---

Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

Let me make it clear that we do not believe that the move from jury trial to non-jury trial is in the interests of justice. All we have sought to do is to improve the Bill for fear that we will lose the battle on it. We are fighting on two fronts. We will vote against Third Reading and we will seek to defeat the Bill in the House of Lords, which I suspect we will do because the combined numbers of my party, the Conservative party, Labour peers who oppose the Bill and Cross Benchers will, happily, be enough to do so. The Government will then have the option of revisiting the issue. However, if the Government eventually win the day—in theory, by using the Parliament Acts—we seek to protect people from the excesses of injustice that we see in the Bill. We have a principled position and a fall-back, compromise position—