Brian Altman KC

Brian Altman KC’s main specialisms are public inquiries, fraud and bribery, corporate governance, compliance and regulatory work. A large part of his practice is advising prominent private and corporate clients, as well as the UK Government, on a wide range of high-profile and esoteric issues. His work involves both private prosecution and defence.

Brian’s clients have included high-net-worth individuals, foreign multinational corporations and UK PLCs and other organisations, as well as a Middle Eastern Royal Family. Typically, his instructions emanate from well-known and respected City solicitors, but also from in-house Counsel.

Brian has long and successful experience as leading counsel in the most serious, high-profile cases of murder and terrorism, and has headed and advised teams of lawyers and investigators countless times over several years.

In June 2013, Brian ended his highly successful tenure as Treasury Counsel at the Old Bailey, having been Treasury Counsel for some 16 years, the last two-and-a-half of which had been as First Senior Treasury Counsel.

Notable work

In May 2021, Brian was commissioned by the Director of the Serious Fraud Office ​to investigate and report into the collapse of the Serco trial of R v Woods and Marshall in April 2021. His report was published by the Serious Fraud Office on 21 July 2022.

The link to the Director’s statement and the Report and Annexes may be found at: https://www.sfo.gov.uk/2022/07/21/publication-of-brian-altman-qc-and-sir-david-calvert-smith-reviews/

In January 2017, Brian was appointed Lead Counsel to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) (to see The Times report of the appointment click here). Brian provided strategic and legal advice to the Chair and Panel on all aspects of the Inquiry, as well as overseeing the large counsel team. He appeared as Lead Counsel in a number of the Inquiry’s high-profile investigations. The final report was published in October 2022. See https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/inquiry/final-report

In the spring of 2021, Brian was appointed as Lead Counsel to the Brook House Inquiry, whose terms of reference were to examine the mistreatment of detained individuals at the Brook House Immigration Removal Centre in Gatwick, then run by G4S, which was exposed in a BBC Panorama programme in September 2017.   The Inquiry concluded in September 2023 with the publication of its report. See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/brook-house-inquiry

Brian is representing the Secretary of State for Defence and the Ministry of Defence in the Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan established in December 2022.

He is also instructed on behalf of Boris Johnson, the former Prime Minister, in Module 2 of the Covid Inquiry.

During his time as Treasury Counsel, Brian advised on, and prosecuted, some of the best-known cases of the day such as the case of John Downey, alleged to be an IRA man guilty of the 1982 Hyde Park bombing, who had erroneously received a comfort letter indicating he was not wanted in the UK; the notorious abduction and murder of Milly Dowler and the killing of Amelie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy; the so-called ‘Babes in the Woods’ murder case – the killing of 9 year old Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows in Brighton by Russell Bishop in 1986. In March 2020, Brian led for the prosecution in the first trial concerning the death of PC Andrew Harper who was dragged to his death by a car driven by three young men escaping from their theft of a quad bike. That trial had to be aborted due to Covid-19. Brian was unable to prosecute the retrial in June 2020. The three were convicted of PC Harper’s manslaughter.

In March 2021, Brian, leading Simon Baker KC, Jacqueline Carey KC, Charlotte Brewer and Helen Jones (all of 2 Bedford Row), instructed by Nick Vamos of Peters & Peters and Hannah Laming (then Peters & Peters, now at Squire Patton Boggs), appeared on behalf of Post Office Ltd in the Court of Appeal Criminal Division in relation to 42 cases referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in what was the largest conjoined appeal ever heard by the Court of Appeal Criminal Division (R v Hamilton & Others [2021] EWCA Crim 577. You can read the full judgment here.)

The appeals all related to individuals who had been prosecuted by the Royal Mail Group and post-2012 by Post Office Ltd between 2000 and 2013 relying on evidence from the Horizon accounting system which has since been found to suffer from bugs, errors and defects. None of the counsel team, nor Peters & Peters, had been involved in prosecuting any of the cases during this period, and were brought in to conduct a thorough review of the cases to ensure proper disclosure was made and to advise on and conduct the appeals. Leading a team of over 60 review counsel, the counsel team oversaw an enormous post-conviction disclosure review exercise (with over 4 million documents subjected to review and substantially over 300,000 pages of material disclosed) to enable the appellants to advance their appeals.

