Max Hill will need to restore confidence and morale as the director of public prosecutions

The next director of public prosecutions needs to restore badly dented confidence in the Crown Prosecution Service after a series of collapsed trials, lawyers said yesterday.

Max Hill, 54, whose appointment to the £204,000-a-year job was announced on Tuesday, must also prove to right-wing critics that his liberal credentials do not undermine the reputation of the country’s top prosecutor.

The QC has come under fire in his role as the independent reviewer of terrorism laws for meeting an Islamist group that praised the terrorist known as Jihadi John as a “beautiful man.”

The Conservative MP Philip Davies has called Mr Hill a “politically correct snowflake” and among some lawyers he is referred to as “TV’s own Max Hill”, a jibe at his high media profile.