Justice watchdog’s ‘absent’ leadership in disarray before review of Letby case | Criminal Cases Review Commission

For the wrongfully convicted, watching the years disappear from a prison cell, the miscarriage of justice watchdog represents their final hope. But some staff at the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) say its leaders appear divorced from that reality, using public money for executive training retreats in France and networking over fine wine and steak.

The CCRC is in the spotlight again as it is due to consider a dossier of new expert evidence in the Lucy Letby case. While it faces a decision in one of the most high-profile potential miscarriages of justice in decades, its leadership is in a state of disarray.

Its chair, Helen Pitcher, resigned last month after an independent panel decided she was no longer fit to stay in post. Pitcher responded by saying she had been “scapegoated” over the case of Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in jail for a 2003 rape he did not commit after the CCRC missed multiple opportunities to help.

Sources claim there is rising frustration within the organisation that thinly stretched staff who care about uncovering miscarriages of justice have been poorly represented by its leaders, who they say “haven’t got a clue”.

Sources said Pitcher “would conduct Teams meetings from the balcony of her villa in the sunshine” in Montenegro and boast about her jetset life in weekly memos to staff.

Meanwhile, Karen Kneller, who remains chief executive, has been given the nickname “Karen Invisible” by staff. She is described by some of those working for her as “absent”, with her “finger off the pulse”.

In December last year, Kneller wrote what had become a familiar message in her weekly update to staff: “I am away doing some training but I’ll be staying in touch.”

She was at Insead, Europe’s answer to Harvard Business School, staying in a luxury room at its four-star on-campus hotel in Fontainebleu.

Pitcher, alongside chairing the CCRC, has held several roles with the gold-plated business school, whose courses Kneller has attended regularly since Pitcher was appointed chair in 2018.

Pitcher’s spokesperson said the Ministry of Justice approved the business case for Kneller to attend Insead and that she “fully declared” her interests with the business school.

According to Kneller’s LinkedIn page, she has completed a 10-day director’s course advertised as costing more than £21,000 over three trips as well as a “leading from the chair course”, the fees for which are listed as £7,500.

In November 2023, three months after Malkinson’s exoneration, Kneller told staff she had spent another week at Insead on a “digital disruption and innovation” course, which she said “was fascinating and exhausting in equal measure”, adding that she “logged on during the week and stayed in touch with the team including two or three meetings”.

A government source said the spending “does not reflect the new government’s expectations of the best use of the CCRC’s funding”.

Kneller was director of casework when the CCRC undertook what Chris Henley KC described in his review as “very poor” work on Malkinson’s first application to overturn his conviction in 2009. She has been in full-time leadership roles at the organisation for nearly 20 years and Malkinson has previously said that “if accountability means anything”, she “has to go”.

One staff member said that under Pitcher and Kneller, an “us-and-them culture” had been allowed to grow within the organisation, with commissioners – the arbiters of cases – staying at top hotels when staff were summoned to Birmingham for meetings, while others stayed at budget accommodation.

Fine wines, lobster dishes and post-dinner brandies featured while Pitcher held court at top restaurants with commissioners at their twice-yearly meetings. One source recalled: “It was The Ivy; it was never McDonald’s. It was always the posh restaurant.”

Pitcher said she never claimed expenses in her role and that any staff or commissioner spending on food or drink that went beyond civil service allowances was paid out of their pockets.

Sources said Pitcher lacked self-awareness and that “insensitive” emails misjudged her audience of overworked public sector staff.

She would use weekly emails to name-drop the figures in the justice system whom she planned to meet for meals at top restaurants or her private member’s club in London. One all-staff memo said she was “meeting Ruth Runciman (Lady) for lunch”, while another remarked: “I have a summer party to attend at Inner Temple on the lawns, so let’s hope the weather is good.”

A source recalled: “It was jarring … The CCRC’s staff are very hardworking, under the cosh, have had their budget stripped and stripped away, and they would not demonstrate the kind of life that the CCRC staff were feeling.”

