Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

I rise to support what the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) has said, and to speak more specifically to new clause 5. Like the hon. Gentleman, and like my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) on the Opposition Front Bench, I am very much against this Bill. On the other hand, it will be carried through this House, and possibly through the House of Lords, although that may be unlikely. Our business, therefore, is to try and improve the Bill, even though we do not want it to make progress. It is in that spirit that I shall make my remarks. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 stipulates that the consideration that applies when determining whether a trial should be heard without a jury is whether its complexity and length would be burdensome to a jury, but the length and complexity of fraud cases are not peculiar to them. Cases involving terrorism and conspiracies, for example, or ones with many people accused of drugs offences are also long and complex. We are setting a dangerous precedent if we accept that it is only length or complexity that justifies a non-jury trial, because that is to create an argument—irresistible in logic—that the same conditions should be applied to non-fraud cases. I can foresee Ministers saying, ““Parliament has decided that this is appropriate in fraud cases, so why should we not apply that precedent to other cases?”” The Government have a track record of doing that, and they have tried many times to dilute the classes of case in respect of which a jury is required to be empanelled. I refuse to grant Ministers that precedent, because I object fundamentally to these proposals. I propose however to adopt an approach that earlier I characterised rather kindly as the less principled one. Given that the Bill is going to progress through this House, surely we are obliged to try and improve it? Is it possible that there might be occasions when the interests of justice might require a non-jury trial? I find that difficult to contemplate, for the sort of reasons that the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) always advances so eloquently, but I do not exclude the possibility. Certainly, I can contemplate a test that is much more satisfactory than the one proposed by the Solicitor-General. Two options are presented in the new clauses—the Liberal Democrat version in new clause 4, or the version in new clause 5 that is supported by hon. Members from both main Opposition parties. The test that we propose would determine whether the interests of justice might require a non-jury trial. As I said, I can conceive of circumstances when that might be so. For example, I noted earlier—and the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey acknowledged my point—that the coroner in the Princess Diana inquest held that it was right to for that inquest not to have a jury. I am not in any sense questioning the merits of that decision, but I believe that she came to that conclusion because the fact that a lot of evidence would come from abroad, either through interpreters or in translation, could cause difficulties for a jury. I can see that juries might find it difficult fully to handle evidence in deeply complicated cases that comes from abroad. To put it differently, it is possible that a defendant might apply for non-jury trial for those reasons, and I emphasise that I support a defendant’s right to make such an application. If defendants are allowed to apply for non-jury trial, they may decide to do so for reasons of cost. That means that another class of case will become increasingly common. With more defendants funding their own defence, they might well think that their trial would be abbreviated if no jury were involved—clearly an attractive proposition. Moreover, even when a defendant is not providing the funding, long trials can be enormously costly, and that would be another reason to opt for the possible brevity of a non-jury trial. For those reasons, I do not want to exclude the possibility that there are a few classes of case in which a non-jury trial could be authorised, especially when the defendant make that application. However, I do not think that that should happen on grounds of complexity or length—simpliciter.