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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

I do not know where the hon. Gentleman is coming from. This is not a timetable motion debate; it is a Second Reading debate on a self-standing Bill. It is true that there have been attacks before—over the centuries—on our fundamental liberties, including trial by jury, and those attacks have been seen off, including previous ones by this Government, but that does not make the issue under discussion any less important. I always approach such issues in the same way as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) evidently does—perhaps there is something in the Lincolnshire air that makes us automatically adopt the same attitude. I first address them as issues of principle, and then as issues of pragmatism, and then I test whether the pragmatic arguments are sufficiently strong to deserve that some compromise be made in the fundamental principle. The issue of principle is threefold. Opposition Members are all making similar points—they are mutually supportive and consistent points, and to a degree there is an overlap, but each Member has a slightly different perspective. I start from the position that although we in this country do not have a written constitution and we therefore do not have any foundational law, if we did have a foundational law Magna Carta would come as close as is possible to being it. The idea of trial by jury began in Magna Carta; so far as I know, its reference to trial by peers is the first time in the history of the human race that that idea was enshrined in a constitution-type document. It has not only been with us in this country ever since, but it has been followed by scores of countries around the world—in fact, by all those that have respectable systems of justice. We should treat it with the greatest respect and be extremely sceptical about eroding it. I must give credit to the House of Commons Library for drawing to my attention a quotation from Sir William Blackstone. It is good for all Members to read Blackstone because there is no more eloquent advocate of our constitutional liberties and the rationale for them. For the benefit of those who have not read the note produced by the Library—that is a wonderful task that it always performs on such debates for Members—I wish to read out a few lines of it:"““yet let it be again remembered, that delays and little inconveniences in the forms of justice, are the price that all free nations must pay for their liberty in more substantial matters; that these inroads upon this sacred bulwark of the nation are fundamentally opposite to the spirit of our constitution; and that, though begun in trifles, the precedent may gradually increase and spread, to the utter disuse of juries in questions of the most momentous concern.””" Those words were penned, presumably, rather more than 200 years ago, as they are part of Blackstone’s ““Commentaries””, but they might have been penned for this debate.