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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

No. The Government’s proposal for judges to try cases without a jury is not a general attack on jury trials—on the contrary. As I said, there were 28,000 trials before a jury in the course of the past year. The provision will affect a few trials each year; 99.9 per cent. of jury trials will be unaffected. Furthermore, the Government are looking to take steps to examine the issue of Diplock courts in Northern Ireland. If we can do that, there will more jury trials than ever. In fact, I am a great believer in jury trials; I was a criminal lawyer before I came here. They are a good way of deciding guilt or innocence in the Crown court. That said, the vast majority of trials take place in magistrates courts and do not involve a jury, so there is no immutable principle that we must always have a jury to do justice. Every day, in criminal courts across the country, people elect in either-way cases to allow district judges—judges sitting alone—to decide guilt or innocence in trials. If we went down to Horseferry road magistrates court or to other London courts today, we could well see that happening. It often happens, although not in summary-only cases, with the consent of the accused. No one should argue that justice is not being done because no jury is present. Many of these cases result in people going to prison. Thousands of people are tried in this way every year. Someone who gets arrested for benefit fraud and charged with a deception can be tried by a judge sitting alone, so it surely cannot be said that a senior judge sitting alone could not do justice in the case of someone arrested for a serious white collar crime. Is the argument that having a jury is a great principle only if it happens in a particular kind of court—the Crown court? Either that is a principle or it is not. Daily in this country, justice is delivered in trials before district judges or before a single judge in our civil courts. In our view, a High Court judge can do justice for that very small number of white collar fraudsters. Juries are right for some cases, but not for every case. The real issue is how we can best do justice. Where justice can be delivered in a better way, we should act on that. Our argument is that in a few cases a year out of the 48,000—only in the most serious and complex fraud cases—there are good reasons for saying that justice can be done by a judge sitting alone.