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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable point, but the same applies to jury trials. Judges ought to ““read themselves into the evidence”” before a case starts, and in my experience of long and complex fraud trials—indeed, all long and complex trials—that is what they do. A much more complicated issue, which we have not resolved, arises when the material that the judge ““reads himself into”” at the outset turns out to be different from the material that is ultimately presented in the course of a trial. We have heard nothing from the Solicitor-General about that procedural issue and the real risk of miscarriages of justice. I shall say more about that shortly. Yes, there should be good case management, and I am sure that case management can be improved. Stephen Wooler’s report on the collapse of the Jubilee line case shows exactly what can go wrong with trials, and it has nothing whatever to do with juries.