Clients who go to a solicitor for advice are often not warned that they are running up huge bills, the Government’s legal watchdog complained last week. Although he failed, he maintains that all the subsequent difficulties faced by the service were predictable then.Jane Coker, the Gardner family’s solicitor, believes there were always going to be difficulties for the prosecution in the Gardner case, where the defendants mounted the “classic defence” of merely doing their jobs. He was so unimpressed with the service that in 1986 he applied to the Divisional Court to have the CPS closed down – because the area office he was working with was “wrecking” his practice. This will change only, he believes, when the service is granted rights of audience and CPS lawyers become more than mere “chair polishers”.

(Only solicitors in private practice have the right to appear as advocates in the higher courts.)”When it gets rights of audience, the Treasury will say, `No more barristers – you do it.’ Initially, the service will lose case after case, it will go through an enormous crisis, but it will change radically and then it will become a proper prosecuting body and an organisation worth joining.”At the moment, no one who wants to be “a proper advocate” stays long in the service, he says. The CPS is on a hiding to nothing with any politically sensitive case – it will get flak whatever it does.” What it often does, he says, is to take the understandable way out, and say “let the court decide”.As to whether any prosecution of a police officer could be said to be less vigorous than of any other defendant, the CPS is “incapable of vigour”, says Mr Mackenzie, largely because the CPS by nature is a purely administrative organisation. A criminal case that would be slung out in normal circumstances is likely to proceed if it is against a police officer, he says.”The CPS doesn’t apply the same standards to the police because it doesn’t want to be seen to do the unpopular thing. “Before that, there was a perception that the CPS was reluctant to prosecute the police. Now, it is under political pressure to be seen to be squeaky clean.”Police officers suffer “a very raw deal”, according to John Mackenzie, a solicitor in west London. “The police have a perceived obligation to keep the peace,” he says, “but it’s a common law duty, not a statutory one.

So if an officer doesn’t carry out that duty, he will be disciplined. If he does, he could get prosecuted for unlawful action.”Mr Webber believes that the CPS’s attitude to prosecutions against the police hardened four or five years ago. If the allegation is solely against the police officer, the CPS is keen to pursue the case, but reluctant to do so when the officer is the victim.”He adds that many alleged assaults can be said to be carried out in the line of duty. “It’s difficult,” he says, “because often there are allegations of assault on both sides.