CPS boss Alison Saunders does not deserve a damehood
READERS of this page will know that I am not one for stripping people of titles and pensions when they get things wrong. Nor do I believe that severance pay, which has been negotiated and signed up to as part of the contract, should be withheld if someone is sacked for failure (as opposed to fraud or dishonesty).
In short, I hate the cult of vengeance that now seems rife in our post-Christian society.
Yet I find myself supporting those who say that Alison Saunders, the outgoing head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), should not be decorated with a damehood – or indeed anything else.
On her watch the justice system in this country became effectively politicised, driven by the need for convictions rather than for impartial justice.
Any questioning of this would lead to ludicrous allegations of "victim blaming".
And when the CPS did take action against women falsely accusing men of doing the unspeakable it would issue apologetic press releases, stressing the need to protect genuine complainants but barely acknowledging the huge damage caused to the innocent men.
However she was absolutely not the only villain.
The police took to believing any woman complaining of rape or sexual assault and branding the man a "perpetrator" and her "the victim" before any investigation had started.
They took exactly the same attitude to anyone complaining of child abuse, calling even the most luridly unlikely stories "credible and true".
They have withheld evidence from the defence that would have cleared men almost on the spot.
Yet it was down to Miss Saunders whether to bring such prosecutions, many of which collapsed, and to give a lead as to the standard of evidence expected.
The CPS will not get every decision right and no sensible person expects it to but a pattern emerged of abandoning serious evidential testing in rape cases.
Thus we have ended up with a review into all rape convictions in recent years.
That says it all.
Miss Saunders must remain Miss.