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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

I did not know that and I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for intervening and pointing that out to me and to the House in general. I obviously do not follow as closely as I should, and as he does, proceedings in the other place on these important matters. My starting point is that there must be a very strong presumption against eroding these fundamental liberties, and I am very glad that the Liberal Democrats are with us on this matter this afternoon. I come to the second point of principle about which I feel strongly. It is extremely important for public confidence in our criminal justice system that it not become the protected private preserve of a professional caste. With due respect to those of my right hon. and hon. Friends, and colleagues in all parts of the House, who are professional lawyers, it is not healthy for the law to become an arcane, closed system whereby the only people in a courtroom who are not lawyers are the defendant and the doorman. The jury system draws the wider citizenry into the process in a systematic way, which is extremely valuable. The third point of principle is that creating a two-tier criminal justice system is profoundly problematic. We all know that the distinction between people who have an automatic right, or the right to elect trial by jury, and those who are dealt with in a summary fashion, is a distinction between lesser and more serious offences. We could argue all afternoon about what constitute lesser and more serious offences, but the general point of common sense has always been that a serious offence is where a conviction would have had a very damaging and perhaps devastating effect on the life of the individual so convicted, because of the damage to their reputation or the considerable loss of liberty arising from a substantial sentence. We would all agree that, in that sense, speeding is not a very serious offence but murder is. We have to draw the line somewhere. If the Bill proceeds today, serious fraud, which has always been considered an extremely serious offence and usually involves a very long custodial sentence on conviction—so that it undoubtedly and without the slightest ambiguity falls into that category of a serious offence—will no longer be appropriate for jury trial. That is a very serious and damaging development. In the category of serious offences, there will be a two-tier system of justice, with some types of offence being tried in front of a jury—as we have discovered this afternoon, we must worry about how long even that will last under this Government if they pursue their agenda—and others being tried only by a judge, with no right to jury trial, thereby contradicting the Magna Carta principle. That is a two-tier system. In the light of what the Solicitor-General has said this afternoon, I am a great deal more worried about this issue than I was at midday, before the debate started. He seemed to say in support of his proposals that under his system, a judge could read a great deal of evidence, which would not therefore come out in front of the court. Of course, it is perfectly proper and desirable that when a judge is presiding over a jury trial, he does a lot of homework before the trial opens, simply from the point of view of managing the trial effectively. That is fine—if the judge is not going to reach a verdict. However, the idea of a judge with responsibility for reaching a verdict reading before the trial begins material that will not be delivered in open court, and which cannot therefore be challenged by the defendant or his or her counsel, is deeply troubling. It is extremely subversive of the whole principle that evidence should be available to the court and, equally, to the defence and prosecution, and that the defendants should, at every stage, have an opportunity to challenge any allegations made against them.