Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

Indeed. That is more true now that the rules on legal representation have changed. There has been criticism—justified, in some cases—that people who appear to be well off have been getting legal assistance from the public purse for a long case, and there may be more of those cases. To summarise, people might normally prefer a jury to a judge, because they think a jury might represent them better, for gender, ethnic or other reasons, but in a case that has attracted great publicity or, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman says, in one involving substantial cost, they might prefer to appear before a judge alone. New clause 9 argues for equality of opportunity to make the case. New clause 10 makes the supplementary point that, if a judge is to consider an application from the prosecution, there should be an opportunity for oral representations—a public presentation of the reasons for not wishing the case to go to a judge-only trial—or, if one defendant made such an application, the other defendants should have the right to present orally to the court the reasons for not wishing the case to go before a non-jury trial. New clauses 11 and 13 are similar. They are perhaps the most important in the group and would provide for a necessary further safeguard. If an order to go to a judge-only trial was found not only to be unnecessary in the interests of a safe verdict or in the interests of justice, but that it would"““significantly disadvantage or otherwise prejudice a defendant or any of the defendants””," there must be an opportunity for the law to say that it should not be permissible. The balance of argument must allow that, even if only one of a large group of defendants would be prejudiced, the alternative of a judge-only trial would not be open to the court. I want to comment on the number of cases that we are considering and the reason for my hope that hon. Members believe that every defendant’s right should be taken into account. Let me give the numbers of cases in which the Serious Fraud Office reported that it had been involved in recent years: eight trials in 2001-02; 14 trials in 2002-03; 14 trials in 2003-04; 22 trials in 2004-05; and 10 trials in 2005-06. As we would expect, there are many more than one defendant per trial. Let me provide the number of defendants in that five-year span: 13 in 2001-02; 25 in 2002-03; 39 in 2003-04; 58 in 2004-05; and 23 in 2005-06. There are many defendants and it is important that the interests of each are considered. Serious fraud cases are, by definition, more likely than other types of cases to involve many defendants. If we wish to protect the interests of defendants, we must examine the other two or three columns that the Serious Fraud Office produces each year on the success rate of the current system. We do not argue that changing from one system to another would or should increase convictions or acquittals. The Government appear periodically to make the case that, if we changed the system, there would be more convictions. However, there has been a significant number of convictions and the Serious Fraud Office has never claimed that serious fraud cases result in an unusual number of acquittals. Before our current debates, the Government never made such a claim. We understand the reason for that when we consider the number of convictions for the past five years: 10 in 2001-02; 17 in 2002-03; 20 in 2003-04; 37 out of 58 cases in 2004-05; and 13 out of 23 in 2005-06. The difference is obviously the number of people acquitted. The conviction rate is 77 per cent.; 68 per cent.; 51 per cent.; 61 per cent. and 57 per cent. Those percentages apply to big cases, in which many people are involved. The conviction rate is regularly over 50 per cent. On one occasion, it exceeded 75 per cent., and, on two others, it was more than 50 per cent. though less than 60 per cent. The Liberal Democrat case is that the current system has worked relatively well but is working better because of changes. It would adversely affect the interests of the defendant and of justice if further changes, such as those for which the Government argue, were made. However, if further changes occur and fraud trials are tackled differently, defendants must be treated the same as the prosecution, and the interests of every defendant—not only that of the defence as a whole—must be considered. I hope that hon. Members will be sympathetic to those arguments and that we shall have the opportunity to test the House’s opinion on at least some of them.