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Fraud Bill [HL]

My Lords, we touched on this issue in yesterday’s debate on the Statement, to which my noble friend contributed. The Government intend to implement Section 43 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which deals with the mode of trial. I touched also on other methods of seeking to constrain the length of trials. We hope that this Bill will help too, as it simplifies the law. But my noble friend is absolutely right that the length of fraud trials is a very serious issue which we must tackle. While simplifying the law will help, the Bill will not, of itself, deal significantly with that problem. The complexity of the facts, not of the law, creates the length of trials to which my noble friend rightly refers.