Thank you for that. In terms of thinking about another kind of unintended consequence, in terms of managing performance and all of the targets that the police need to reach, are we perhaps going to see some people going through the criminal justice system in an inappropriate way and contrary to the interests of the child, because we need to reach some target in terms of performance measures?
I have to say I think that extremely unlikely. In the CPS, we don't have targets for securing convictions or not. Clearly, we prosecute if we think that there's a reasonable prospect, a realistic prospect, of conviction and it's in the public interest, but we have no targets. And I would also say, because the numbers here are likely to be so small, any assertion of looking to meet targets—it's a tiny, tiny fragment of a drop in the ocean.
What about—? There is a target for unsolved crimes, or unsolved offences. What if they fall into that category? Is that an unintended consequence?
I'm talking about something I don't have great knowledge of here. There was, at one stage, a series of targets for the police that bore down upon cases that secure what was called a sanction detection, which counted for Home Office figures. That disappeared some years ago. Some individual constabularies may still have targets, but, as far as I'm aware, we don't have a suite of national measures. The police are required to report against this, but we don't have targets. And, in my experience, the police are much more sensible these days than they may have been 20 years ago, in terms of trying to get cases charged in order to meet some notional target. It's much less of an issue than it ever was—much.