Barbara Mills

Dame Barbara Jean Lyon Mills DBE, QC (née Warnock; 10 August 1940 – 28 May 2011) was a British barrister. She held various senior public appointments including Director of Public Prosecutions, and was widely seen as a pioneer for women gaining such appointments in the higher echelons of the legal profession. At the time of her death she was chair of the Professional Oversight Board.

Career Mills was called to the Bar from the Middle Temple in 1963. She became a barrister at 3 Temple Gardens in 1967, in chambers headed by Edward Cussens. She had a successful career as a barrister, specialising in criminal prosecution. She became a prosecuting counsel in 1977, then junior Treasury Counsel at the Central Criminal Court in 1981. She secured the convictions of Michael Fagan, an Irish vagrant who broke into Buckingham Palace in 1982 and stole a bottle of wine, exposing the Palace's lax security; of the Brighton bomber Patrick Magee in 1986; and of the Guinness Four in 1990. She defended Winston Silcott when he was tried for the murder of Keith Blakelock in the Broadwater Farm riot in 1985; Silcott was convicted in 1987, but the conviction was quashed on appeal in 1991. David Mills was later found guilty of accepting a cash bribe from Berlusconi, but the conviction was quashed by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation.

From 1992 to 1998 she was Director of Public Prosecutions, the first woman to hold that position. As DPP she also served as the second head of the Crown Prosecution Service, with 6,000 staff considering the prosecution of 1.4 million cases each year. During her term in this office, levels of bureaucracy in the CPS were high and morale was low. She worked to increase the efficiency of the CPS, and introduced victim impact statements.

After a report by the West Yorkshire Police into abuses at the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, she agreed that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute any of the officers at the squad, a decision for which she was widely criticised. She was criticised when the CPS declined to prosecute suspects for the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. She resigned in 1998 after she was criticised in reports by Gerald Butler and Sir Iain Glidewell for repeatedly refusing to bring prosecutions over deaths in police custody. She also ordered a 75-year embargo restriction on the Devon and Cornwall Police Investigation of failures by West Midlands Police in the Birmingham Six scandal of 1974. On 1 June 2016 the Coroner re-opened the inquests after a 42-year adjournment, a decision opposed by West Midlands Police.

She was appointed as Adjudicator for Inland Revenue and for HM Customs and Excise on 26 April 1999, a part-time role independent of those departments, dealing with complaints from members of the public who are not satisfied with how the departments dealt with their complaints. Mills retained the role as Adjudicator for HM Revenue and Customs when those bodies were merged in 2005, and held this post until 2009.

Death

Dame Barbara Mills died on 28 May 2011, aged 70, after suffering a stroke 12 days earlier. She was survived by her husband, their four children, and eight grandchildren. Her ashes are interred in Highgate Cemetery (west cemetery).