---

Criminal Justice

I look forward to the Home Secretary’s consultation with former jurors, as, like my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), I was summoned for jury service—at the Old Bailey, last week. It was a bit of a damp squib; 120 of us were summoned and we sat in a cramped room for three hours before we were released without having to serve the rest of our two weeks. Do not we need radical changes in the way courts are run? The sittings should not simply be in the interests of the lawyers and at the convenience of the judge. There should be programmed times for cases so that trials are not as long as they are at present, and jurors and witnesses should not be treated as some kind of necessary evil.