WASTE NOT, WANT NOTThe Director of Public Prosecutions' recent comments on reform are a curious mixture of elderly platitudes which have been taken out of the cupboard yet again and given a dusting, to spruce them up in the hope that the audience will be impressed.

There is also a desire to be politically correct (see [2001] Gazette, 1 February, 10).

Most of David Calvert-Smith's suggestions for reforming the system are things that are glaringly obvious and ones with which no sensible commentator could disagree.

Even using Crown Prosecution Service solicitors for simple matters in the Crown Court is not new.

It has been going on quietly since before his appointment, although he now appears to be questioning its cost effectiveness in some areas.

Mr Calvert-Smith is to be congratulated on his additional award of 30.4 million of the Chancellor's largesse, but as far as one can see only a small proportion will go on additional lawyers.

If it costs, say, 50,000 - salary and National Insurance - to employ one lawyer, which is a generous estimate, 100 will cost him 5 million.

Taking on 100 extra lawyers will I am sure be welcomed, but, in reality, that is only 2.5 per CPS area.

It will make little difference in large, cumbersome areas such as London or Manchester.

By saying that he hopes to avoid the mistakes of former regimes, in not now rushing to appoint new lawyers, his contention is that hurried recruitment in the past has contributed to CPS underperformance.

This is a reflection on his existing staff.

He may find that they are not entirely happy with it.

What is to be done with the remaining 25 million? As someone who was the head of one of his branches for ten years, I would hazard a guess that it will go not in trying to reduce the CPS's famous paper-chase, but on computer projects that do not deliver, various initiatives and working parties of doubtful utility, and to fund the ever burgeoning size of the bureaucracy in area offices and Ludgate Hill.To see that this does not happen is the real challenge for Mr Calvert-Smith.

John Edwards, solicitor, Heswall, Wirral