My Lords, I too support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. Strongly though I support it and absurd though I too think it is to allow for some possibility of a jury trial with the jury sitting otherwise than in the actual courtroom, I had no intention of speaking tonight until I learned that my noble and learned friend Lord Judge could not. As I seem to be the last judge standing this evening and feel so strongly about this, it seems that I should say a word. But I urge all of your Lordships to recognise that if my noble and learned friend had been speaking, he would have said the little I propose to say so much more tellingly and convincingly that the House really ought to add enormous weight to it.
All I say is that the whole value of a jury, sacrosanct in our law of course, is that they are there and part of the atmosphere. They watch the whole thing unfolding, see the witnesses and sense the entire development of the arguments as they emerge. My noble friend Lord Carlile made a number of these points, as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, has just done. The whole aura of the process and the fact that the jury recognise in the courtroom that they are, for the first time, having to apply themselves to this critical question—is this man or woman guilty or not guilty?—is lost and dissipated if they are not there. I urge your Lordships not to provide for this suggested possibility, for who knows in what circumstances it would be? They can be only circumstances that do not justify having a separate jury.