The question for this year’s 6KBW Essay Competition will be released on 27 July 2026. Further information can be found here. To inspire any potential essayists, here are the three winning entries from the 2025 competition. The question was ‘Should a prosecution ever be private?’ Congratulations once again to Reuben, Cameron and Emilia!
1st place: Reuben Wood
English and Welsh law has long recognised the right to bring a private prosecution. Preserved by section 6 of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, it survives as a rare exception in a system otherwise dominated by the Crown Prosecution Service. Yet its compatibility with a centralised criminal justice system has been tested by serious failings, most notoriously in the Post Office Horizon scandal. This raises the question: should a prosecution ever be private? This essay argues that it should. Private prosecutions preserve a vital constitutional safeguard and plug genuine enforcement gaps, but their continued legitimacy must be conditioned on reform to secure transparency, objective review, and independence.
The Case for Private Prosecutions
Section 6 has been described by Lord Wilberforce in Gouriet as “a valuable constitutional safeguard against inertia or partiality on the part of authority.”[1] Before the creation of the CPS, most prosecutions were private; although now comparatively rare, they remain significant in principle and practice. Today, private prosecutions are commonly brought in two contexts: first, by regulatory or charitable organisations with specialist expertise; and second, by individuals who pursue cases where public authorities have declined to act. The RSPCA has historically been one of the most prolific private prosecutors, ensuring enforcement of animal welfare offences. Transport for London similarly brings fare evasion cases, freeing the CPS from large numbers of relatively minor prosecutions. More recently, corporate and regulatory bodies have relied on private prosecutions to address complex fraud and intellectual property offences, fields often considered beyond the CPS’s mainstream focus. The Justice Committee heard evidence from FACT, Sky, and the Premier League that without private prosecutions, copyright infringement and fraud would often go unpunished, given the CPS’s “understandable limitations, both in resource and specific expertise.” [2]
The figures on fraud prosecution illustrate the scale of the problem. Chronic underfunding and neglect have left the CPS and police ill-equipped to investigate and prosecute such resource-intensive crimes.[3] In this context, private prosecutions can fill a critical gap. A notable example is the prosecution of Paul Asplin, the former CEO of DAS (UK), for a large-scale fraud. The company itself pursued the case privately, demonstrating how organisations with both the means and incentive can ensure that serious financial crime is brought before the courts. Without the ability to initiate a private prosecution, such wrongdoing might otherwise have remained unpunished.
A further benefit lies in the capacity of private prosecutions to prompt oversight where otherwise none exists. When the police decide not to prosecute, there is no right of appeal to the CPS. Commencing a private prosecution can compel the CPS to review the case under section 6(2) POA 1985, applying the Full Code Test and determining whether proceedings should continue. This mechanism ensures that victims are not left without recourse where public authorities decline to act. Moreover, CPS policy requires that decisions on private prosecutions be endorsed at Chief Crown Prosecutor or Head of Division level and overseen by the Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division.[4] This affords complainants a higher level of scrutiny than they would receive under the police Victims’ Right to Review scheme, where decisions are only revisited internally.[5] Although such cases may be comparatively few, they illustrate how private prosecutions can remain valuable not only as a safeguard against inertia but also as a practical route to independent review within the contemporary criminal justice system.
Some argue that private prosecutions are especially open to abuse, allowing determined complainants to pursue weak or vexatious cases. However, significant safeguards exist. Under section 6(2), the DPP may take over and discontinue a private prosecution. Since 2009, CPS policy has required that this power be exercised by applying the Full Code Test, meaning a prosecution will be stopped if either the evidential or public interest stage is not met.[6] In Gujra, the Supreme Court confirmed that this policy is lawful and does not frustrate section 6.[7] Additional safeguards reinforce this protection: courts may terminate weak cases through the “no case to answer” test, and the prospect of adverse costs deters frivolous claims. Taken together, these mechanisms ensure that prosecutions are not pursued haphazardly but only where there is a sound evidential foundation.
These examples demonstrate that prosecutions should sometimes be private: while reliance on them must be exceptional, their continued existence ensures accountability and provides a mechanism to pursue serious wrongdoing where the state cannot or will not act.
