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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

I am dealing with an intervention; I will happily give way in due course. What I have described means that the full culpability of a particular defendant does not get exposed in a particular trial. It may get exposed in a couple or maybe even three trials on occasions, but the case is not properly set out in a trial before the public and before a particular court. That all happens not because that is the way in which the courts want to do things, but because the requirements of oral presentation of documents and evidence to a jury mean that the process that takes place is lengthy and puts a substantial and undue pressure on certain juries. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield mentioned the report on the Jubilee line case, so let me refer him to that report because it is important that we look at it. Some of the points that he made were accurate; the jury in the Jubilee line case said that it understood the evidence. That was not the dispute that we had in Committee. We take the view that juries are certainly capable of understanding the evidence. Our point is that there is a burden on them.