Criminal Cases Review Commission
Less than 24 hours after she was named as interim chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, Dame Vera Baird KC gave a robust interview to the Radio 4 Today programme on Wednesday — listen here from about 2.11.40 or read the BBC’s report. No question of waiting until she had “got her feet under the table”: she knew exactly what she needed to do.
Baird starts work on Monday and clearly expects the CCRC’s chief executive, Karen Kneller, to be waiting for her when she arrives at the office, assuming that Kneller can remember her way to a building that she has been used to visiting “maybe one or two days every couple of months or so” — and assuming also that Kneller has not, in the meantime, accepted the Commons justice committee’s conclusion that her position is no longer tenable.
Who’s to blame for this woeful state of affairs? And how can Baird best tackle the huge challenges she faces? That’s the subject of my latest column for the Law Society Gazette.
I shall try to keep this brief since I have posted SO often on this general subject BUT:
1. Where’s the DOSH to come from? It is irrational to proceed on the premise that -yes- re-arranging the deck chairs might suffice.
2. When are the Secretary of State, her relevant Under-Secretaries AND senior officials going to return to OWNING the Commission, rather than persisting in treating it as the dotty relative to be kept in the attic, or -if you will- as surplus rolling stock shunted off into a siding, just in case?
3. Recent Parliamentary comment is on the point and for example Baroness Butler-Sloss AND my good friend Edward Garnier have it right.
4. A full recognition of the parlous and more or less token state it has been allowed to descend into AND a “hands-on” regime change (face to face meetings, full time working , adequately compensated ) is no optional extra. Indeed it never was. I shall return to urging my own MP here in Brum and anyone else available to me to take this seriously and to show demonstrable support for this former “jewel “in Birmingham’s Crown (at least potentially) - after all the shoulder shrugging and the writing off as “been there, done that”.