Shortcomings and the Case for Reform
Yet these benefits depend on rigorous safeguards. The Horizon scandal illustrates what happens when they fail. In Hamilton,[8] The Court of Appeal found that known flaws in the Horizon IT system—central to the prosecution case—were not disclosed. The ‘pervasive failures of investigation and disclosure’ went, in the court’s words, ‘to the very heart of the prosecution’.[9] Despite having legal representation, the Post Office relied on an in-house team whose approach was ‘influenced by what was in the interests of POL, rather than by what the law required’.[10] Such institutional blindness mirrors the problems identified by the Philips Commission when police both investigated and decided whether to prosecute—one reason the CPS was created.[11] While public prosecutions also suffer disclosure failings, as in Liam Allan, the risk is greater where in-house or unrepresented prosecutors lack comparable expertise.[12] Although some private prosecutors instruct specialist firms adhering to the Private Prosecutors Association’s code,[13] there is no requirement to do so. This creates inconsistency: some defendants face cases built to CPS-equivalent standards; others face prosecutions driven by parties without the training or detachment to meet those standards.
Beyond disclosure, private prosecutions lack the structured review that characterises public prosecutions. CPS decisions are anchored in the Full Code Test, requiring both a realistic prospect of conviction and that prosecution is in the public interest,[14] applied against a backdrop of detailed prosecutorial policies. By contrast, a private prosecutor is under no statutory duty to apply such criteria. This increases the risk of arbitrary or emotionally-driven prosecutions. As Lord Neuberger observed in Gujra, an “objective, expert, and experienced assessment” is more reliable than that of a person “wholly inexperienced in the criminal justice system”, who may be “far from dispassionate”.[15]
It must be acknowledged that the Horizon scandal was an extraordinary anomaly, unlikely to be repeated on that scale. Yet it exposed structural weaknesses that could enable smaller miscarriages of justice. Reforming private prosecutions is therefore essential, not because Horizon would necessarily have been prevented, but because consistent safeguards would raise standards and guard against future injustice.
One reform is greater transparency. Evidence before the Horizon Inquiry revealed that sub-postmasters were told their problems with Horizon were unique when, in fact, many others were being prosecuted. Had data on the number and nature of Post Office prosecutions been publicly available, patterns of failure could have been identified earlier. At present, there is no central database of private prosecutions. The limited HMCTS internal register does not capture the full picture, including prosecutions under the Single Justice Procedure. The Justice Committee in 2020 recommended the creation of a public register, a proposal now under consultation by the Ministry of Justice.[16] A centralised register, coupled with requirements to publish anonymised data and qualitative assessments of prosecutorial practice, would provide accountability for organisations exercising powers akin to the state.
In conclusion, prosecutions should sometimes be private. They preserve a constitutional safeguard of real significance, ensuring that serious wrongdoing does not go unpunished when public authorities lack the resources or expertise to act. From complex frauds to animal welfare cases, they fill enforcement gaps and maintain a measure of citizen oversight in a state‑centered system. Yet the Post Office Horizon scandal has exposed their vulnerabilities. Without consistent disclosure, objective evidential review, and greater transparency, private prosecutions risk serious injustice. Reform is therefore essential—not to abolish the right, but to recalibrate it so that prosecutions brought outside the CPS meet the same standards of fairness and accountability as those pursued within it.
[1] Gouriet case [1978] AC 435, 477.
[2] House of Commons Justice Committee, Written Evidence from FACT, Sky UK Limited, The Football Association Premier League Limited (PPS016) [4].
[3] Justice Committee, Fraud and the Justice System (HC 1020, 2022) 8.
[4] CPS, ‘Private Prosecutions’<www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions> accessed 6 September 2025.
[5] Metropolitan Police, ‘Victims’ Right to Review Scheme’ < www.met.police.uk/advice/advice-and-information/victim-support/victims-right-review-scheme> accessed 6 September 2025.
[6] CPS, ‘Private Prosecutions’www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/private-prosecutions accessed 13 September 2025.
[7] R (on the application of Gujra) v CPS [2012] UKSC 52.
[8] Hamilton v Post Office Ltd [2021] EWCA Crim 577.
[9] ibid [123].
[10] ibid [129].
[11] HMSO, Report of the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure (Cmnd 8092-I and II, 1981) [7.4].
[12] Tom Smith, ‘The “near miss” of Liam Allan: critical problems in police disclosure, investigation culture and the resourcing of criminal justice’ [2018] Crim LR 711.