Pitcher’s spokesperson said she “argued consistently for greater resources for the commission and better reward for its hardworking staff, reaching out to the key decision-makers in politics and law with influence over the commission”.

“Staff surveys were invariably positive [under Pitcher’s tenure], other than the responses of a small group known to the CEO and her top team,” they said.

Pitcher was revealed by the Guardian as having being pictured barefoot in Montenegro promoting her property business while refusing to apologise to Malkinson or give interviews after his conviction was overturned by the appeal court.

She is understood at the time to have proposed explaining more about her property portfolio and of failing to see how it might look. One insider said she wanted to stress “that I was actually just out in Montenegro dealing with my property business, which is my children’s inheritance”.

The source said it was “a horror show” and that some staff were left thinking: “Oh my God, why would you even get into that subject? Why are you just not bloody apologising?”

The justice select committee is so concerned about Pitcher’s work that it has made a formal request that the next chair should be subject to pre-appointment scrutiny by its members.

Its chair, the Labour MP Andy Slaughter, wrote in a letter last month to the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, that “action must be taken to rebuild the reputation of the CCRC and repair some of the damage to public trust in the organisation that has been done during Ms Pitcher’s time as chair”.

The letter also questioned Pitcher’s suitability to remain as chair of the judicial appointments commission, saying: “Given your conclusion that Ms Pitcher was unfit to chair the CCRC, it would seem inconsistent for questions not to be raised about her fitness to continue as chair of the JAC.”

Both Pitcher and Kneller have been keen to portray the mishandling of the Malkinson case as an outlier, but there have been serious concerns for several years about the way the body has been run. One source said Pitcher had “surrounded herself with ‘yes people’” at the CCRC, with Kneller cited as a prime example.

A Westminster commmission on miscarriages of justice found in 2021 that “a target-driven culture prioritises speed over thoroughness” and that while it recognised “some excellent investigative work”, it found that “financial constraints and an increased caseload have compromised the CCRC’s ability to carry out its role effectively in all cases”.

Pitcher is credited with pushing to make the organisation remote-first since the Covid-19 pandemic, despite moves to get the wider civil service back in the office. The majority of staff now work from home and come to the office twice a year for meetings. The rationale was that the flexibility would attract a better calibre of candidate, but some staff said it made casework more challenging. One said: “As a remote worker, it’s quite difficult because you can’t just walk over to someone and say: ‘What do you think about this?’”

It is an arrangement that is likely to have suited Pitcher, who is based in north London and enjoys managing her property portfolio in Montenegro.

With staff hired on remote contracts, they are now scattered across the UK and any travel to the office is funded by the CCRC’s already tight budget. And those living in Scotland, Newcastle or Cornwall are unlikely to be persuaded to relocate to Birmingham.

A spokesperson for Pitcher said the CCRC was forced to introduce remote working “like almost every other public body” and that this had remained in place as it had in much of the civil service. “There isn’t space at the CCRC office for every employee to work on-site and most of the staff are widely dispersed around the UK,” they said.

The organisation is also hampered by a shortage of commissioners, who ultimately decide whether to refer cases back to the court of appeal. This means the backlog of cases where an investigation is concluded but needs a final decision continues to be high.

There should be 12 commissioners but only nine are in post. “The decision queue is ridiculous because we now don’t have enough commissioners,” one insider said.

It is understood that there were more than 200 investigated cases waiting on a decision at the end of last year before a concerted effort was made to bring them down to the high-100s, with commissioners working overtime.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the time commitment for commissioners has been reduced to just one day a week of remote working. Pitcher lobbied successfully to increase commissioners’ pay to improve the quality of candidates but this has further delayed the process of recruiting replacements.

Meanwhile, replacing Pitcher is expected to take even longer. Staff have been told it will be at least six weeks, and probably several months, before an interim chair is appointed.

In summer 2023, during a crescendo of calls for Pitcher to apologise to Malkinson, she sent a memo to staff saying it was “super to see how supportive and aligned we all are”.

That support from staff of the remaining leadership, if it was ever as effusive as Pitcher assumed, can no longer be relied on.