Following advice from the counsel team, the appeals of the 39 successful appellants had been conceded on grounds of limb one abuse of process (with four of those 39 appeals conceded on grounds of both limb one and limb two abuse of process). Only three of the 42 appeals were opposed on all grounds, and the Court of Appeal upheld all three of those convictions.

Testimonials

Over the years Brian has consistently been acknowledged to be ‘a leader in his field’ by both Chambers & Partners and the Legal 500. In 2007, Brian was nominated by Chambers & Partners as ‘Crime Junior of the Year’ and in 2011 as ‘Crime Silk of the Year’. In 2013, he was nominated by Legal 500 as ‘Crime Silk of the Year’ and in 2022 as ‘Public Inquiries Silk of the Year’. Brian was also selected by Lawyer Monthly as winner of the 2015 ‘White Collar Crime Barrister of the Year – UK’.

The Times has named Brian in its Law 100 list as one of the country’s 100 most influential lawyers. He was also listed by The London Evening Standard in the law section of the list of London’s 1000 most influential people for 2011, and in 2012 he was named by The London Evening Standard as one of London’s top three ‘Golden Legal Eagles’ in crime.

Brian was also featured in The Times on 17 December 2020 as their Lawyer of the Week for his work as Lead Counsel to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. See The Times.

Media and Select Committees

On 12 February 2024, Brian gave evidence alongside Sir John Saunders (Chair of the Manchester Arena Inquiry) and Kate Eves (Chair of the Brook House Inquiry) in the first evidence session of the House of Lords Select Committee looking into statutory inquiries, following on from the House of Lords’ Committee’s 2014 report on its post-legislative scrutiny of the Inquiries Act 2005.  Watch here: Parliamentlive.tv – Statutory Inquiries Committee

The House of Lords Committee report was published on 16 September 2024. You can read it here: House of Lords – Statutory Inquiries Committee

Brian was interviewed on Times Radio about public inquiries on 8 December by Ruth Davidson and on 10 December by Calum Macdonald.

The interview with Ruth Davidson is available on the following link (between 53.43 and 59.45): https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/show/20231208-17909/2023-12-08 and the interview with Calum Macdonald is available on the following link (between 02.48.10 and 02.55.52): https://www.thetimes.co.uk/radio/show/20231210-15971/2023-12-10

On 19 October 2022, Brian appeared before the Justice Committee in Parliament to give evidence about the report into the collapse of Serco trial of R v Woods and Marshall in April 2021. He appeared with Sir David Calvert-Smith (former DPP and High Court Judge) and Anthony Rogers (His Majesty’s Inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service) in relation to their report into the SFO’s mishandling of the Unaoil case. Watch here.

The case of Ash-Smith (an historic murder of a 16-year-old schoolgirl in which Brian successfully led for the prosecution) was one of two historic cases featured in Episode 3 of the BBC4 documentary series ‘The Prosecutors’ in which cameras were allowed into court buildings for the first time. The programme in which Brian was interviewed followed milestones in the preparation and prosecution of the case to its successful conclusion. See BBC iPlayer: the prosecutors.

Brian also featured in the 2019 BBC2 documentary ‘The Babes in the Wood Murders: The Prosecutors’ about the successful quashing of Russell Bishop’s acquittal in 1987 for the murder of two 9-year-old Brighton girls in 1986 and his retrial and conviction at the Old Bailey in 2018 in which Brian led for the prosecution. See The Times.

Media agencies frequently ask Brian for his opinion and input on current legal affairs, and he has been quoted and mentioned in many media articles. In a Channel 4 News online article by Patrick Worrall ‘Why is there no courtroom drama like the real thing’, dealing with the issue of cameras in the courtroom, Patrick wrote:

“Court reporters sit around and argue over top prosecutors the way that fight fans talk about boxers. Who’s the best, pound-for-pound? We all had our favourites. Mine was Brian Altman QC, vanquisher of Milly Dowler’s repulsive killer Levi Bellfield, among others. Mr Altman is an expert cross-examiner, breaking down the hardest of the hard men with patient, remorseless logic, trapping them with their own lies.” See Channel 4.

Brian has been interviewed by Clive Coleman, the former BBC legal affairs correspondent, for the Radio 4 Today programme broadcast on 4 April 2013 about the end of his tenure as First Senior Treasury Counsel and the workings of the Treasury Counsel system. See BBC News.

He has been quoted in several articles and often gives talks and seminars to legal professionals on practical and current legal issues.