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OK. So if that’s the case, it’s even more damning for Post Office / Fujitsu as it would appear that people not only found the build failure (back door to the live store systems) but then actively and repeatedly used it. That isn’t bad code and oh dear something bad happened, it’s a million times worse
Lets be clear here. Development staff need access to the live system to perform updates to control files and also to correct errors. I recentley flagged 7400 orders for deletion (using SL update) after the pricing team put the wrong price into the system. But I had proper authorisation from the IT director and also a senior person in the business to do this. I signed on in a special way that logs everything I did and that was reviewed by my manager, who is a tekky as well as having a management role.
The difference was my access was controlled. I believe Fujitsu's access wasn't.
The "offence" is still being committed - by the police.
They threaten allegedly errant motorists that they will prosecute them unless they agree to participate in an educational course (cost: around £100 which is split between the constabulary and the course provider). The evidence for their threatened prosecution usually comes from a device which is assumed to be working correctly unless the allegedly errant motorist can cast doubt on its reliability (which they invariably can't).
This is no different, in principle, to the threats issued by the Post Office to its allegedly errant SPMs.
Yes, this brings us back to my opening post, what does all this portend for the railway. Particularly as the railway approach of "Pay us a £100 penalty to avoid prosecution" appears to have a close comparison with what the Post Office lawyers were saying to the Sub-Postmasters about making up losses. The "threat" being used to force people to do something. I think many of these at the post office, which of course have no criminal record trail, are still to come out.
What has become of the old law of "Demanding Money with Menaces"?
That is the nub of the problem in a lot of cases. A good solution might well be to make threatening a prosecution in order to obtain money, even if that money is due, a criminal offence carrying a mandatory prison sentence. If you want money, sue via the Civil Courts. If you want a prosecution, by all means pursue that.
I signed on in a special way that logs everything I did and that was reviewed by my manager, who is a tekky as well as having a management role.
The difference was my access was controlled. I believe Fujitsu's access wasn't.
Yes, they supposedly had some correct setup that did audit and logging (Tivoli remote console?) which was apparently found to be inefficient, so they gave up on it.
The inquiry transcript has this exchange:
Mr Beer: No, that would be an unfair question to ask: what was on the author’s mind? But looking at it, manual procedures requiring managerial sign-off is essentially the steps that we looked at, the 13 of them –
Stephen Parker: Yes.
Mr Beer: – in the previous document?
Stephen Parker: Yes.
Mr Beer: “Otherwise, third line support has:
“Unrestricted and unaudited privileged access (system admin) to all systems including post office counter PCs …”
When I asked you earlier whether you were ever made aware of a concern that SSC staff had unrestricted and unaudited privileged access to all systems, you said no. Presumably, you hadn’t remembered this.
Evidence from Stephen Parker, former Fujitsu Deputy Manager / Problem Manager / Manager of SSC. Phase 3 is examining the operation of the Horizon system, including training, assistance, resolution of disputes, knowledge and rectification of errors in the system.
www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk
The whole thing is just shocking.
I had thought it was bad but the reality is actually worse in so many ways...
For the railway connection, I get the impression that the court system feels badly caught out on this, especially the expert witness thing.
I expect both lawyers and judges to be much more suspicious of technical evidence in future.
I also wonder whether judges may start asking specific questions to witness about whether they had been correctly briefed about their responsibilities as expert witnesses, etc. Various people in the inquiry have stated that they had not been told of their responsibiilties.
Horizon isn't a double entry book keeping system, it's more of a transactions register, which also enables a range of post office products. Clearly all transactions should balance out but there wasn't the granularity of transaction data available to PO Limited or the subpostmasters to go through this. The support contract with Fujitsu only allowed a limited number of ARQ (log data) per month so this was rarely investigated. One lady who worked at Westcliffe took a list of her own transactions and was able to clear herself in court by sowing more than a little doubt with the jurors, by simply going through her list and comparing with what POL was saying. She was still fired by POL despite being found not guilty, and her replacement threatened with dismissal if she gave evidence that she too was finding shortages.
