CCRC – New Chair but no change?

Dame Vera Baird

Dame Vera Baird KC has been Chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) for six months, with one year remaining on her contract. There have been lots of fine words from Dame Vera, but has anything actually changed at the CCRC? In my experience and that of many others – no.[i]

I am sure that when Dame Vera commenced her role early in June this year she was inundated with correspondence from frustrated applicants. So much so that I doubt that she read even a small fraction of letters and emails. There must surely be a small army of assistants reading her mail and redirecting it without her ever being troubled by the content.

The problem is that if you write to Dame Vera and point out required actions in order to resolve issues with a submission, in my experience she does nothing more than pass on the correspondence to the person being criticized! That person is then empowered by Dame Vera to carry on disregarding whatever points have been addressed to her because I really doubt that she follows up on anything.

To illustrate my points I am going to indulge in fantasy – what would I do differently were I appointed Chairman of the CCRC (I have my supporters in this imaginary venture!). As newly appointed Chairman I would take a particular interest in submissions that had run for longer than 3 years, or involved multiple applications, as these were likely the most problematical cases. However, I suspect that Dame Vera did not undertake such an activity.

Quite recently, in July 2024, it emerged that a police officer discussed with a journalist that he had received a 999 call from someone supposedly dead. In an audio recording the police officer is clearly not distressed by the discussion, indeed seems quite cheerful and helpful in admitting that someone was alive inside a farmhouse where all occupants had apparently been murdered. Indeed, it is as if he was blissfully unaware of how stunning his revelation was! This has caused quite a stir in the ‘chatterati’ internet forum community surrounding Jeremy Bamber. The 999 call was acknowledged by retired Essex Police officer, Nick Milbank. The circumstances are detailed here.

The CCRC, under the leadership of Dame Vera reverted to the ‘bad old days’ practices so beloved by former CEO Karen Kneller – by ignoring the reported evidence and asking Essex Police to ‘discuss’ the issue with the retired policeman rather than do the job themselves. Lo and behold, to nobody’s surprise, the police officer was persuaded to change his story and alleged that he didn’t know that he was talking to a journalist and he hadn’t given permission to be quoted. The CCRC, therefore, declined to consider Milbank’s evidence. The CCRC have naïvely accepted the word of Essex Police even though there is irrefutable evidence that Essex Police are not telling the truth about this issue, because the journalist, Heidi Blake, has text messages from her to Milbank stating clearly that she is a journalist employed by The New Yorker magazine and intended to quote her discussion with him in a podcast. To which Milbank replied with two ‘thumbs up’ emojis! Hardly the reaction of someone being conned by a journalist, as Essex Police would have us believe.

In any case, the three statements that Essex Police have now supplied refuting what Milbank said contain largely irrelevant points and the fact remains that Milbank acknowledges receiving a 999 call from a supposedly dead person. The CCRC seem content to ignore this absurd situation, the kind of thing that Dame Vera was appointed to ensure never happened again.

What would I have done differently to Dame Vera? For a start, within hours of The New Yorker publication I would have invited Heidi Blake to a meeting with me when she would have been given the opportunity to outline all of her evidence (and play me the audio of her conversation with Milbank). I would have treated Heidi with respect and congratulated her on achieving more than the CCRC staff had done in thirty years. I would have recognised that The New Yorker is owned by Condé Nast, with a market of more than 1 billion consumers in 32 markets through print, digital, video and social platforms; Condé Nast is a vast business empire and home to some of the world’s most iconic brands, including Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, Architectural Digest (AD) and Condé Nast Traveler. They are not the Beano or the Dandy; these are serious publications with a publishing reputation to protect. Heidi Blake would absolutely possess credible evidence, not to be dismissed lightly.

I would also have asked Jeremy Bamber’s Campaign Team to brief me on the issues, and I expect that they would have pointed out that (a) a 999 call from White House Farm would completely exonerate Jeremy Bamber; and' (b) there was further evidence to be found in two sets of documentation that in over 30 years the CCRC has never examined.[ii] 

After discovering that there was documentation that the CCRC had never examined I would have insisted that they immediately make arrangements for the documentation to be produced for inspection, and I would have explained to Mr. Mike Proctor that this was non-negotiable, and he had one week to secure the reports and prioritise analysing the content. The long running saga of the Jeremy Bamber submissions would then have ended with his referral to the Court of Appeal.

The problem is not confined to individual submissions.[iii] Tracy Alexander, a former president of the British Academy of Forensic Sciences, said that external experts could help the CCRC but the charity ‘Inside Justice’ had offered to help had been rebuffed.

She said:

“We’ve said to them on countless occasions: ‘We have experts in pretty much every field, we are free, why don’t you let us have a look? We’ll advise you.’

And they say:

‘No, because you’re obviously on the side of the guilty party, and you’ll be biased.’ The whole point of forensic investigation is that you’re not biased one way or the other. You’re supposed to interpret the evidence and then come up with an answer, and if a test will prove it one way or the other, you get the test done.'"

She said that the CCRC had hired retired police officers “who also know bugger all about forensic opportunities” and failed to understand that DNA “is not a barcode of guilt”, given how readily it was transferred.

Alexander claimed the watchdog (what we at CCRC Watch refer to as a lapdog) was “not fit for purpose” and yet police forces will not release evidential material directly to prisoners[iv] and their lawyers.

“Put some responsibility on police forces to hang on to their exhibits and then hand them over,” she said. “Because if somebody can get a decent barrister and a team of experts to support them with further testing, then why are we spending money on the CCRC?”

So, what is going on at the CCRC if the revolution has stalled under Dame Vera’s tenure?

The attitudes being demonstrated by the CCRC now are seemingly no different from the ‘bad old days’ under Karen Kneller that Dame Vera was appointed to rectify. The elephant in the room is now the Lucy Letby submission, another case where there is an overwhelming need for the Court of Appeal to act to release an innocent prisoner. But, of course, lurking in the background with all these cases is the political need to convince the public that the justice system is not in crisis and not making repeated errors in jailing innocent people or failing to free those wrongfully convicted.

So, has Dame Vera been ‘nobbled’? Has she been in limbo since the start of her term of Chair, ultimately concerned with denying as many applicants as possible? It looks that way.

Dame Vera, please convince the doubters that they are wrong.

By Bill Robertson

Bill Robertson has researched alleged miscarriages of justice for around 20 years and advised on several cases, including the most recent application to the CCRC by Jeremy Bamber.

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References                      

[i] We thought that things were changing when the case of Clive Freeman was referred to the Court of Appeal in August 2025, but it seems that was a false dawn, an outlier in a sea of CCRC induced calamity. CCRC refers convictions of Clive Freeman to the Court of Appeal - Criminal Cases Review Commission

[ii] The Operation Stokenchurch investigation in 2002 and the 1985 investigation by Detective Chief Inspector Thomas ‘Taff’ Jones.

[iii] Watchdog fails wrongly convicted owing to lack of forensic expertise, experts say | Criminal Cases Review Commission | The Guardian 7/09/2025.

[iv] Prisoners denied access to forensic evidence in bid to prove their innocence | Law | The Guardian