Robert Brown comments on the speculation of who will become the next DPP in The Times

Alison Saunders has announced that she will step down as DPP in the autumn at the end of her five-year contract. All bets are still on over the new head of the Serious Fraud Office after it was announced this week that Mark Thompson, its chief operating officer, would fill the job only temporarily, but speculation is also growing over who will become the director of public prosecutions (DPP).

Robert Brown, criminal and fraud partner at Corker Binning, says: “In the past, lawyers would want to be the DPP because of the kudos of having such an important powerful position, not to mention the prospect of a knighthood. But we now live in an age where there are huge sums of money to be earned by barristers instructed in the huge fraud, bribery and corruption cases.

“With private sector silks earning large sums, why become a public servant?” Then, he says, there is the problem of politics. “The law and the workings of the criminal justice system have now become an essential part of the political football.”

Read the full article in The Times here, behind a paywall.