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Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

My Lords, the principal charge against the Bill is that it attacks the foundation stone of British justice: the jury trial. I must confess that I am somewhat mystified by some of the arguments that run along those lines. Like my noble friend Lord Rosser, I note that the British legal system considers very many crimes to be best tried without a jury. It was not so long ago that a drink-driving charge could be tried by jury until it was decided, under a Conservative Government, that that was impractical. Let us take the case of a man getting drunk, taking a car without consent and assaulting the police officer who apprehends him. Parliament has now agreed that the serious offences involved—taking a vehicle without the owner’s consent, assaulting a police officer and drink-driving—are ones that only magistrates can try. I do not hear calls to return such cases to jury trials, so I assume that we believe that justice is being served. We often hear that the Crown Court is generally reserved for more serious cases, and we reserve jury trial for those cases. I am sure that many here would rather be defrauded than assaulted, so I am not sure on what basis we decide that fraud is more serious than theft and assault. Rather than being serious, fraud is a more complex and difficult charge to pursue and prosecute, and it cannot be dealt with in the same way as common assault. Fraud requires forensic treatment and expensive lawyers, and both are best found in the Crown Courts. Parliament has long had the power to change the categories of offences which are subject to jury trial, and, as life and society change, it makes changes when they are needed to improve the likelihood of justice being achieved. I believe that that deals with the ““slippery slope”” argument. Can my noble and learned friend say whether I am right in asserting that a whole raft of offences which were previously subject to trial by jury are no longer so? I take pride in speaking not as a lawyer but as near as possible as a member of the public. I sense that the public are not convinced that in serious fraud cases the guilty are always convicted and the innocent freed. Rather like my noble friend Lady Mallalieu, I believe that in general the public have confidence in juries but not always. For example, if comedians are prosecuted for tax frauds, I believe they stand a better chance of getting off in Liverpool than they do in Birmingham. I can give many other examples where, from time to time, juries have reached perverse decisions and judgments. In fraud cases, I observe as a member of the public that the minnows seem to get caught, but I perceive that an abnormally high number of serious fraud cases fail, and I believe that there is public concern about that. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, asserts that his party is not soft on fraud trials. However, a problem in dealing with fraud trials was identified as long as 22 years ago, when his party was in power and turned its attention to the matter. I think that most speakers today have accepted that there is still an unresolved problem and I have heard a range of options advanced as solutions. Many involve saying, ““Let’s just wait a little bit longer until we see how that works as time passes””, or, ““Let’s wait a bit longer for another piece of legislation to work its way through””. If we were to move on not 22 years but 24, 26 or even 28, I suspect that most people in this House would be prepared to let the issue run along those lines. However, I do not believe that, if the public were tested, they would be willing to go along with that. They sense that something is wrong and that it needs to be put right. Given the way in which the Government have presented their case and have been turned back on several occasions, I do not think that our Front Bench is being soft on serious fraud cases; it has put forward a pretty compelling argument for change in respect of juries and I believe that the public will support it. It seems to me that the major issue is not the length of the trial nor, indeed, the ability of some juries to cope with the issues put before them; it is that the full criminality of fraud is not exposed because of the complexity of cases these days and the inability to present the facts to juries clearly and concisely. That was a strong point advanced by my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General, but—I was listening carefully—I did not hear the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, respond to it convincingly. Perhaps I am being unfair but I should be grateful if the noble Lord would return to that point.