I know the answer to the second paragraph quoted. In a "normal" year, around 5 or so SPMs are convicted of theft or fraud. This went up to 50 plus during the period from 2008 to 2013. In 2014 a barrister wrote the Clarke's Advice, the smoking gun, telling POL of the risk of miscarriage of justice. POL still prosecuted 30 or so people after the Clarke's Advice, and until fairly were drawing on bankruptcy trustees to recover "losses". Lee Castleton, the Bridlington SPM shown in the ITV drama is still under a bankruptcy trustee to this day. SPMs were hand-picked to be honest workers, so I'm now unsure if even the 5 a year can be relied upon.
Separately The Observer today has a leak from the Justice Department to the effect that private prosecutions are under some sort of review by HMG. The Labour party is also looking at this. The HMG version is new prosecution standards, an inspection process and the power to remove prosecution rights.
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Surpluses - small ones - did and will happen. But the repeating "losses" was a unique feature of Horizon's operations. Crown Post Offices, so not SPMs, also saw discrepancies in multiple directions, but were not usually prosecuted. Some SPMs did not usually get shortfalls, or they were very small - there were different Horizon configurations and implementations. Some SPMs noticed problems with Chip and Pin, which was bolted on after initial implementation, others had issues with National Lottery transactions - not all SPMs did National Lottery. The staff at Crown Post Offices do feature in the 2000 or so who have claimed compensation - some were fired, others were moved to other roles, losing salary and promotion options in the process. A few Crown staff were prosecuted though.
To me that is extremely damning. This clearly indicates to me that the Post Office expected discrepancies and wanted them hushed up. All in the midst of still prosecuting people. A very punishable offence. Clearly holding on to lies and suppressing the truth.
Whilst it's a subject that caught my attention long before it hit the public spotlight via the ITV drama, discussion of the Horizon system's shortcomings and its appalling consequences for sub-postmasters strikes me as being of limited relevance to TOCs' private prosecutions. The obvious and troubling common ground is that in both cases prosecutors had/have a commercial interest that provides them with an incentive to shirk their obligations towards those they accuse of crime.
I note from a Guardian article dated 13th January that an inspection regime and binding code of standards for prosecutors is now being contemplated by HMG, but the article includes the chilling observation that “Whitehall officials believe that the reliability of the Fujitsu-developed Horizon system at the heart of the Post Office scandal could be challenged in court without the need to change the law.” The civil service is, therefore, still flying in the face of the evidence from the Post Office debacle that the repeal of Section 69 was a catastrophic change in the law on evidence which is now shown to be in desperate need of reform. (Prior to its repeal in 1999, Section 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act made the admissibility of computer evidence to support a prosecution conditional on proof that the system that generated it was operating correctly. For those sufficiently interested, I recommend a reading of James Christie's devastating critique of Section 69's repeal and the part played by the Law Commission in bringing it about. It can be found here.)
Moreover, the civil service belief that no change to the law is needed on the basis that prosecution evidence on IT matters could be successfully challenged reflects a wholly unrealistic perception of the wider difficulties faced by the individual citizen in opposing a company possessed of comparatively limitless legal, technical and financial resources. Contrast Lee Castleton's civil law litigation that ended in a costs award to the Post Office of £321,000 when the sum at issue was around £26,000 with the opening words of the Civil Procedure Rules to which those proceedings were supposedly subject: “These Rules are a procedural code with the overriding objective of enabling the court to deal with cases justly and at proportionate cost.” The case demonstrates how inappropriate and out of touch that civil service sentiment is and how far the civil justice system has fallen short of its aspirations.
Again, consider the position of the individual who mounts a successful defence to criminal charges brought against him. His prosecutor is free to spend whatever it takes to secure a conviction, but a pre-condition of the successful defendant's ability to recover costs will be the making of an application for state funding of his defence which, in a railway case, will almost inevitably be refused. Even if he surmounts this ridiculous procedural hurdle there will still be the sting in the tail that any costs award he obtains will be capped by legal aid rates that are far, far below what he will have to pay for private representation; this is bound to weigh heavily upon a defendant's judgment of how he is to respond to a criminal charge.
CPR Part 1 fleshes out achievement of the overriding objective as including “Ensuring that the parties are on an equal footing” and the Criminal Procedure Rules contain a somewhat similar opening provision. Equality of arms? Really? You must be having a larf.
For those sufficiently interested, I recommend a reading of James Christie's devastating critique of Section 69's repeal and the part played by the Law Commission in bringing it about. It can be found here.)
