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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. I welcome to yet another debate on this issue many of the aficionados who attended the previous debates. I am sure that we will cover much of the same territory, important as it is. Fraud does enormous damage to our national economy and the Government are determined to modernise our criminal justice system to tackle it. Our policy has four main strands. We recently took through the House the Fraud Act 2006, which will create a statutory offence of fraud and modernise much of our law on deception. Secondly, the Government have also carried out a cross-departmental review of fraud to examine the prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution and punishment of fraud. We published a report in July, and consultation finished on 27 October. We are now considering our response. Thirdly, new protocols and procedures for our courts have been introduced by the prosecution authorities, the Attorney-General, the Lord Chief Justice and others to improve the management of large criminal cases. The Bill is the fourth element. It will reform our criminal justice system to enable it more effectively to try a small number of serious and complex frauds without a jury.