[13] Private Prosecutors’ Association, ‘Code for Private Prosecutors’ (2019) Available at: www.private-prosecutions.com/ppa-code-foreword/ accessed 13 September 2025.
[14] CPS, ‘Code for Crown Prosecutors’ (CPS October 2018).
[15] Gujra (n 7) 504-505.
[16] Ministry of Justice, Oversight and regulation of private prosecutors in the criminal justice system (government consultation, published 6 March 2025) <https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/oversight-and-regulation-of-private-prosecutors-in-the-criminal-justice-system/oversight-and-regulation-of-private-prosecutors-in-the-criminal-justice-system-consultation> accessed 6 September 2025.
2nd place: Cameron Samuel Keys
Samuel Johnson wrote that “injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged,”[1] succinctly distinguishing between the purposes of the civil and criminal law. Private prosecutions seem to straddle this divide. While they use the mechanisms of the criminal justice system in a similar way to a CPS prosecution, private prosecutors are not generally acting purely in the public interest.[2] In this way private prosecutions seem to both revenge the injury and avenge the crime.
This essay discusses and justifies the default position in English and Welsh law, that prosecutions are brought by the state, with victims playing a limited, primarily evidential, role. I then consider the consequences of departing from it, concluding that while there are significant risks inherent to permitting private prosecutions, maintaining a well-regulated and limited system of private prosecutions is the most desirable approach when faced with an imperfect public prosecution service.
The Default Position
Distinguishing criminal from tort law, Anthony Duff wrote, “a civil case is controlled by the plaintiff… By contrast, a criminal case is controlled by criminal justice officials.” [3] Even in jurisdictions like England and Wales, where individuals can bring private prosecutions,[4] these are understood as a departure from the norm.[5]
Duff sees the criminal law as “concerned with wrongs, albeit, perhaps, only with harmful wrongs” whereas he considers tort law (and the civil law more generally) to be interested in wrongful “harms.”[6] Further, the civil law allows individuals to “recoup the costs of repairing the harm,” whereas the criminal law allows the community, through the state, to “call to punitive account the person who violated…shared public values.”[7] In essence, prosecutions being public rather than private reflects the fact that the criminal law is about ‘wrongs’ to the community not the arbitration of personal disputes.
To allow an interested party to “call to punitive account”[8] the perpetrator undermines the extent to which any subsequent punishment is seen as the community obtaining justice rather than the victim obtaining revenge. Therefore the default position is justified as a necessary part of respecting the different functions of the criminal and civil law.
Departing from The Default Position
a) Self-Interest
Departing from the default position risks that a private prosecutor’s purpose is not primarily to achieve justice but rather to produce their desired outcome.
The practical implications of this risk are evidenced in the ongoing Post Office scandal. A private entity, albeit with statutory rights to bring private prosecutions, brought hundreds of prosecutions for mistakes now understood to be predominantly the result of a faulty IT system.[9]
The convictions themselves cannot be untied from the procedure used to obtain them. As part of his criticism of the Post Office, Fraiser J observed an “extraordinarily narrow approach to relevance, generally along the lines that any evidence that is unfavourable to the Post Office is not relevant.”[10] Self-interested treatment of evidence is, perhaps, an inevitable consequence of the fact that when individuals act in their own interest, they behave differently to individuals acting as agents of the state.
Without the same safeguards or accountability as the public prosecutor[11], the Post Office was allowed to ruthlessly and, at times, unlawfully[12] pursue its interests through the criminal justice system. This demonstrates a major risk of allowing ‘victims’ of crime to assume the role of the prosecutor: permitting the criminal law to move from a system of community censure to one of individual retribution.
b) Access to Justice
A second justification for the default position is the principle of fairness. In a private prosecution, the costs of investigation and prosecution are shifted from the police and the CPS to the private party.[13] As a result, accessing justice risks becoming a question of resources rather than merits, undermining the value of equal treatment before the law.
The area where this discrepancy is most notable is fraud. In 2024 just 1% of fraud cases reported “result[ed] in a criminal justice outcome.”[14] However, in the same year, rail-passengers were privately prosecuted for mistaken use of their railcard which saved them under £2.[15] This contrast illustrates the inevitable unfairness which arises when a prosecution is undertaken by individual parties and not the state.
