# CPS publishes the Levitt review of the Jimmy Savile charging decision

Date: 2013

## The fact

On 11 January 2013 the Crown Prosecution Service published Alison Levitt QC’s review of decisions not to prosecute Jimmy Savile in 2009. The review found that a prosecution should have been brought on the Surrey Police file. Starmer was DPP when the 2009 decision was taken and commissioned the later review.

## Context

ITV’s Exposure documentary in October 2012 forced a reopening. Starmer asked Levitt, Principal Legal Advisor, to review. The published finding criticised the 2009 decision as wrong on the evidence then available. Starmer accepted the finding in public. He did not write Savile’s offences. He did not sit as the original reviewing lawyer on every minute of the 2009 file, but the DPP owns CPS charging policy.

Savile’s offences are not this Fact. The 2008 DPP appointment is a different date. Do not treat a 2013 review as a 2009 conviction of the DPP.

The Director of Public Prosecutions heads the Crown Prosecution Service. He decides charges and issues guidance; he does not sit as a jury, write statutes, or police the streets. A later review of a charging file is not a criminal conviction of the DPP.

## Evidence and sources

Crown Prosecution Service carries the official instrument or communique. BBC records the same dated act independently.

## Significance

It strengthens documented distrust of charging discretion without converting the DPP into the offender.

## What is established and what is not

Established: publication on 11 January 2013 of a CPS review concluding that Savile should have been charged in 2009, commissioned and accepted while Starmer was DPP.

Not established: a criminal finding against Starmer personally, or that a 2013 review uniquely caused later IICSA recommendations.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, a later repeal, a court that vacated the instrument, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

Levitt wrote the finding. Savile committed the underlying offences.. A later repeal, court stay, or successor order would be a different Fact with a different date. That pair identifies CPS publishes the Levitt review of the Jimmy Savile charging decision, not a later speech about CPS publishes the Levitt review of the Jimmy Savile charging decision.

Co-authors and later implementers named in Context remain on the file. CPS publishes the Levitt review of the Jimmy Savile charging decision on 2013-01-11 is not a licence to treat every later Crown Prosecution Service communique as this same act. If a later repeal, stay, or successor instrument exists, it needs its own date and its own row. This dossier refuses to average CPS publishes the Levitt review of the Jimmy Savile charging decision into a personality. The contribution described on this Person row is limited to Complex: he headed the CPS when the 2009 decision was taken and commissioned the 2013 review. Levitt wrote the finding. Savile committed the underlying offences. That limit is the alternative to treating office-holding as authorship of every later series.

## People

- Keir Starmer: https://factrail.ai/people/mig-keir-starmer

## Drivers

- Judicial independence erosion (court capture): https://factrail.ai/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion

## Sources

- https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20981611
- https://www.cps.gov.uk/publication/levitt-review

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/uk-starmer-savile-levitt-review-2013