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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

No. This may be a technical point, but it is an important aspect of the law. The Solicitor-General raises some important, pragmatic considerations. Every week, prosecuting authorities, such as the SFO and the Crown Prosecution Service, and the counsel they appoint and brief, have to take important decisions about such matters. The Solicitor-General and I take a different view. I disagree with him completely. Justice does not require that the indictment be exhaustive; it does not require that every act that might be deemed contrary to the law, and therefore criminal, should be included in the indictment. I do not believe that at all. As elsewhere in human life, we have to concentrate on the essentials. Human time—like other resources such as money—is not infinite. Whether the case is being heard by a judge or a jury, we do not want it to go on for a month of Sundays; we want to deal with the essential points—the essential criminality—and prosecute the egregious offences. If a guy has been convicted of a rape and a murder, it does not much matter if we forget about the fact that he has a few motoring offences on his record. Anyway, if there is a conviction on the major charge in a serious fraud case and other offences are taken into account, it barely affects the sentence. It would not affect the sentence at all if the other sentences were concurrent so there would be no practical effect. The idea that we can achieve platonic perfection in the law courts and expose all the criminality is wrong and futile. We cannot succeed and it is dangerous to try because we shall muddle the justice system and make it much more difficult for people—not just juries or judges, but people outside—to understand the essentials of the incident that led to the prosecution.