If private prosecutions alleviated the burden of funding for the criminal justice system, this might be considered a reasonable trade off. However, as private prosecutors can normally recover their costs from the state, they are not ultimately a cost saving device.[16]
Taking the purpose of the criminal law as providing a community response to harmful wrongs against the community, it appears the default position is justified and that deviations can risk undermining the doctrinal purpose of the criminal law. However, in the following section, I will argue that some deviation is necessary in order to realise the goal of a fair and effective criminal justice system.
Justifying departures from the Default Position
Once a state acknowledges the fallibility of its public prosecution system, it has three options. The first is to accept that sometimes wrong decisions will be made. The second is to provide victims of crimes with a right of judicial review. The third is to provide interested parties with a right to prosecute their own case.
To some extent the first option is an inevitability. If a case has insufficient evidence, or it is not in the public interest, the CPS may correctly decline to prosecute, even when that conflicts with the wishes of the victim. However, for borderline cases, we should acknowledge that an organisation will inevitably make mistakes and having a mechanism to remedy these mistakes is desirable.
The second option, while more in line with the principles of the criminal law, would be unwise. Firstly, compelling a CPS prosecution where there isn’t sufficient evidence is unlikely to lead to greater justice. Secondly, there is a significant risk, whenever access to judicial review is expanded, that challenges slow down the system and undermine its ability to operate efficiently.
The final option is allowing private prosecutions. While the risks discussed above are not to be underestimated, this appears to be the defensible response to the inevitability of mistakes within the criminal justice system. With relatively small changes, these risks can be mitigated, without disproportionately damaging a system that is mostly functional.
Safeguards like the DPP’s right to take over and discontinue private prosecutions should be strengthened. While it would still raise the issue of fairness, costs should be recoverable in a more limited set of circumstances as it is preferable to the current position where well-resourced individuals are diverting public resources into their own private disputes.[17] Finally, there should be a legally binding and enforced set of regulations which private prosecutors must adhere to in order to prevent situations where prosecutors are disclosing only the evidence which benefits them.
Even if each of these safeguards were fully achieved and perfectly enforced, a private prosecutions regime would still undermine an ideal view of the criminal law. However, given the imperfect nature of any criminal justice system, this represents an appropriate balance between preserving the doctrinal function of the criminal law and securing justice in individual cases.
Conclusion
In an ideal world, the prosecution of a criminal offence would never be private. Understanding a crime to be a wrong against the community, the state, as the agent of the community, should respond to this wrong. However, not living in an ideal world, the state does not, and cannot, perfectly represent the interests of the community in every case. Given this, I have concluded that a compassionate society interested in maintaining a principled criminal justice system would best achieve its aims by allowing for a limited and strictly regulated system of private prosecutions; allowing individuals to vindicate wrongs but not seek revenge, while still maintaining the distinction between apportioning the burden of harms and avenging wrongs on behalf of the community.
[1] “revenge, n.s.” (3) A Dictionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson. 1773.
[2] Sam Townend, Safeguards are needed against the abuse of private prosecutions, the Post Office scandal shows (The Guardian, 13/01/24)
[3] Duff, R.A., ‘Repairing Harms and Answering for Wrongs’, in John Oberdiek (ed.), Philosophical Foundations of the Law of Torts, Philosophical Foundations of Law, 213 (Oxford, 2014)
[4] Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, s6 (1)
[5] Gouriet v Union of Post Office Workers [1978] AC 435, 447
[6] (n3) 215
[7] (n3) 217
[8] Ibid
[9] House of Commons Justice Committee , HC 497, Private prosecutions: Safeguards (2020), 5
[10] Bates V Post Office Ltd [2019] EWHC 606 (QB) [138] [34]
[11] CPS Code for Crown Prosecutors, s4
[12] Mark Sweney, Police criminal inquiry into Post Office has identified dozens of persons of interest (The Guardian, 11/12/24)
[13] “the average costs of a private prosecution are around £8,500”
HM Courts and Tribunals service, Research and analysis: Private Prosecutions (22/02/22)
[14] House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, HC 40, Progress combatting Fraud (31/03/23)
[15] Ewan Gawne ‘I’m facing court over £1.90 rail ticket error’ (BBC News, Manchester, 09/10/24); Jack Fifield “Bolton train passenger given criminal record over £1.60 mix-up” (Bolton News, 09/10/24)
[16] Prosecution of Offences Act 1995, s17; (n9) Peter Hungerford-Welch, Written Evidence (PPS0006)
[17] (n15)
3rd place: Emilia Cieslak
The vast scale of the miscarriages of justice in the Horizon scandal, which involved a series of private prosecutions conducted by the Post Office, has prompted calls for reform of private prosecutions.[1] Defenders of private prosecutions argue that they provide a necessary safeguard against State inaction,[2] and fill the gaps in our increasingly resource-limited criminal justice system. Many believe that private prosecutions should remain, with added safeguards built into the system.[3] This essay will go further and argue that private prosecutions have no place in our modern criminal justice system.
