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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

I am not advancing what the hon. and learned Gentleman describes as the stupid jury argument—not at all. I want to make it very clear that it is not our claim that juries are incapable of understanding complex fraud cases. What we say is that, in the words of Lord Justice Auld, the length of such trials—some of which last for several months—represents an unreasonable intrusion on jurors’ personal lives, and, where they are in employment, their working lives, going way beyond the conventional requirement for such duty of about two weeks’ service. Juries can cope with long trials, but having to sit on a jury for six months, or sometimes more than a year, is an excessive burden on members of the public. That is my first point. My second point is—