I'm not convinced that the retention or repeal of Section 69 would make any difference. If expert witnesses are required to swear in Court that a computer system was working perfectly, how can you prove or disprove that evidence? You could argue that the expert has run various tests (if allowed to get anywhere near the program) but that would only show that these tests worked - it may not be an exhaustive set of tests. And how would the Court know if these were appropriate tests - the Judges are not experts and relay on expert witnesses.
If Section 69 was retained, the same arguments apply - who could challenge an expert witness who said everything was ok based on the tests run? He may not have run the crucial test that showed there were errors in the system, but who in the Court would know that?
The fundamental problem is that a computer cannot swear on oath
I am also unconvinced by the S.69 arguments. And actually relatively few Horizon cases had a direct input from Gareth Jenkins or anyone else from Fujitsu, POL just held the line that their system was reliable. Lawyers, juries and judges all went along with this.
My take on the Statutory Enquiry is that on the POL side, there had been significant job cuts in POL that led to people getting over-promoted. Most noticeable in both the Investigations and Security Teams, but also to some extent in the Law team. The Investigations team was filled with former postmen and counter clerks, who had very poor IT knowledge and even less on Horizon - at best they attended a one day training event. The head of the Law team was also IT unfamiliar and could barely type emails. The external lawyers didn't know Horizon, the judiciary are well known not to be IT savvy. And no-one wanted to say "well I don't really know about this, I will just trust the software or the statements given". Many (not all) of the defending solicitors and counsel were reluctant to probe too deeply into the software, and those that did probe were of course rebuffed with replies that are now being investigated for perjury.
If one good thing has come out of this, it's that hopefully public, lawyers and judiciary will now accept that computers are reflections of the humans that write the software and thus prone to human errors, AKA bugs. There is a TOC aspect to that, so some of the data trawls for historic infractions are open, I would suggest, to challenge, we shouldn't just accept IT related data or meta-data as being by definition correct.
But I’ll add my unanswered question here in case someone can answer both.
Has anything been said about the actual design of Horizon, rather than it just being buggy? In the past I’ve spent two years working on the detailed design of one element of an ERP system, and it’s brutal. Horrendously complicated, especially where it has to differ from the provider’s “base” product. Were there design faults inherent in Horizon, so that even if Fujitsu built it to the specification it would’ve still not worked?
If one good thing has come out of this, it's that hopefully public, lawyers and judiciary will now accept that computers are reflections of the humans that write the software and thus prone to human errors, AKA bugs. There is a TOC aspect to that, so some of the data trawls for historic infractions are open, I would suggest, to challenge, we shouldn't just accept IT related data or meta-data as being by definition correct.
The problem with Section 69's repeal is that it set a new – and false – presumption as to the reliability of computer evidence, even though the repeal was only supposed to deal with the different issue of admissibility. That presumption established a sanctity of computer evidence that proved impossible to displace: the Law Commission's belief that it would be straightforward to rebut the presumption was utterly unrealistic.
Indeed we should not accept that IT-related data or metadata is by definition correct – but that is precisely the presumption the Law Commission told us would flow from Section 69's repeal.
The problem with Section 69's repeal is that it set a new – and false – presumption as to the reliability of computer evidence, even though the repeal was only supposed to deal with the different issue of admissibility. That presumption established a sanctity of computer evidence that proved impossible to displace: the Law Commission's belief that it would be straightforward to rebut the presumption was utterly unrealistic.
Indeed we should not accept that IT-related data or metadata is by definition correct – but that is precisely the presumption the Law Commission told us would flow from Section 69's repeal.
Logic would be that computer evidence should be corroborated with additional evidence of correctness, i.e. in this case the calculations that led to the money being due, or in the case of a speeding ticket the calibration certificate for the camera setup. (To be fair the markings on the road on GATSO type cameras are there for that exact reason - while the radar or timer could be off, it's much less likely that both will be off).
(To be fair the markings on the road on GATSO type cameras are there for that exact reason - while the radar or timer could be off, it's much less likely that both will be off).
On another point, if prosecution were no longer an option (for whatever reason, including the CPS being too overstretched to take on rail ticket prosecutions) what would be the deterrent for travel with invalid tickets or none? An even higher Penalty Fare: how would non-payment of these be enforced?