Inbuilt conflicts of interest
The lack of safeguards around private prosecutions is now well known. There is no binding code of practice, regime for inspection or system of accreditation for private prosecutors.[4] While the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) can take over and discontinue a private prosecution, the CPS is not automatically notified about private prosecutions.[5] Magistrates deciding whether to issue a summons have little information and are not best placed to consider the reasons for the prosecution or the strength of the evidence.[6] The abuse of process doctrine has a high threshold and can fail to protect defendants against serious malpractice by prosecutors.[7] Even if the reforms addressed all of this, deep flaws would remain.
Private prosecutions allow the victim to occupy two further roles, the investigator and the prosecutor, creating an “inbuilt conflict of interest”.[8] A “victim-prosecutor” will have a personal or commercial stake in the prosecution and so is less likely to have a dispassionate view of the merits of the case. Commercial private prosecution companies have a profit motive to bring private prosecutions. In a competitive market their business depends on bringing higher numbers of prosecutions and securing higher rates of convictions than their competitors. Victim-prosecutors and commercial private prosecution companies undermine the ethos of our criminal justice system, which is that crime is a wrong against society beyond the victim, and criminal justice should focus on crime prevention and deterrence rather than personal vengeance.[9]
Defenders may argue that some government agencies, such as the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), both investigate and prosecute offences. However, the SFO is not the victim of the alleged offences and it does not have a profit motive. Additionally, the SFO is supervised by the Attorney General and directly accountable to Parliament, ensuring accountability and transparency.[10]
Furthermore, prosecutions can raise complicated issues of the public interest that private prosecutors are not well-equipped to consider. The CPS must consider factors including the suspect’s level of culpability, the suspect’s age and maturity, the impact on the community, and the proportionality of a prosecution.[11] CPS guidance ensures the consistency of decision-making across the country. This is especially important where prosecution decisions involve contentious or sensitive issues. For example, the CPS publishes detailed guidance into the circumstances in which it will prosecute in cases of assisted suicide.[12]
Private prosecutors do not have to consider these public interest factors, leading some to bring inappropriate prosecutions. For example, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) was criticised for bringing prosecutions for animal neglect against individuals who were elderly, vulnerable or not holding primary responsibility for the relevant animal.[13] As an animal rights group, the RSPCA prioritised securing deprivation and disqualification orders over “human factors”, such as the mental health of vulnerable defendants.[14] Considering the public interest requires regard to polycentric issues involving many stakeholders and often incommensurable values. For this reason the CPS holds wide-scale public consultations into its prosecution policy. It is difficult to envisage how a similar exercise could be undertaken by an aggrieved individual, a campaigning organisation with particular policy aims, or a commercial private prosecution company with its own business aims.
Access to justice
Baroness Hale, among others, has argued powerfully that private prosecutions are a necessary safeguard for victims who are not traditionally listened to or believed by the authorities.[15] For example, the family of Stephen Lawrence famously brought a private prosecution after the CPS refused to prosecute. A public inquiry later found that the police investigation was “palpably flawed” and that the police were institutionally racist,[16] and a subsequent public prosecution secured two convictions for murder. It should be noted that the private prosecution itself was unsuccessful, yet it did maintain the case in the public eye.
Since the killing of Stephen Lawrence, there are new routes for victims and their families to seek justice. Victims now have a right to review the CPS’s decision not to prosecute, and the EU Victims’ Rights Directive provides rights to support, information and involvement in criminal proceedings.[17] Judicial review and actions against public authorities under the Human Rights Act 1998 provide further avenues for redress. Furthermore, private prosecutions are expensive, with an average cost of £8,500.[18] While costs can be recovered from central funds, this is a substantial amount of money required upfront to initiate a prosecution. The unfortunate reality is that private prosecutions are only open to affluent victims or those sympathetic or well-known enough to fundraise.
