Peter Walker is a former Deputy Chief Constable of North Yorkshire Police. He now owns SuperSkills, a Construction Training Business in Thirsk

THE injustice inflicted on Liam Allan over the past two years since an allegation of rape was made against him has rightly caused much criticism of the police in general and the Met in particular.

To remind readers, Liam Allan had been on bail charged with twelve counts of rape and sexual assault. His case was that sex with the woman was consensual. It was only after a new prosecuting barrister took on the case and acted on a request from defence counsel for disclosure of his accuser’s telephone records that material came to light which exonerated him. The trial then collapsed.

That a second case – involving the same investigating officer – also collapsed because material had not been disclosed to the defence within the same week in December has caused the Met Commissioner, Cressida Dick to order a review of all similar cases.

To make matters worse, in the immediate aftermath of the Allan case, a shocking number of barristers came forward to say this was not an unusual event. The fact of the matter appears to be the rules about disclosure are not adhered to on far too many occasions and that too many police officers either do not understand them or adopt a cavalier approach to undertaking their responsibilities.

Thank goodness for the independent nature of the Criminal Bar. Barristers may be prosecuting one day and defending the next. Their duty is to the court and to serve justice and they rightly guard that independence fiercely. For sure, Liam Allan has been a direct beneficiary.

Nowadays, we seem to specialise in knee-jerk reactions to shocking news. This case has produced some predictable ones.

Firstly: “People who make false allegations of rape should be named.” Secondly: “Alleged perpetrators of rape should not be named prior to conviction.” Some say the police and Crown Prosecution Service are biased towards the apparent victim and there are plenty who would argue women do not come forward to report crimes because they fear being disbelieved.

There are those who maintain “the police are incompetent” and others who blame all this on “Government cuts”.

Let’s dismiss most of these in turn. There is no doubt if somebody makes a malicious allegation, they will be investigated and depending on the evidence, charged. At that point, they will be named.

With regard to the naming of people charged as a result of an allegation of rape being made against them, this should only occur in the normal course of events when the evidence has been properly assessed and the CPS has concluded there is both a sufficient amount of evidence to lead to a conviction and that it is in the public interest to prosecute.

Both the principles above apply to the Allan case. If the accuser was to be prosecuted, she would be named. If the police investigation had been conducted as it should have been and the CPS had taken the right course of action, Mr Allan would not have been named, because he would not have been charged.

WITH regard to police competence or lack thereof, such a blanket statement as has been made about the present case cannot possibly be right. In every force here in the North-East, there will be thousands of activities every day, across a mind-boggling range of issues – a simple feature of our approach to policing in the UK. Terrorism; human trafficking; child sexual exploitation; domestic violence; drug trafficking; anti-social behaviour; road collisions – the list goes on and on and generates hundreds of thousands of individual interactions between officers and the public.

The simplistic statement “the police are incompetent” demonstrates an ignorance of the facts – which are that like all large organisations, police forces contain a range of people from the outstanding to the inadequate and the trick for police leaders is to make sure that overall, the service delivered is as good as it can be by effectively monitoring performance all the time. That is what keeps the nation safe – which by comparison elsewhere in the developed world, it largely is.

Similarly, blaming “Government cuts” appears to have become the public sector’s go to excuse when something has gone badly wrong. The unsuitability of using that excuse in the present case is demonstrated by those barristers who will tell you disclosure has been a problematic issue for as long as it has been required.

YET these circumstances demonstrate something is wrong – and it appears from the measured reactions by members of the Bar, some police officers who have commented and others, this is the case when it comes to the disclosure of material received during the course of an investigation.

Serving police officers tell me that training is insufficient in general and there is too much reliance upon “distance learning”.

Preparation of case files is no simple matter and the Inspectorate of Constabulary/CPS Inspectorate recently reported the rules about disclosure were not sufficiently understood across both police and CPS when they conducted a joint inspection about case preparation.

This is an issue which police and crime commissioners across the country should be addressing with their chief constables – and telling the public what they are doing about it.

There is no doubt much can and should be done to ensure no further cases like that of Liam Allan occur.

It should not need the last-minute intervention of a barrister to avoid a young man serving a long sentence for a crime he did not commit.