Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

I support that entirely. I also support the provision for a sunset mechanism enabling such proposals to lapse if the Government do not deliver. There is a second thing that we still do not do, and ought to do. The other day I spoke at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the organisation Justice, along with the hon. Member for Beaconsfield and the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General said that he and the Government support the objective of codifying the criminal law. We also do so—as, I think, does the Conservative party. The best way to start to achieve that objective is to make sure that as proposed legislation comes before us in Home Office business—it will mainly come before us in Home Office business, but it will also occasionally come across Law Officers’ desks—we update wider legislation so that we end up with a consolidated Act, as it were, on the subject in question. Therefore, in the context of this Bill on jury trial, we should end up not with a Bill that is slim and appealing—as this one is—but with an updated version of either the Fraud Act 2006 or the Criminal Justice Act 2003. We would then have only one piece of legislation, and therefore when we start to put proposed legislation in 2007 together with legislation enacted in 1998 or 2003 or whenever, what has not been addressed that should have been addressed will become obvious to us, and many more issues will be dealt with. I also want to offer an encouragement—it is not a proposal because it refers to something that has been achieved. A new parliamentary process has belatedly been adopted which did not apply to this Bill: before the merits of the wording of legislation are deliberated in Committee, there is the ability to take evidence on it. Although the Bill missed the deadline, we have now agreed to that process, so I am not criticising the Government. I hope that that process will be valuable, because I hope that the people who give evidence to us about the practical implications of Bills will be the sort who are likely to say to us, for example, ““You do realise, don’t you, that the measures to which this part of the Bill refers have not yet been implemented?”” Therefore we as legislators, as well as the Government and civil servants, will be alerted to problems such as that which the new clause addresses. I do not object to agreeing to the new clause. It is more than a technical amendment, but it is not the most substantive part of the Bill by any means—we will come to that shortly. However, it raises questions to do with the process of government and, to be blunt, as my party’s Front Benchers have often said—as have Conservative Front Benchers—if we had legislated less and administered better in the past 10 years, criminal justice and the Home Office would not have such an unsettled or declining reputation. That is not in anybody’s interests; it is not in the country’s interests that criminal justice and the Home Office do not have a good reputation.