I think this is a red herring. Others have made the point perfectly well regarding the current Penalty Fare which fulfils the function you're describing. The Crown would be perfectly able to act, obviously, in serious cases, and would do so subject to the usual tests. The Procurator Fiscal or Lord Advocate can act in a fraud case for people travelling avoiding payment where evidence is supplied by ScotRail. This has happened in the past, and has also been used to agree settlements with ScotRail. More of these have happened in the past few years e.g. https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/scots-fare-dodger-hit-750-24054839. Are you saying you'd have an issue with that happening in England and Wales?
Alternatively, if people were genuinely concerned about the lack of resources then perhaps they should be lobbying the government for more money for the Police and prosecution services? Why not try and get more courts sitting too to clear the backlog of cases? That'd have an awful lot of further benefits than just making it more likely people would pay the correct fare in the first place.
I agree. Although there is a cruel twist - if you plead guilty you cannot then later appeal.
I think that is why a special law/bill is going ahead so people who had pled guilty in the Post Office sham case can now have their criminal record cleared.
I wonder if at the end of it anyone investigated and prosecuted for these "frauds" will be left needing to appeal. It is so bad that I can see it just being a blanket pardon. The parallel is if TOCs get chasing fare dodgers wrong they might have to compensate more than just the obvious mistakes. You reap what you sow.
In a CPS public prosecution, the lawyer is required to consider whether prosecution is in the public interest and whether it is proportionate to the offence alleged. It is hard to see how railway prosecutions over fare irregularities meet these tests, when they are very often aggressive and oppressive. Also, it is hard to see how somebody employed by the non CPS prosecutor can be truly independent in making a decision to prosecute. That person may be under pressure from senior employees, fear of losing their job or missing a target, to go ahead with prosecution. It seems logical that any decision to prosecute should be made by someone separate from the organisation (whether local authority, railway operator or other private body). So, the ability to launch private prosecutions should be removed and decisions to prosecute should only be made by the CPS. Anyway, why does the railway have the privileged position of prosecuting for fare irregularities in a very complex fares system?
We see certain TOCs- Northern and Merseyrail in particular- deliberately and repeatedly misrepresent s.5(1) RoRA and attempt to use this section to prosecute people who have provided their name and address. Not to mention the way the TOCs routinely don't bother with legal niceties like appropriate disclosure.
The fundamental problem is the commercial imperative of the TOC is not conducive to transparent and open justice.
The problem with Section 69's repeal is that it set a new – and false – presumption as to the reliability of computer evidence, even though the repeal was only supposed to deal with the different issue of admissibility. That presumption established a sanctity of computer evidence that proved impossible to displace: the Law Commission's belief that it would be straightforward to rebut the presumption was utterly unrealistic.
Indeed we should not accept that IT-related data or metadata is by definition correct – but that is precisely the presumption the Law Commission told us would flow from Section 69's repeal.
Perhaps the Section 69 question could be dealt with by asking if there were any bugs in the system in the relevant period: if the answer is yes, then the system isn't working 'properly'
Perhaps the Section 69 question could be dealt with by asking if there were any bugs in the system in the relevant period: if the answer is yes, then the system isn't working 'properly'
If anyone answers "no" to that question for any business IT system ever developed, they are lying or deluded. Business systems are so complex that there are always bugs of some sort, usually it is a constant process of fixing the worst and sometimes making new ones along the way.
Safety critical systems are different (though every Computer Science student probably still gets the London Ambulance case study which caused deaths) but that level of testing and provability isn't considered affordable for most systems.
Responses to this thread are illustrative of another pernicious side effect of the Law Commission's recommendation that Section 69 should be repealed and that in its place there should be a presumption that a computer was working correctly: it subtly encourages us to treat that issue as one that only admits a “yes” or “no” answer.
In reality the true answer to whether a computer was “working correctly” is much more nuanced. Take for example a spreadsheet. These have been notorious for the incorrect calculation results they can produce, sometimes through coding errors, at others due to firmware errors such as the floating point arithmetic bug in certain Pentium processors (think I've correctly remembered that). In some settings that renders the spreadsheet's output something on which no reliance can be placed, but in others the same spreadsheet produces output on which its users can and do confidently rely, notwithstanding the presence of the faults that make it unusable for other purposes.
In this respect computer output is not much different from human witness testimony: from your assessment of any given human witness' evidence you may conclude that your are able to accept and rely absolutely upon part of the testimony given whilst rejecting completely another part – or treating different parts of the witness' evidence as occupying different locations on the spectrum of reliability between those extremes. The same should apply to your assessment of computer evidence, the problem you have being that the tools available for assessing the human's testimony such as witness demeanour are not going to be available, so that you need a different toolset for the purpose.
