Sir Keir Starmer blasted for ‘back-sliding’ on rape case law

SIR Keir Starmer was blasted for “back-sliding” on rape case law by his own minister, it has emerged.

Emily Thornberry criticised Labour’s leader in 2012 when he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

Ms Thornberry was Shadow Attorney General, the same role she holds now.

She demanded “an urgent rethink of the CPS’s decision to weaken guidelines that specialist barristers must deal with every stage of a rape prosecution”.

In a letter to Sir Keir and then Attorney General Dominic Grieve, she let rip: “Rape campaigners have denounced this as backsliding. The trial process can be notoriously traumatic for rape victims.”

At the time, Sir Keir’s CPS strongly denied watering down the guidance.

But the unearthed criticism risks shattering Labour’s claim that Rishi Sunak — who only entered Parliament in 2015 — is to blame for Britain’s “broken” justice system.

Sir Keir says he makes “zero apologies” for a Labour ad campaign that has accused the PM of going soft on sex offenders.

Labour last night insisted Ms Thornberry’s 2012 attack had been on Tory cuts, not the CPS or Sir Keir.

But Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith said: “Labour’s attack has backfired.”

Labour pointed out that Ms Thornberry’s letter was critical of the government’s “decision to slash the Crown Prosecution Service’s budget by 25 per cent over the course of the Parliament”.

A party source said: “As Emily makes clear, this was a criticism of the impact of the cuts imposed by the Tory government on the CPS, and no criticism of the CPS itself, or Keir Starmer as DPP.

“It had no impact on the ability of the CPS to charge rapists or put them in prison, both of which were happening at much higher rates under Keir Starmer’s watch than is happening today under the Tories.”