A related argument runs that due to “austerity measures and a reduction in [the State’s] law enforcement capabilities”, private prosecutions are necessary to provide access to justice.[19] However, the costs of successful and unsuccessful private prosecutions can be claimed back from central funds.[20] Therefore, private prosecutions have the effect of diverting funds from public prosecutions to prosecutions made in the personal or commercial interests of the private prosecutors. This creates the risk that a parallel prosecution system will develop for certain crimes that are more lucrative for private prosecutors to pursue,[21] bringing the criminal justice system into disrepute.
The final argument regarding access to justice is that for certain offences, such as intellectual property crime, private prosecutions are indispensable as the CPS and police do not have the expertise required.[22] However, if private prosecutions were abolished, private and third-sector organisations could still have a role in providing evidence or expert witnesses. If an enforcement gap appeared, it would be preferable for responsibility to be transferred to a new government agency with the appropriate expertise that would be responsible for investigating and prosecuting those types of crime, in a similar manner to the SFO. In the long term this would fill the enforcement gap while protecting the rights of defendants and ensuring justice for all, not just those well funded enough to bring a private prosecution.
Conclusion
Private prosecutions have no place in our modern criminal justice system. Even with added safeguards, private prosecutions contain an inherent conflict of interest, and those bringing them are not well placed to consider the wider public interest. With regard to safeguarding against State inaction, there are now alternative routes for victims to challenge the decisions of the police and CPS. As to the resource deficits in the criminal justice system, private prosecutions are a sticking plaster solution that does not address the underlying structural issues and may make them worse in the long term. Critics of the criminal justice system, whether of funding or prosecution policy, should support structural reform rather than championing this expensive and potentially dangerous “safeguard”.
[1] Ministry of Justice, Oversight and regulation of private prosecutors in the criminal justice system consultation, published on 06 March 2025 <https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/oversight-and-regulation-of-private-prosecutors-in-the-criminal-justice-system/oversight-and-regulation-of-private-prosecutors-in-the-criminal-justice-system-consultation> accessed on 27 August 2025
[2] Gouriet v Union of Post Office Workers (1975) AC 435
[3] Ministry of Justice (n 1)
[4] Ibid
[5] Stephan Colman, ‘Evaluating private prosecutions: reform or abolition?’, (2023) Criminal Law Review (11) pp.692-708, at pp.697
[6] Ibid at pp.698
[7] Peter Hungerford-Welch, ‘Abuse of Process: Does it really protect the Suspect’s Rights?’ (2017) Criminal Law Review (1) pp.3-17
[8] Jesse Elvin and Claire De Than, ‘Private prosecution: a useful constitutional safeguard or potentially dangerous historical anomaly?’, (2019) Criminal Law Review (8) pp.656-683, at pp.667
[9] Ibid at pp.658
[10] Justice Committee, Private prosecutions: safeguards, Ninth Report of Session 2019-21, (HC 497, 02 October 2020) at para 20
[11] CPS, The Code for Crown Prosecutors, <https://www.cps.gov.uk/publication/code-crown-prosecutors> accessed 01 September 2025 at para 4.14
[12] CPS, Suicide: Policy for Prosecutors in Respect of Cases of Encouraging or Assisting Suicide <https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/suicide-policy-prosecutors-respect-cases-encouraging-or-assisting-suicide> accessed 01 September 2025
[13] Stephen Wooler CB, The independent review of the prosecution activity of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, (24 September 2014) at para 6.3.5
[14] Ibid
[15] R (Gujra) (FC) v CPS [2012] UKSC 52 at [124]
[16] Sir William Macpherson, The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, (Cm 4262-I, February 1999) at paras 2.10 and 6.45
[17] Elvin and De Than, (n 8) at pp.666-667
[18] HMCTS, Private Prosecutions, <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-prosecutions/private-prosecutions> accessed 01 September 2025
[19] Justice Committee (n 10) at para 26
[20] Section 17, Prosecution of Offences Act 1985
[21] R v AB [2017] EWCA Crim 534 at [98]
[22] Justice Committee (n 10) at para 23