The necessary toolset has been receiving the attention of some sharp minds possessed of the knowledge required both of the law and of computing. One approach, set out in a paper entitled “Recommendations for the probity of computer evidence” can be found here. You'll note that the authors include the same James Christie to whom I've previously referred, and amongst his co-authors you'll find Paul Marshall. If that name is only ringing a faint bell I'll remind you that he was the barrister who represented Seema Misra, Tracy Felstead and Janet Skinner in their appeals against criminal convictions secured by Post Office prosecution and, with his junior Flora Page, were successful prime movers of limb 2 of those appeals, namely that their convictions were an affront to the conscience of the court.
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Three such cases reported on this board can be found here, here, and here. A common feature was the TOCs' misleading omission from the specification of charge of that part of Section 5(1) as would have indicated to the court the posters' available defence of having supplied their name and address. But the courts concerned were also remiss in failing to note the TOCs' want of authority to use the Single Justice Procedure, and that the evidence lodged in support of the prosecution case indicated that the defendants must have given their names and addresses and had thus discharged their obligation under the Section charged.
If anyone answers "no" to that question for any business IT system ever developed, they are lying or deluded. Business systems are so complex that there are always bugs of some sort, usually it is a constant process of fixing the worst and sometimes making new ones along the way.
Safety critical systems are different (though every Computer Science student probably still gets the London Ambulance case study which caused deaths) but that level of testing and provability isn't considered affordable for most systems.
As a former Analyst Programmer I would say this is very true. I often had to repair bugs in software that had been around for many years.
Ironically for some bugs I fixed it would be a design problem. The software worked in a way that did not suit the users. BUT when I went to fix the "bug" I would find evidence that a previous coder had actually created the "bug" to suit a different set of users. So behold there was a conflict of requirements. I was not often thanked for pointing this out and had to just amend the code knowing full well it would not do what another department wanted. Fair enough I was turning a simple task (often one line of code) into a need to find out from all users in different departments what they actually wanted and adding coding conditions that did different things for different (identifiable) user-groups/departments. We often lived with bugs.
But it did amaze how poor some code was that I encountered.
I would find errors introduced by inconsistent rounding.
The worst thing with a new system is the large number of bugs. As a system matures the number of bugs is reduced. So a shiny new computer system can be a nightmare - often exacerbated by the promises to replace the old system cheaply.
Safety critical systems take a hell of a lot of testing to get the code mature. And nowadays many systems are a lot more complicated.
For the Post Office system some of these bugs or weaknesses led to unsafe prosecutions rather then just inconvenience for users. What is then telling for me is the apparent effort to hide shortcomings that led to peoples lives being ruined.
I imagine the scope for that sort of software error in the case of rail fare prosecutions is less BUT what is still there is the potential cavalier attitude that will lead to pursuing someone wrongly.
This, ultimately, is what is scandalous about the Post Office affair.
It's not good that there were errors in the system - but as discussed above, that's inevitable in computer systems (and indeed in anything created by fallible humans). Neither is it good that the Post Office relied on the fallible figures without considering the possibility of error. But what is scandalous is that once the errors were uncovered the Post Office tried to cover them up to other people's (the subpostmasters') detriment.
To try and remain on topic, do we see this sort of scandalous behaviour on the railways? I don't think so. That could, of course, be because the railways are so good at hiding their mistakes that we don't know that they're doing it. Or it could be because the railways haven't fallen into that particular trap. If honesty is an issue then the tendency of some staff to reassure customers that 'nothing will come of it' when taking details, only for a prosecution to follow is a related issue. But I don't see that as being quite the same as the systematic dishonesty of the Post Office's approach once they knew that Horizon was unreliable.
This, ultimately, is what is scandalous about the Post Office affair.
It's not good that there were errors in the system - but as discussed above, that's inevitable in computer systems (and indeed in anything created by fallible humans). Neither is it good that the Post Office relied on the fallible figures without considering the possibility of error. But what is scandalous is that once the errors were uncovered the Post Office tried to cover them up to other people's (the subpostmasters') detriment.
