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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

I was trying to deal with the substantive point, rather than the supplementary point made by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield. Of course more than 90 per cent. of all criminal trials take place, as we know, in magistrates courts. However, the principle of the justice system is that serious charges go before a jury of one’s peers. I share the view expressed around the House that in the intervening period we have had a tokenistic consultation, which was only a consultation afterwards—in terms of how it was defined. It certainly did not honour what I understood was the undertaking made by the then Home Secretary to me across the Floor of the House in November 2003. There have been constructive discussions and constructive ideas have been put to Law Officers by the Conservative party and by me on behalf the Liberal Democrats, but they have not been responded to. We are where we are because there is a fundamental divide when it comes to the question, ““Are you in favour of jury trial for all these cases or not?”” That is not going to be changed. Why should those of us on this side of the argument stand our ground? First, because there should be one form of trial for serious offences and one form of justice dispensed, for reasons that many people have given. A judgment by a single judge, with written reasons, for certain cases and a judgment by a jury, on the basis of guilty or not guilty, are different forms of justice. There is no logic to say that one person who has committed an offence should have a different form of justice from somebody else. The reality is that, however great the integrity of the judge, there will be suspicion. The more cases there are in which somebody is the judge of both the fact and the law—going in and out of all the questions about looking at documents and rejecting them, and rejecting evidence—the more cause for suspicion. There will be cause for suspicion where at the moment there is none. People know that all the evidence that is to be used to decide guilt or innocence will be seen or heard by the jury, and by everybody else in the court. Secondly, I have argued for many years, as have many people on the Liberal Democrat Benches, for votes of equal value in all parts of the country. This issue is about verdicts of equal value in all parts of the country. The principle is important. A verdict by a jury is much more conclusive, much more commanding of public confidence, and much more likely to stand and not be the subject of a considered appeal, than verdicts by judges alone. Thirdly—this point has been well made elsewhere—it is highly unacceptable that the professionals will be tried by the professionals, and the white-collar offender by the white-collar professional judge. That is not an acceptable way of dividing the way in which society administers its justice. It is the professionalisation of the justice system. That is against all our tradition, which has been very successful. Fourthly, to be blunt, there is much more confidence in juries than in judges. That is not because judges do not do an excellent job, but because the public trust their own. The most logical reason is this: in a jury, at least 10 people have to come to a view that the person is guilty. That is a much more satisfactory outcome than one person coming to a view that somebody is guilty. That is better not just for defendants and the public, but for judges. The answer to the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) that was being disputed—about saving judges from being the subject of any sort of corruptibility risk—is that jurors in long trials will do only one jury trial. They will be exempt for the rest of their lives and will not come back again. There is no point in their being a target, because they are not likely to be put in that position again. The same does not apply to judges. The situation is entirely different from that which applies in a civil case, where the same sort of people will not be enmeshed in the same sort of risk of losing their liberty for a long time. Above all, there is no evidence that the system is quicker or that the verdicts are more accurate. If the Solicitor-General had been able to show that since the Government first wanted to go down this road in 2000 or 2001, all the evidence had come in their direction—if he had been able to say, ““Look at the percentage of cases that have failed. Look at the percentage of cases that the Serious Fraud Office has said it hasn’t been able to deal with,””—there would have been a case. If there had been reports commissioned by the Government that said that the Jubilee line case collapsed because the jury did not understand it or did not get the whole picture, or if the jurors had said, ““Terribly sorry guys, but it was all beyond us,”” or, ““We didn’t think we were getting the whole picture,”” there would be new evidence. However, there is no new evidence. Indeed, the evidence has been going in the opposite direction. Although the Liberal Democrats believe that this may not be a general attack on juries—I accept what the Solicitor-General says about that—it is a specific attack. It is what my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) calls, ““one specimen count””. If we let the specimen count stick, the danger is that the Government will find arguments for saying that long cases and cases of a certain complexity should be passed over to the new system. There is a logical progression—and that is a dangerous road to go down. Of course, we cannot say that that is what will happen, but it is impossible to resist the argument that it could happen, once the link is broken. It is the law of attrition. The movement becomes difficult to resist. That is why we have to stand our ground where we are. There is a strong constitutional tradition in this country that we depend on a robust Parliament with independence from the Executive—and robust judges, lay magistrates and juries that are independent of the Executive, too. On these Benches and elsewhere, we will defend the jury system. We believe that it works well, and with the new procedural changes it will work even better. The new improvements should be seen, tested, reviewed and allowed to take their time. In a few years’ time Ministers will not have a case to argue, because necessary changes will have been made. It is not a necessary change to replace jurors—representatives of the great British public—with professional judges, and thus to change the whole nature of the way in which some people are tried, and tried entirely satisfactorily.