Fraud (Trials without a Jury) Bill

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There are strong indications that this Government do not like juries and lay magistrates and believe that the expert in the Government ultimately knows best. It is precisely because I disagree profoundly with that idea in matters of the administration of justice that I do not want the Bill to get on the statute book. The Government’s arguments concerning the burdens on juries just do not hold up. The Jubilee line report and the interviews with jurors show clearly that, whatever those burdens may be—they are burdens that jurors have to carry in any major criminal trial—jurors are capable of doing the work. In so far as there may be a problem in that area, one of my regrets is that during the Bill’s passage, we have been unable to look at any alternatives because its terms have been so tightly drawn. From Second Reading on, we had to consider only trials without juries. The jury system can be made to work, yet the Government constantly blinker themselves and ignore the improvements that can be made. They themselves have provided in future for the possibility of trial on specimen counts, with the judge determining the other counts thereafter, yet they failed totally to take that into account in bringing the Bill before the House.