To try and remain on topic, do we see this sort of scandalous behaviour on the railways? I don't think so. That could, of course, be because the railways are so good at hiding their mistakes that we don't know that they're doing it. Or it could be because the railways haven't fallen into that particular trap. If honesty is an issue then the tendency of some staff to reassure customers that 'nothing will come of it' when taking details, only for a prosecution to follow is a related issue. But I don't see that as being quite the same as the systematic dishonesty of the Post Office's approach once they knew that Horizon was unreliable.
1) Well there is/was the prolific P-Coding used by some TOCs to hide persistent cancellations. So some TOCs do have an inclination to, shall we say hide the truth.
2) That is a mark of inconsistency. Which could be viewed as one part of the company (TOC) not taking into account the reality that another part of the company knows about. The number of times I have been waved on so to speak BUT, if I was pulled up, I wonder would I have a leg to stand on.
Back to the OP, the link between the railway industry and Post Office is the combination of private prosecutions and recovery of economic losses. My view is that such prosecutions are inherently vulnerable to being an abuse of process, and should not be allowed outside exceptional circumstances. I'd suggest that any prosecution where an organisation is also out of pocket, and has the ability to use economic leverage on suspected offenders (penalty notices, plea bargains) in parallel to criminal prosecution, should require the explicit permission of the DPP before it can go to court.
Three such cases reported on this board can be found here, here, and here. A common feature was the TOCs' misleading omission from the specification of charge of that part of Section 5(1) as would have indicated to the court the posters' available defence of having supplied their name and address. But the courts concerned were also remiss in failing to note the TOCs' want of authority to use the Single Justice Procedure, and that the evidence lodged in support of the prosecution case indicated that the defendants must have given their names and addresses and had thus discharged their obligation under the Section charged.
When we encounter cases like that, my first thought is always one of disbelief: How could anyone in such a position make such an elementary mistake? Why don't they have to answer for their mistakes to their professional body? Of course, the people making those mistakes were probably neither legally qualified nor subject to such professional regulation, and I think we've seen parallels with the Post Office here too. One gap in the courts system might be in not triggering additional checks where the papers weren't prepared by regulated professionals (for whom basic mistakes like these could be career-ending).
When we encounter cases like that, my first thought is always one of disbelief: How could anyone in such a position make such an elementary mistake? Why don't they have to answer for their mistakes to their professional body? Of course, the people making those mistakes were probably neither legally qualified nor subject to such professional regulation, and I think we've seen parallels with the Post Office here too. One gap in the courts system might be in not triggering additional checks where the papers weren't prepared by regulated professionals (for whom basic mistakes like these could be career-ending).
I agree entirely. Lawyers who work for an organisation such as the Post Office or a TOC are supposed to act in a professional way, and the papers must surely have been approved, if not prepared, by a professional lawyer before being filed with the court. I hope that the the Solicitors Regulatory Authority will be taking a close look, and indeed ending the careers of lawyers who have failed in their duty. I would go further and say that private prosecutions should be stopped, so that any prosecution has to go through the CPS. Lawyers working for organisations don't have the necessary independence.
I agree entirely. Lawyers who work for an organisation such as the Post Office or a TOC are supposed to act in a professional way, and the papers must surely have been approved, if not prepared, by a professional lawyer before being filed with the court. I hope that the the Solicitors Regulatory Authority will be taking a close look, and indeed ending the careers of lawyers who have failed in their duty. I would go further and say that private prosecutions should be stopped, so that any prosecution has to go through the CPS. Lawyers working for organisations don't have the necessary independence.
If the railway is anything like the Civil Service the people who prepare the paperwork for the Court case are not legally trained, they just follow specific instructions on how and what to do, the correct wording and how the paperwork has to be completed. It would then be checked and authorised by a senior officer to confirm that everything was correct, who also wasn't legally trained.
In the cases I took, I would often have been the person who interviewed the miscreant, the person who completed the paperwork, the person who served the Summons, and the person who presented the case in Court. All done as laid down in the specific Rules and Codes, and "signed-off" by the HEO in charge of the Dept in our office. The only Lawyers that would have been involved would have been when the original Rules and Codes were written. I know from friends in 2 Departments that the system is still the same, as it is where local authorities prosecute.
As far expecting the CPS to take over every single prosecution going through the Court system, you have to be joking. They don't have enough personel at the moment to cope with their current workload which is one of the reasons Court cases are taking so long to get to Court, plus the Courts themselves haven't got enough minutes in the day to hear many more cases.
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